Paola Iovene (University of Chicago), Eve Lin (University of Freiburg), Nicolai Volland (as discussant, Penn State University)

Media and places of reading are often seen as the context of reading acts. Foregrounding these “peripheral” aspects of reading, however, will supplement our understandings of reading cultures and the social-cultural mechanisms behind reading. Moreover, analyzing media and places of reading promotes reevaluations of literary figures and literary history, brings into being new forms of reading, and constantly (re-)defines cultural legacies and cultural concepts in a rapid-changing society such as that of the post-Mao China. In the 7th session of ReadChina's online lecture series, Paola Iovene will investigate how local museums and the national radio have recreated the authorial persona of the writer Lu Yao and popularized his fiction beyond the written page. The other speaker, Eve Lin, will discuss the vicissitudes of post-Mao China’s reading culture and its high culture legacy by tracing how the concept of “Avant-Garde” mutates over the years in bookstores.