In the contemporary digital era reading is no longer solely a private or solitary act.  Literary engagement is shaped by interactive, algorithmic and participatory cultures that influence how texts are discovered, interpreted, circulated and valued. From the viral success of #BookTok and the growth of online reading communities to platforms such as Goodreads and digitally mediated publishing spaces, contemporary reading practices are increasingly entangled with systems of recommendation, visibility and participation.

This seminar explores how digital platforms are transforming reading culture and reshaping the broader literary ecosystem. As algorithmic systems mediate encounters with texts, readers increasingly participate in new forms of literary discourse that blur the boundaries between reader, writer, critic and curator. These spaces raise important questions about how literary value, taste, interpretation and community are constructed in environments shaped by likes, comments, reviews, rankings and recommendation technologies.

Rather than approaching digital reading practices as simply replacing traditional literary cultures, this seminar seeks to examine the complex ways that online platforms expand, challenge and reconfigure longstanding ideas about literary engagement. Through sustained discussion across multiple sessions, participants will collectively explore how digital environments influence the ways literature is encountered, interpreted and shared.

Possible areas of discussion include but are not limited to:

• social media-driven reading communities and forms of amateur criticism;
• algorithmic recommendation systems and their influence on literary discovery;
• digital paratexts (reviews, tags, ratings, comments and engagement metrics) as sites of meaning-making;
• emerging aesthetics, genres and literary practices shaped by online circulation;
• relationships between publishing industries, platforms and digital audiences;
• questions of visibility, popularity and literary value in algorithmically mediated spaces;
• how digital reading communities and practices challenge or expand definitions of literary culture.

This seminar welcomes interdisciplinary approaches from comparative literature, digital humanities, publishing studies, media studies, rhetoric, cultural studies and related fields. By bringing together scholars examining literature’s relationship with digital platforms, the seminar aims to foster an ongoing conversation about how reading culture is being transformed and what these changes reveal about the future of literary studies. 

The seminar encourages participants to build connections across individual projects and consider how different approaches to digital reading cultures might speak to one another. Across multiple sessions, participants will work toward a broader understanding of how digital platforms are reshaping literary communities, interpretive practices and the contemporary literary ecosystem.