29 October 2015, CSB Seminar, 5:15pm – 6:30pm, Visiting Scholars’ Centre, Level 2,Weston Library

Christina Lupton (Warwick) ‘Reading and the Materiality of the Future’

We know that books record the past, but how does the materiality of paper allow us to see into the future? What would it mean to things of books – unlike websites – as things that can be present before they are read? This paper looks at Jude the Obscure and A Simple Story as novels that make reading visible as the difference between now and what is to come. Figuring reading as future-orientated, and engaging with media theory by Stiegler and Derrida, it is part of a project that aims to contest the image of the material book as a way of looking backwards.

N.B. You will require a reader’s ticket or University card to enter the library for this talk, or please email [email protected] if you wish to come and are not a registered reader.