Part of the EXC 2020 Annual Conference 2025 "Futures of Doing Literature", 9–11 July 2025.

Reading is one of the fundamental cultural techniques of modern societies: Once learned, it modulates our relationships to ourselves and the world; it creates connections across time and space, and constitutes a site of our collective self-understanding. The roundtable aims to foreground the practice of reading literature both as a form of social participation and as a means of reflection for individuals and communities. Against the backdrop of the current transformation of our reading culture, it seeks to explore the uses and functions of 'doing literature' in the present, while also envisioning possible futures.