Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic provides the first detailed scholarly investigation of the cultural phenomenon of bookshelves (and the social practices around them) since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. With a foreword by Lydia Pyne, author of Bookshelf (2016), the volume brings together 17 scholars from 6 countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA) with expertise in literary studies, book history, publishing, visual arts, and pedagogy to critically examine the role of bookshelves during the current pandemic. This volume interrogates the complex relationship between the physical book and its digital manifestation via online platforms, a relationship brought to widespread public and scholarly attention by the global shift to working from home and the rise of online pedagogy. It also goes beyond the (digital) bookshelf to consider bookselling, book accessibility, and pandemic reading habits. 

Corinna Norrick-Rühl is Professor of Book Studies at the University of Muenster (WWU), Germany. Her recent publications are The Novel as Network: Forms, Ideas, Commodities (2020, co-edited with Tim Lanzendörfer, in this series) and Book Clubs and Book Commerce (2019). 
Shafquat Towheed is Senior Lecturer in English in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at The Open University, UK. He directs The Open University’s History of Books and Reading (HOBAR) research collaboration and was UK principal investigator for the Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool (READ-IT) project (2018–2021).