Networking the Canon: Reconstituting the American Literature Canon through Online Distribution Systems

Literaturnachweis - Detailanzeige

Trefferliste

Autor/in	Champagne, Ashley Marian
Titel	Networking the Canon: Reconstituting the American Literature Canon through Online Distribution Systems
Quelle	(2017), (211 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
ISBN	978-0-3557-3591-8
Schlagwörter	Hochschulschrift; Dissertation; Online Systems; Power Structure; Reading Material Selection; Literature; Audio Books; Reading Processes; Narration; Specialists; Awards; Book Reviews; Periodicals; Cultural Capital; Critical Reading; Females; Minority Groups; Retailing; Corporations; Comparative Analysis; Whites; Civil Rights; Social Change; Literary Criticism; Computer Software; Listening; Professional Recognition; College Faculty; Scholarship; Credentials + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Thesis; Dissertations; Academic thesis; Online; Literatur; Leseprozess; Award; Auszeichnung; Book reviewing; Book review; Rezension; Periodical; Journal; Zeitschrift; Fachzeitschrift; Periodikum; Kritisches Lesen; Weibliches Geschlecht; Ethnische Minderheit; Warenwirtschaft; Unternehmen; White; Weißer; Bürgerrechte; Grundrechte; Zivilrecht; Sozialer Wandel; Literaturkritik; Hörvorgang; Zuhören; Fakultät; Scholarships; Stipendium; Studienbuch
Abstract	I examine the formation of power as it relates to canonicity through online delivery systems, Amazon and Goodreads, and the academic sector in the contemporary period. The digital age has radically changed literature by providing for a textuality of literature that is multi-channeled, and this project responds by engaging new critical lenses for understanding how readers digest, interpret, and select literature. Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase "the medium is the message," coined in 1964, and revised in McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's later work The Medium is the Massage (1967, rpt) digs both hands into the reader to pay attention to that which often goes unnoticed: the medium. So too does this project argue that the medium vastly changes how people read and write about literature in the digital age in the context of online delivery systems that recommend literature to users and offer audiobooks that record performative narrations of literature. I argue in my first chapter that there is a redistribution of cultural power between specialist and citizen readers in the contemporary period. The professional specialist reader, in the past, adjudicated the cultural value of literature through prizes [PEN, Man Booker, Pulitzer, National Book Awards], book recommendations, and literature reviews published in academic journals and news venues [e.g., "Los Angeles Review of Books," "New York Review of Books," "The Atlantic"]. Today, however, the review infrastructure is more widely dispersed and accessible to citizens, allowing amateurs to participate in a parallel process. Much like how citizen science is scientific research conducted largely or entirely by amateur scientists, the "citizen reader" participates in a similar process for reading. The result is that the once sacrosanct cultural capital of the "literary scholar" is no longer the primary credentialing mechanism for regulating, and even disciplining, how and what one should read. Now a new kind of popular cultural capital--one accrued less through the professional work of critical reading than what I will call the "amateur play" of social recommendation--also allows citizen readers to adjudicate literature by awarding prizes [e.g., Goodreads Choice Awards], curating lists of recommended books, and reviewing literature on social cataloging sites [e.g., Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, Anobii]. My first chapter examines the cultural work (and play) of the citizen reader, particularly in regards to literature awards for women in the Goodreads Choice Awards. My second chapter is focused on how the Internet now dismisses the near fifty years of work by women's studies scholars to include women and people of color in the historically male canon. Taking book sales on Amazon as a point of departure, I engage with the literature Amazon promotes through its recommendation engine. I compare a sample of book recommendations on Amazon with those of the "Heath Anthology." My argument is that Amazon's book recommendations often repartition artists of color apart from historically canonical white male authors, and thereby threaten to hide the important influence of women's and civil rights movements in literary study. In my third chapter, I study how the narrator's performance or deliberately intended anti-performance in the audiobook industry produces an interpretation of the text and therefore changes how readers understand literature in the twenty-first century. The seminal works of New Criticism, which focus on the formal elements of a text, largely disregard a text's oral quality. Because New Critics draw strict boundaries around the printed text, they almost exclusively focus on a text's visual aspects, without regard for oral performance. With emergent platforms such as Audible, Librovox, Poetry Foundation, and other digital resources, however, listeners have the ready ability to hear authors read their own work, marking a shift in literacy culture that foregrounds oral performance. While the work of W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and M.C. Beardsley, along with that of the other New Critics, changed and dominated the field of literary studies in the mid-twentieth century, the digital media that have popularized the practice of listening to literature in the twenty-first century challenge their interpretive frameworks. My final chapter is about the current role of professional specialists in the evolution of the literary canon--specifically to identify the important function they fulfill in a post-fact era where the public is skeptical of the credentials, educational background, and professional status of elite educators. Specialists continue, even if in a new means and context, to play a vital role in shaping the literary canon, especially as algorithmic arrangements seemingly objectively present canonicity when, in fact, the canon has embedded, subjective dimensions. The radical changes in reading practices in the digital age shape canonicity, and I share part of that story in my dissertation. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.] (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Tel: 800-521-0600; Web site: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01