My Research

I describe my research as a sociology of literature. The interdisciplinary work has theoretical foundation in French cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of social and cultural capital, symbolic power and power structures, cultural fields, and habitus; American Educational and Media philosopher Douglas Kellner’s understanding of contemporary media, and media spectacle in particular; American sociologist Paul DiMaggio’s categorical hierarchies of taste and individual/collective/institutional agency influenced by class positions; and, Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith’s feminist standpoint theory and her theory of ruling relations of power. The work might be situated within the interdisciplinary fields of communication, cultural, and cyber studies.

The consistent thread through my work is an interdisciplinary analysis that accounts for the changing forms of the book, the platforms and communication channels on which readers articulate their experiences, and the ways that readers connect to other readers, and to authors, publishers and booksellers. My long-time research partner, Danielle Fuller, and I conceptualised the relationship among these agents as ‘the reading industry’ for our study of mass reading events (the term we came up with for formally organized, mass-mediated public shared reading programmes). This enabled us to name and create a framework for critiquing the various social and economic structures that produce contemporary cultures of reading.

I approach the professional field of Communication in which I teach much as I do the reading cultures that I investigate. Power relations are at the crux of my research interests. I want to know who has it and why, what do they do with it, and to what effect.

Using mixed methods that transfer across disciplinary inquiry, I investigate reading as a socially embedded activity. I analyse and critique media production and representation of contemporary and historical reading practices. I explore the production itself and people’s interpretations of those representations, the literature people read, and the articulations of their reading experiences. Moreover, I critically assess the relationships that form around cultural participation. These analyses necessarily consider the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which we live. Because of my scholarly “training” in cultural studies criticism, I privilege the concepts of gender, class, sexuality, occupation, ethnicity, and religion in my research.

Please see my CV for my publications.