Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic provides the first detailed scholarly investigation of the cultural phenomenon of bookshelves (and the social practices around them) since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. With a foreword by Lydia Pyne, author of Bookshelf (2016), the volume brings together 17 scholars from 6 countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA) with expertise in literary studies, book history, publishing, visual arts, and pedagogy to critically examine the role of bookshelves during the current pandemic. This volume interrogates the complex relationship between the physical book and its digital manifestation via online platforms, a relationship brought to widespread public and scholarly attention by the global shift to working from home and the rise of online pedagogy. It also goes beyond the (digital) bookshelf to consider bookselling, book accessibility, and pandemic reading habits.

This book analyses how growing managerialism and the marketisation of higher education has undermined educational standards and pedagogical integrity. Specifically, it provides a thorough critique of how the pandemic, and the move to online learning and MOOCs, has reinforced these developments. The book outlines the limits of new managerialism, which is replacing critical mass with a culture of compliance in higher education. Employing an ethnographic approach, the book explores the impact of the sudden shift in teaching delivery from in-person to online for example, the changing role of the PhD supervisor during the pandemic, and the impact on students’ willingness to engage and their (in)visibility in the classroom, and further considers how these impact class interactions, social relationships and learning. Ultimately, this book argues that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of marketisation of education and revealed the distorted managerial response to a crisis.

The famous 1962 precedent at the Restrictive Practices Court of the United Kingdom, 'Books are different,' is still the reasoning behind many cultural policies around the world, building on longstanding assumptions surrounding 'the book'. As this suggests, the 'difference' of the book as a unique form of cultural (rather than economic) production has acquired a powerful status. But are books still different? In (somewhat provocatively) asking this question from a network-oriented and interdisciplinary perspective (book studies/literary studies), this Element inquires into the notion of 'difference' in relation to books. Challenging common notions of 'bibliodiversity,' it reconsiders the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. It also engages with the diversifying potentials of the digital literary sphere, offering a case study of Bernardine Evaristo's industry activities and activism, the Element concludes with thoughts on bookishness, affect and networked practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The look of love . . . through an analytic lens Long treated with skepticism in literary and cultural studies, love – as a subject of serious scholarly inquiry – is now attracting intense interest and renewed attention. Love, Etc. centers on two key themes: representations of love in literature and culture and love as a relationship to literature and culture. How are our attitudes to love changing in the wake of new technologies and social media; shifting norms around partnering, marriage, and divorce; and feminist and queer thought? Fifteen short and accessible essays cover a wide range of topics from Tinder to The Bachelor, from liking trees to loving aliens, from unrequited love to maternal love, from polyamory to new stories of female friendship, from loving physical books to theorizing love in popular music. Contributors: Carolina Bandinelli, University of Warwick * Mette Blok, Roskilde University, Denmark * Angus Connell Brown * Stephanie Burt, Harvard University * Anne-Marie S. Christensen, University of Southern Denmark * Jonathan Flatley, Wayne State University * Lily Gurton-Wachter, Smith College * Timothy Laurie, University of Technology Sydney * Hanna Meretoja, University of Turku, Finland * Kevin Ohi, Boston College * John Plotz, Brandeis University * Anna Poletti, Utrecht University, The Netherlands * Jessica Pressman, San Diego State University * Biswarup Sen, University of Oregon * Hannah Stark, University of Tasmania

Shining a spotlight on everyday readers of the 21st century, Beth Driscoll explores how contemporary readers of Anglophone fiction interact with the book industry, digital environments, and each other. We live in an era when book clubs, bibliomemoirs, Bookstagram and BookTok are as valuable to some readers as solitary reading moments. The product of nearly two decades of qualitative research into readers and reading culture, What Readers Do examines reading through three dimensions - aesthetic conduct, moral conduct, and self-care – to show how readers intertwine private and social behaviors, and both reinforce and oppose the structures of capitalism. Analyzing reading as a post-digital practice that is a synthesis of both print and digital modes and on- and offline behaviors, Driscoll presents a methodology for studying readers that connects book history, literary studies, sociology, and actor-network theory. Arguing for the vitality, agency, and creativity of readers, this book sheds light on how we read now - and on how much more readers do than just read.

