The End of Reading? Literature, Health, and the University
Traditional, long-form modes of reading are, it seems of late, in decline. If true, such a loss poses a threat to established practices of learning and dissemination in all areas of life – and, perhaps especially, to the work of the university. While the loss of long-form reading clearly matters to a discipline like Literature, the approach taken in this talk is to relativise these claims by thinking how it might also matter to a discipline like Health or Medicine. Based on interviews with readers across different universities, this talk will provide much needed sociological detail about academic reading methods, practices, and habits. What kind of texts are being read by scholars and students, and through what dedication of time and space in the course of study and research? Does AI make it possible to see the reading and writing of text as a less fundamentally human-centred activity? How important is the time spent re ing to the acquisition of knowledge in these two disciplines? Does this matter to their professional reading? And how might reading itself be seen as an index of health in a university environment?