Susanne Reichl Livres

This enquiry into the principles and practice of reading literature brings together insights from cognitive studies, literary theory, empirical literature studies, learning and teaching research and higher education research. Reading is conceptualised as an active process of meaning-making that is determined by subjective as well as contextual factors and guided by a sense of purpose. This sense of purpose, part of a professional and conscious approach to reading, is the central element in the model of reading that this study proposes. As well as a conceptual aim, this model also has pedagogical power and serves as the basis for a number of critical and creative exercises geared towards developing literary reading strategies and strategic reading competences in general. These activities demonstrate how the main tenets of the study can be put into practice within the context of a particular institution of higher education.

Black British writing, as a branch of postcolonial cultural production, has made a considerable impact on the contemporary literary scene. The starting point of this study is the programmatic ‚contact zone‘, a topos of transcultural and multilingual encounter. The spatial contact zone of post-WWII Britain has engendered literary contact zones, Black British novels, which often focus on the meeting of cultures and languages. As an alternative and a supplement to purely thematic approaches to Black British writing, this study offers a model of ethnic semiosis and proposes a methodology which brings together postcolonial ideology, reader reception theory, semiotics, film studies, cultural theory, sociolinguistics and translation studies. This forms the basis for a cross-section analysis of more than 30 Black British novels and the versatility of the proposed framework and analytical tools.