Picking Your Professor: Bridging Scholarly and Popular Bookish Publics in the Digital Age

Abstract The study of literature is currently imperiled by political attacks, defunding, and casualization within universities, yet simultaneously thrives beyond them in an online world of author-reader interaction, amateur reviewing, and social-media book talk. This article traces the relationship between literary studies and lay book-reading communities in the past, present, and future. How was the professional/amateur distinction a precondition for the discipline's institutionalization? How do digital technologies now enable us to bridge this divide between the academy and the broader world of booklovers online? Looking forward, what best practices aid professional literary scholars to engage constructively with amateur online bookish communities?