0275 - Talking about reading groups with Adam Kelly

In this episode I talk with Adam Kelly about ACADEMIC reading groups, which I think we’ll DISCOVER, are a whole lot different to book clubs.

Adam is an Associate Professor of English in UCD’s School of English, Drama and Film.

He has written books himself and published special editions and edited collections and proceedings, (which, for our audience, are books too), and written numerous journal articles, conference papers and reviews (publications that are a bit like books but shorter).

OBVIOUSLY you know a thing or two about WRITING (we might talk about that in depth some time)…

But, what about this other THING, READING, you must also be very good at it too?

Have reading groups had much of an IMPACT on your academic intellectual DEVELOPMENT?We’re talking about READING groups. But when the group meets, you don’t sit around READING do you? Why don’t we call them TALKING groups? So, what is a reading group? What’s it good for? How does the thing you’re reading impact the way you organize the gathering? (monograph, selected chapters, collection of articles, scripts, interpreting artefacts like designs, cases)Must you decide all the readings in advance? (you invited members to offer readings, gave them agency, value of doing it this way?)Where does the audience come from? Relatedly, what about the angle of disciplinary versus inter-disciplinary? Room for both?Thoughts on pace? (weekly, fortnightly, monthly)Are deliverables or traces important? (artefacts like blogs, pods, websites). I know some people hope that each topic would be written up. Is that too much to expect?Reading group lifetime - what to do when they run out of steam?

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: Menehune Dance

Artist: James Pants

Source: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/James_Pants/Bonus_Beat_Blast_2011/39_james_pants-menehune_dance/

License: CC-BY. Creative Commons Attribution License.