BACLS seminar: Ben Davies and Christina Lupton, Reading Novels in the Covid-19 Pandemic

​Reading Novels During the Covid Pandemic reports on a major ethnographic study of fiction readers in the UK and Denmark, conducted during the pandemic in 2020-21. It provides a snapshot of an extraordinary moment in cultural and reading history. What do novels mean at a time of crisis and which novels did readers turn to in this one? Was it old favourites or books that helped them to make sense of the present predicament? The book is distinctive in its combination of the literary and the sociological, revealing what readers value at a moment when the balance between public and private, between work and leisure, has been suddenly disrupted. In awarding the prize, the BACLS prize judges praised ‘the dialogue the monograph fostered between texts across time to shed light on our contemporary moment’. 

​We’re delighted to host two of the three authors, Ben Davies (University of Portsmouth) and Christina Lupton (University of Warwick, University of Copenhagen). Ben and Christina will introduce the research project and the reading practices it uncovered, reflect on the use of empirical research methods in contemporary literary studies and talk about the afterlives of the book in their current research. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

​BACLS members, colleagues and friends are all welcome.