The latest issue of the journal Book History features the work of not fewer than three members of our department! Prof. Sarah Brouillette’s article “Wattpad, Platform Capitalism, and the Feminization of Publishing Work” argues that Wattpad’s success reflects and reinforces trends in the distribution of publishing work and profits. Key among these trends, Brouillette argues, is the feminization of labour and the habits of thinking about reading and writing that support it.
With Sarah Pelletier, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in English, Prof. Jody Mason co-authored “‘Singular Plurality’: Settler-Colonial Transcendence and Canada’s Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the 2021 Frankfurt Book Fair.” Examining how reconciliation folds Indigenous writers and their work into a creative-economy logic that depends on cultural diversity as a unifying sign, Mason and Pelletier contend that a campaign more attentive to the unique needs of Indigenous-owned and -operated publishers in Canada would make visible the fact that reconciliation is not simply a matter of culture but always also a matter of political and economic sovereignty.