When violence breaks out at the stands of far-right publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Beatrice Deft is provoked into action. An alienated Australian high school teacher who finds herself at the centre of the global book industry, Beatrice encounters a cast of characters including the very hot Caspian Schorle (German police officer), Kurt Weidenfeld (left-wing German publisher), and White Storm (a neo-Nazi publishing organisation). Such is the premise of The Frankfurt Kabuff, a comic erotic thriller about the publishing industry originally self-published under the pseudonym Blaire Squiscoll. With The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition, Blaire Squiscoll is revealed as the pen name of Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires, who created the novella in the midst of fieldwork at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Published for the first time as a full critical edition, this experimental, playful work combines critical and creative modes for new perspectives on the publishing industry and creative economies. The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition enriches the novella with an introduction, annotated text, 15 essays by leading scholars and practitioners, and additional creative assemblages. This highly unusual research project offers insights for students, academics and publishers alike.

Literary works play a crucial role in modelling and conceptualising temporalities. This becomes particularly apparent in times of crises, which put conventionalised temporal patterns and routines under pressure. During crises, past, present, and future appear to collapse into each other and give way to temporal disjunction and rupture. Offering pluralised and context-sensitive approaches to temporalities in and of crises, this volume explores how literature’s engagement with crises suggests both the need for and possibility of rethinking ‘time’. The volume is committed to examining the affordances of specific genres and their potential in pointing beyond temporalities of crises to facilitate a sense of futurity. Individual essays are grounded in recent theories of temporality and literary form, which are related to novel advancements in ecocriticism, queer studies, affect theory, and postcolonial studies. The chapters cover a broad range of examples from different literary genres to reveal the knowledge of literature about temporalities in and of crises.

Readers are essential agents in the production of bestsellers but bestsellers are not essential to readers' leisure pursuits. The starting point in this Element is readers' opinions about and their uses of bestselling fiction in English. Readers' relationships with bestsellers bring into view their practices of book selection, and their navigation of book recommendation culture. Based on three years of original research (2019–2021), including a quantitative survey with readers, interviews with social media influencers, and qualitative work with international Gen Z readers in a private Instagram chat space, the authors highlight three core actions contemporary multimodal readers make– choosing, connecting, and responding– in a transmedia era where on- and offline media practices co-exist. The contemporary multimodal reader, or the MMR3, they argue, illustrates the pervasiveness of recommendation culture, reliance on trusted others, and an ethic of responsiveness.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered, and continues to trigger, many changes in K-12 education—some major, like learning remotely from home, and some minor, like sitting farther apart on the school bus. While most students have had routines interrupted, the children perhaps most affected by that disruption are students with special education needs. The challenges we currently face should not undermine what we have accomplished over the last 60 years to protect students with disabilities and those from traditionally marginalized backgrounds. Instead, we must take an honest, proactive and collaborative approach to the challenges laid bare. To do so, we must reckon with the fact that during a pandemic that disproportionately impacted traditionally marginalized communities and people with disabilities, we collectively dropped the ball for students receiving special education services, and we need to consider the continued consequences. Further, we must acknowledge that many students with disabilities have found virtual and remote learning to be more liberating and accessible for their learning strengths, needs, and preferences. This text addresses how we must reconcile disparate realities of the special educational experience during pandemic. Students, parents, teachers, and school officials must align themselves together so that they can provide necessary services and support systems to students with disabilities during unpredictable times. These efforts will help leverage opportunities to disrupt, improve, and ignite educational experiences and opportunities for our children and youth, particularly those with disabilities.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2010–11 left indelible imprints on the Middle East. Yet, these events have not reshaped the region as pundits once predicted. With this volume, top experts on the region offer wide-ranging considerations of the characteristics, continuities, and discontinuities of the contemporary Middle East, addressing topics from international politics to political Islam, hip hop to human security. This book engages six themes to understand the contemporary Middle East—the spread of sectarianism, abandonment of principles of state sovereignty, the lack of a regional hegemonic power, increased Saudi-Iranian competition, decreased regional attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and fallout from the Arab uprisings—as well as offers individual country studies. With analysis from historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, and up-to-date discussions of the Syrian Civil War, impacts of the Trump presidency, and the 2020 uprisings in Lebanon, Algeria, and Sudan, this book will be an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand the current state of the region.