Social Media and Contemporary Literature

Catalog description

This seminar investigates the role of social media in contemporary literary production and reception. We will understand both social media and literature broadly, examining literature about and written for social media, online communities focused on book reviewing such as BookTube and Goodreads, platforms for social reading and writing like Wattpad and AO3, and the use of social media by publishers and authors in promoting literature. We will read scholarship in media studies, reception studies, and publishing studies to understand how social media shapes the contemporary literary field and how literature shapes social media. Throughout, we will ask what it means to consider literature as a social phenomenon, foregrounding questions about its conditions of production and the people who read and respond to it online.