The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture Medium, Object, Metaphor

This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

1. The Printed Book, Contemporary Media Culture, and American Studies, Heike Schaefer and Alexander Starre.- 2. The Books That Count: Big Data vs. Narrative in Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers, Regina Schober.- 3. US Print Culture, Literary Narrative, and Slow Reading in the Age of Big Data: Steve Tomasula’s VAS: An Opera in Flatland, Antje Kley.- 4. “Books and Books and Books … an Oasis of the Forbidden”: Writing and Print Culture as Metaphor and Medium for Survival in Margaret Atwood’s Novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Reingard M. Nischik.- 5. Zines in the Library: Underground Communication and the Property Regimes of Book Culture, Janice Radway.- 6. The Book between Media Convergence, Media Specificity, and Diverse Reading Communities in Present-Day US Culture, Christoph Bläsi.- 7. Michael Cunningham’s The Hours: Homage to the Book in a Time of Media Transformation, Aleida Assmann.- 8. “There’s Nothing Quite Like a Real Book”: Stop-Motion Bookishness, Jessica Pressman.- 9. Remediation, Oral Storytelling, and the Printed Book: The Stylistic Strategies of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Fifty Year Sword, Alison Gibbons.- 10. Book Design as Literary Strategy: Aka Morchiladze’s Novel Santa Esperanza and Its Poetics of Playful Storytelling, Monika Schmitz-Emans.- 11. Authorial Impression and Remediation in Anne Carson’s Quasi-Artist’s Book Nox, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth.- 12. The Storied Book, Garrett Stewart.

Heike Schaefer is Professor of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Education Karlsruhe, Germany. She is the author of American Literature and Immediacy: Literary Innovation and the Emergence of Photography, Film, and Television (2019) and Mary Austin’s Regionalism (2004) and co-editor of Network Theory and American Studies (2015) and Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences (2017).

Alexander Starre is Assistant Professor of North American Culture at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Metamedia: American Book Fictions and Literary Print Culture after Digitization (2015) and co-editor of Projecting American Studies: Essays on Theory, Method, and Practice (2018).