THE  READING  GROUP

Privacy Settings is a reading group for undergraduate and graduate students from the English Faculty at the University of Oxford. It is aimed at those with an interest in contemporary literature, in life and culture under late capitalism, and in digital reading.

 

Each week, we will read Sally Rooney’s recent novel Beautiful World, Where Are You on the Kindle app. We will spend the first few sessions discussing themes of the book such as privacy, digital life, the literary industry, the neoliberal present.

 

For the final session, participants will be asked to request the data that the Kindle app stores on their reading of Rooney’s novel. We will pool the results, analyse them together, and discuss what it means and what – if anything – can be done with the fact that Amazon harvests data on literary reading.

 

The reading group will run on Fridays of Weeks 5-8 of Trinity Term 2022. After this, participants will be invited to join a collective writing project to reflect on the experience, and to prepare a joint article for publication.

 

Places are limited to 15. Participants will be reimbursed for purchasing a copy of Beautiful World, Where Are You on the Kindle app.

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To register, or for further information, please contact: adam dot guy at ell dot ox dot ac dot uk

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