Landon Reitz

Looking Up from the Page: Imaginative Medieval Reading Practices

This project examines the historical role of the fictional reader in the hermeneutic, media-technological, and aesthetic developments of medieval German literature. I analyze scenes of reading and other representations of reading within medieval texts to examine this evolving cultural practice during the technological, cultural, scientific, and religious transformations of the European Middle Ages. Amid the digitalization of our modern reading practices and reading cultures, my research into the literary representations of reading demonstrates how, historically, reading practices, developments in media and technology, and imaginative literature have shaped the practice of reading as well as its function in society.

The Futures of the Medieval World

This transdisciplinary project explores the cultural practices of the European Middle Ages that engaged and engendered conceptions of the future. It investigates medieval means for gathering knowledge about the future, practices that made sense of the future, and images of the future that affected contemporary action. This project takes its leading question from twentieth and twenty-first century Futures Studies, namely, how does the conception of the future affect present action, contemporary power structures, and visions of the world? At a time when our familiar ways of thinking about the future are challenged by massive natural, economic, and epistemic ruptures, this project highlights conceptions of the future that are not entirely based in capitalistic, nationalistic, and anthropocentric paradigms. It fills an important gap in the history of the future, while challenging Medieval Studies – a historically-focused discipline – to reconsider the role of the future in the past.

Medieval German Textual Culture, Mysticism, German Language, German Reading Culture, and Contemporary Narratives of Migration