Upcoming Events
“Women, Taste, and the Politics of Reading in Twentieth Century America.”
On June 5 at 6 pm CST, we will be privileged to hear Drs. Amy Blair, Mary Unger, and Yung-Hsing Wu discuss their recent monographs published by the University of Massachusetts Press as part of its series, “Studies in Print Culture and History of the Book.” Tasting and Testing Books (https://www.umasspress.com/9781625348203/tasting-and-testing-books/), Reading the Renaissance (https://www.umasspress.com/9781625348586/reading-the-renaissance/), and Closely and Consciously (https://www.umasspress.com/9781625348463/closely-and-consciously/) all examine the ways in which women’s reading played a central role in shaping America’s cultural and political landscape during the twentieth century. They pose significant questions about the mechanisms by which reading and reception shape the very idea of Americanness itself.
For an invitation, please email worthen99@gmail.com
Recent events
RSS panel, 2024 MLA Convention (Philadelphia, PA)
“Loved It/Hated It: Reading, Reception, and Affect”
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“Beware the Envious Reader,” Rebecca Olson, Oregon State University
“Love and Scholarship: Compulsory Affection in Early Wordsworth Studies,” Christopher Rovee,
Louisiana State University
“‘I am so angry at [redacted] right now’: Circulating Affect within Twitter’s Pre-Reading
Environment,” Milan Terlunen, MIT
“Social Media and the Reinvention of Literary Culture,” Adam Szetela, Cornell University
RSS panel, 2023 MMLA Convention (Cincinnati, OH)
“Consensus and Divergence in Reception Studies”
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“‘We Always Do it the Same Way, Don’t We?,’ Experimenting with Consensus, Divergence, and
Reception Studies through Pinter’s Dumb Waiter in Performance,” Alexis Holland, Ben Long, Noah Long,
Colleen Pechin, and Laura Grace Godwin, Christopher Newport University
“Expectations and the Value Problem in The Last Jedi: Film Against a New Age of Television,” Joseph
Ozias, University of Cincinnati
“Home Economics: Writing and Work in The Letters of Shirley Jackson and We Have Always Lived in
the Castle,” Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
RSS panel, 2023 MLA Convention (San Francisco, CA)
“Working” Memes
Chair: Joseph Worthen, Lees-McRae College
“The Bimbofication of Marxism,” Julianne Adams, Vanderbilt University
“From Painting to Pixels: Bob Ross and the (Auto)Biographical Work of Memes,” Laurie McNeill, University of British Columbia
“Memetic Cinderellas of Attention Economy,” Sarbagya Kafle, University of Louisiana Lafayette
RSS panels, 2022 MMLA Convention (Minneapolis, MN)
“Collectivity in Reception Studies I” (Virtual)
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“Truth: New Historicism and Reader Response Approaches to Dexter Palmer’s Mary Toft;
or The Rabbit Queen,” Heather Edberg, La Sierra University
“Archive as Influence: Collecting the Genre of Detective Fiction,” Kathryn Hendrickson, University
of Michigan
“Shifting Autonomies of Allegoresis: Popular Reception of Film Studio A24 and Twin Peaks: The
Return,” Elizaveta Shatalova, University of Waterloo
“Collectivity in Reception Studies II” (In Person)
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“ Reading Relations in the Literary Classroom,” Maral Attar-Zadeh, Trinity College, University of
Cambridge
“The Episteme of the Epistolary: Female Authorial and Fan Participation in Letters Sent to Lord
Byron,” Jake Hennessy, Florida State University
“Decolonizing the Period Drama: Diverse Casting in Recent Adaptations of Austen’s Novels and
Texts,” Shaunna Wilkinson, Saint Louis University
RSS panel, 2022 MMLA Convention (Washington, DC)
“Reception in the 2020s”
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“ABCs of Antiracism: Antiracist Primers and the Movement for Black Lives,” Kristin L. Matthews,
Brigham Young University
“The Presence and Power of the Progressive Reader in the Book Publishing Industry,” Chiara Bullen,
University of Stirling, Scotland
