Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: TL;DR: Cultures and Challenges of Reading

Course Number: 66-153

Recent headlines (and data) suggest we have a growing reading problem. How much and well we read is increasingly a question, in and out of the classroom, from concerns about whether students have ever read a novel to shifting understandings of literacy in the age of AI. At the same time, from #BookTok to the popularity of audiobooks, new ways of engaging with the written word have emerged for and from enthusiastic readers.

Using an interdisciplinary lens based in literary studies, library science, sociology, and technology, this course asks: why, where, and how do you read? What influences your choices? What makes something end up in your TBR pile or results in a DNF? This course offers a deep dive into the history, present, and future of reading, from technologies of reading to socio-cultural influences on reading for pleasure, education, and work. Over the course of the semester, students will analyze how technology, social structures, and institutional power have shaped the act of reading over time. We’ll explore reading as both a personal practice and a social phenomenon, critically examining how and where we read—privately and publicly, individually and collectively, on the page and in our ears. And we’ll take a close look at the myriad forces that shape our reading habits, from book clubs and #BookTok to blurbs and bans.

Through engagement with guest speakers, field trips to libraries and bookstores, and hands-on research, students examine current barriers to reading and work to find solutions. Students will have the opportunity to work on individual and collaborative projects such as reflections on their own reading habits, creating book awards and marketing campaigns in their favorite genre, and designing a survey and reading campaign targeting the CMU community.

Academic Year: 2025-2026
Semester(s): Spring