1st Edition
Reading Home Cultures Through Books
This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading, and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.
Introduction: HOW TO READ HOME CULTURES THROUGH BOOKS?
Marija Dalbello and Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
PART I: HISTORIES
Chapter 1: IMMIGRANTS BEING AT HOME IN LIBRARIES. HOW THE IMMIGRANTS BROUGHT THEIR HOME TO THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Marija Dalbello
Chapter 2: LITERACY, ABC BOOKS AND PRIMARY READERS IN FINNISH IMMIGRANT HOMES AND COMMUNITIES IN THE U.S.
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
Chapter 3: "A PARADE OF HOME." REPRESENTATIONS OF HOME IN GREEK AMERICAN COMMUNITY ALBUMS
Maria Kaliambou
PART II: TRANSFORMATION
Chapter 4: BOOKS AND THE CREATION OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS HOME IN AMERICAN NINETEENTH-CENTURY DOMESTIC FICTION
Johanna McElwee
Chapter 5: SIMULATING DOMESTIC SPACE IN 1990S TECHNOCULTURE: TIMOTHY LEARY’S VIRTUAL HOME LIBRARY
James A Hodges
Chapter 6: BOOKSHELVES CREATE A COZY ATMOSPHERE: AFFECTIVE AN EMOTIONAL MATERIALITY IN BOOKREADING PRACTICES
Anna Kajander
PART III: L’ENVOI
Chapter 7: WRITING HOME CULTURES THROUGH BOOKS IN THE TIME OF THE PANDEMIC
Patience and Fortitude in the First Person (Marija Dalbello)
My Library as a Second Home (Kirsti Salmi-Niklander)
Touching the Books (Maria Kaliambou)
My Bookcase, My Anchor; or Some Reflections on My (Zoom) Background (Johanna McElwee)
What We Lose When We Work From Home (James A. Hodges)
Listening to Books through Lockdown (Anna Kajander)
Biography
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander is a Senior Lecturer in Folklore Studies in the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Marija Dalbello is a Professor of Information Studies in the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, USA.
