The Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities Lecture Series, “FanZ and Enthusiasts: The Passions of Modern Reading,” will open with a program by noted cultural historian Janice Radway at noon on Tuesday, February 17 in the Women’s Building Lounge.
Radway, the Frances Fox Professor of Literature at Duke University, studies the way people make use of what they read. Her two earliest books, “Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Culture,” and “A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle Class Desire,” examine the reasons why ordinary people read. In March, Radway will publish “Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States” with Carl Kaestle. She also co-edited an anthology of American studies, also debuting in March.
Radway received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Michigan State University; her master’s degree is from the State Universtiy of New York, Stony Brook.