Refresh the Book: On the Hybrid Nature of the Book in the Age of Electronic Publishing

by Viola Hildebrand-Schat (Editor), Katarzyna Bazarnik (Editor), Christoph Benjamin Schulz (Editor)

Refresh the Book contains reflections on the multimodal nature of the book, focusing on its changing perception, functions, forms, and potential in the digital age. Offering an overview of key concepts and approaches, such as liberature, technotexts, and bookishness, this volume of essays addresses the specificity of the printed book as a complex cultural phenomenon. It discusses diverse forms of representation and expression, both in literary and non-literary texts, as well as in artist’s books. Of special interest are these aspects of the book which resist remediation into the digital form. Finally, the volume contains an extensive section devoted to artistic practice as research, discussing the book as the synthesis of the arts, and site for performative aesthetic activity.

Refresh the Book is published as part of Brill's Critical Studies series and includes chapters by Christin Barbarino, Katarzyna Bazarnik, Christoph Bläsi, Sarah Bodman, Zenon Fajfer, Annette Gilbert, Susanne Gramatzki, Mareike Herbstreit, Viola Hildebrand-Schat, Thomas Hvid Kromann, Monika Jäger, Eva Linhart, Bettina Lockemann, Patrizia Meinert, Bernhard Metz, Sebastian Schmideler, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Christoph Benjamin Schulz, usus (Uta Schneider & Ulrike Stoltz), Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Sakine Weikert, and Gabriele Wix.

498 pages, ebook

Published April 26, 2021