“What To Read During A Pandemic: A Case Study of ‘Book Promotion Politics’ in Iran,” Mohsen Kafi,
Victoria University of Wellington
Respondent: Amy L. Blair, Marquette University
RSS panel, 2021 ALA Conference (Boston, MA)
“New Georgraphies of Reception”
Chair: Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University
“Metaphor as Gestalt Phenomenon,” Ben Libman, Stanford University
“The Reception to the Game of Thrones Finale: The Historical Amnesia It Indicates,” Stephen Paul
Miller, St. John’s University
“Native American Literary Studies and Geographies of Reading,” Matthew Herman, Montana State
University
RSS panel, 2021 MLA Convention (Toronto, Canada)
“Dostoevsky at 200: International Receptions” (Co-Sponsored with the
International Dostoevsky Society)**
Chair: Carol Apollonio, Duke University
“Popularizing Dostoevsky: Reflections on the Success of Italian TV
Series Adaptations of the 1960-70s,” Sergia Adamo, University of
Trieste
“Dostoevsky in Early 20th Century China,” Hang Yu, Guanzi Normal
University
“Postcolonial Dostoevsky: Revolutions, Radicals, Rêveurs,” Melanie
Jones, UCLA
RSS panels, 2020 MLA Convention (Seattle, WA)
“Authors Made and Remade”
Chair: Yung-Hsing Wu, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
“The Authorship of Reception: Hermeneutic Circles and Rhetorical
Assemblage.” Steven Mailloux, Loyola Marymount University
“Recovery and Disruption: Ruíz de Burton and the Expansions of National
Space.” Isabel Duarte-Gray, Harvard University
“‘Many Books, Many Poes’: Pop-Culture Authorship and the Cult of Edgar
Allan Poe.“ Whitney May, Texas State University
“Margaret Atwood: Managing Reception and Overseeing Adaptation.” Jeremy
Rosen, University of Utah**
“Bad Reading”
Chair: Yung-Hsing Wu, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
“Gift Books and Bad Readers.” Claudia Stokes, Trinity University
“Charles Chesnutt and the Trouble with the Discerning Reader.” Faye S.
Halpern, University of Calgary
“Biopoetics: Reading with the Body.” Gillian D. Silverman, University of
Colorado, Denver
RSS panel, 2018 ALA Conference (San Francisco, CA)
RSS had a panel at the annual conference of the American Literature Association, which addressed the reception of neglected works, materials and more.
“Reception Histories of the Future” Conference (Uppsala, Sweden)
From August 4-6, 2017, the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University organized a conference on Byzantinisms, speculative fiction, and the literary heritage of medieval empire. Since Classics are often reluctant to look beyond the temporal borders of the antique world and venture into its medieval Greek imperial successor, the consideration of classical reception in speculative fiction has mostly neglected the significant impact of Byzantium and other post-Roman imperial formations and their literatures on modern SFF. This conference brought together some of the most innovative modern writers of speculative fiction with scholars working at the cutting edge of Byzantine reception studies for a two-day discussion of Byzantinism, decadence, empire, and storytelling.
RSS panel, 2018 MLA Convention (New York, NY)
“Insecure Receptions”
“The Forceful Insecurity of Minority Youth Authorship: Thea Behran’s
‘Anti-Semitism’.” Amy Fish, Harvard University.
“Staging Reception: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ‘Babington White,’ and
Colonel Shandon Face Off in the Victorian Press.” Naomi Salmon,
University of Wisconsin/Madison.
“‘Facts are Stubborn Things’: Reception Theory in the Forgeries of Iolo
Morganwg.“ Timothy Heimlich, University of California/Berkeley.
“New Propaganda and the Regression of Reading: Harold Laswell Counts the
News.” Maxwell Larson, Penn State University.
RSS panel, 2017 MLA Convention (Philadelphia, PA)
“Fandom and Reception Studies”: In an issue of Reception, Daniel Cavicchi called for a history of fandom. This panel explored the ways in which reception scholars and fan specialists contribute to an exploration of this phenomenon.
