Research line The woman reader and the making of modern publics
We will study both the real and symbolic roles of women in the construction of new readerships in Europe and America. We will analyze how the woman reader could act as a metonymy that symbolized the new general, rather than scholar or specialist public. We are especially interested in exploring how the category of “literature for women” was constructed: what kind of works were considered as addressed or suitable for a female audience?, who labeled them as such?, how the identification of some works or specific literacy genres with a female audience could differ when the former were translated, versioned or marketed in different cultural, religious and linguistic settings?. We are also interested in contrasting the way in which a female audience was represented and moralized with actual women’s reading habits.