Volume 37, Issue 1
For Whom Do We Read?
There have been many theories of reading, with their more or less normative claims, that consider the reader on the one hand and the text on the other. What seems to be forgotten, especially since reading has become primarily a silent and solitary activity, is the addressee of reading. This special issue invites literary theorists and historians to engage with a question raised by this reader: For whom do we read?
differences aims in all critical registers—from the aesthetic to the overtly political—to test the limits of legibility, whether that thinking is inside or outside the academy.