RSS panel, 2016 MMLA Conference (St. Louis, MO)
“History of Critical Reception”: RSS hosted an open topic session at the 2016 MMLA Conference in St. Louis.
RSS panel, 2016 MLA Convention (Austin, TX)
“The Politics of Reception: Race, Gender and Ideology”
Chair: Genevieve West
“Konstanz and the Liberals,” David Rosen and Aaron Santesso
“Reading Themselves into the World: Considerations of Race and Gender in
a Black Woman Book Club,” Florence Kabba
“A Winnicottian Reading of Fans’ Sociopolitical Fulfillment in the
Potential Space of Online Fandom,” Olga Kuminova
RSS panel, 2015 MMLA Convention (Columbus, OH)
RSS hosted a session titled “Reception Controversies: Theory and History” at the 2015 MMLA Conference in Columbus, OH.
A War of No Common Description: The Transnational Reception of Waterloo in the 19th Century (Brussels)
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, the Centre for Reception Studies of the KU Leuven organized a conference on the transnational reception of the event in the 19th century as an open invitation to reconsider the Battle and its broad cultural reception throughout the century. The conference took place from June 18-19, 2015 and the keynote speakers were: Jeffrey N. Cox (University of Colorado at Boulder); Norbert Eke (Universität Paderborn); Jean-Marc Largeaud (Universite Francois Rabelais de Tours); Philippe Raxhon (Universite de Liege); Peter Philipp Riedl (Universitat Freiburg); Philip Shaw (University of Leicester); Jeroen Van Zanten (Universiteit Amsterdam) and Janneke Weijermars (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen).
RSS panels, 2015 ALA Conference (Boston, MA)
“Reading African-American Women’s Fiction: From Alice Browning to Toni
Morrison”
Chair: Barbara Hochman
“Recovering the Black Chicago Renaissance: The Case of Chicago Girl,”
Mary Ungar
“A Cognitive Reading of Beloved,” Lydia Magras
“Toni Morrison’s A Mercy: The Critique of Patriarchy and History’s
Lost Opportunities,” Philip Goldstein
“Mark Twain’s Audiences: Reception Histories and Reconstructed Reading
Communities” (session chair: Philip Goldstein)
“Reconstructing the Reading Community of the Century: The Pre-Published
Chapters of Huckleberry Finn,” Barbara Hochman
“The Political Theology of Reception: From Huck Finn to Francis Finn,
S.J.” Steven Mailloux
“The Reception of The Prince and the Pauper in the Early 1880s,” James
L. Machor
RSS panels, 2015 MLA Convention (Vancouver, Canada)
“Adaptation as Reception”: Yung-Hsing Wu organized a panel focused on multimodal reception, especially adaptations as a proof that reception has happened.
“Zora Neale Hurston Reception”: Genevieve West and Jennifer Marshall led a panel on the reception of Zora Neale Hurston’s work.
RSS roundtable, 2014 MMLA Convention (Detroit, MI)
From Twitter and fan fiction sites to Amazon.com book reviews, the topics brought up by the presenters invited audience members to a lively discussion on personal experiences and research findings about the opportunities and challenges for Reception Study in the age of the digital social media.
RSS panel, 2014 SAMLA Convention in Atlanta:
The panel organized by Paul Dahlgren focused on the new directions in Reception Study with paper topics ranging from pedagogy to digital reading communities, and more.
RSS panel, 2014 ALA Conference (Washington, D.C.)
Philip Goldstein brought together a panel on Mark Twain’s readers in an effort to provide insight into eccentric fan letters, sensation effects and mysteries.
RSS panel, 2014 MLA Convention (Chicago, IL)
Our RSS panel at the 2014 MLA Convention was selected for inclusion in this year’s presidential theme, Vulnerable Times. We had an interesting group of presentations that each extended the field of reception—while focusing even more closely on specific audience groups and reception periods. Thanks for all the presenters and attendees for the engaging discussion afterwards!
RSS panel, 2013 MMLA Convention (Milwaukee, WI)
We had an RSS panel at the 2013 MMLA Convention, which took place between November 7-10, 2013.