US Publishing Today

Course Description

Summary

This course provides an overview of the broader ethical and social landscape around diversity and representation in publishing. Major inquiries will include:

- What identities are over or underrepresented in publishing? 
- Who is able to get published and how? 
- Do writers with various identities, including those with disabilities, writers of color, queer writers, and others, have to accent or exaggerate their difference in order to fulfill mainstream literary taste, that is, culturally produced expectations about what these writers should be writing?
- Who is the US American reading population? What’s the difference between readers (who might use libraries, etc.) and buyers (market consumers)?
- What challenges exist in data collection? Surveying?
- What sorts of gender bias exist and how do they intersect with race bias? 
- What about anti-queerness of various forms?
- What is intersectionality? What are other ways of thinking about difference?
- Are there pay gaps in publishing according to identitarian difference, such as race, gender, sexuality and disability? 

Please note that this course is designed to follow a colloquium model. Readings will be relatively light, but students are expected to come to class prepared, having digested the materials and ready to dig in critically and creatively. The meat of our inquiry will happen in class and active participation is key. Students will create presentations in which they lead class time alongside the professor.