Reading as Habitation. In Memoriam Ana-Karina Schneider
Call for book chapters: Reading as Habitation. In Memoriam Ana-Karina Schneider
Dr. Ana-Karina Schneider has departed this world much too early, leaving behind a legacy that will stand the test of time － time that has not been kind to her at all. This scholarly legacy includes valuable books and articles that reveal her extraordinary acumen and versatility. Central to Dr. Schneider’s endeavors has been the preoccupation with the role of reading, with reading as “a matter of place, of placement and habitation: a matter of dwelling” (12), as Thomas Docherty contended in his seminal article “On Reading.” However, this kind of reading is uncomfortable, it is “an accommodation among ruins,” “the dwelling of an indeterminacy” (13), an activity that exponentially expands the uncertainty (16) as it means “to dwell in the remains, to inhabit culture as a mode of undecidability, end-less-ness” (16). Dr. Schneider fully subscribed to Docherty’s views so much so that she came to entitle her habilitation dissertation “‘The Placing of the Reader’: Reading British and American Fiction in Romania,” a testimony to how much the English theoretician impacted her. This was not a mere creed; it materialized in her critical work that was always self-reflexive, self-critical, aware of her place in space and time, and of the difference between her “habits and habitations” (12), of her place in the text since “critical reading gives one a place, a place that is different from the place of the text” (12).
Dr. Schneider placed herself at the crossroads of the comparative study of English-and Romanian-language criticism and theory, and of Romanian ones that she convincingly expounded in her doctoral dissertation, Critical Perspectives in the Late Twentieth Century: William Faulkner, A Case Study, published in 2006. This monograph investigated Faulkner’s work from a historicist perspective, offering alternative readings of the American writer’s major works through the lens of each important major critical tradition, from New Criticism, through deconstruction and new historicism. The analysis of the reception of Faulkner in the Romanian academia occasioned a productive dialogue with East-European perspectives.
Furthermore, Dr. Schneider’s interest in critical methods resulted in Studies in the Rhetoric of Fiction (2015) that reveals the text of the novel as a space of communication between author and reader, subjecting to analysis the various reading practices and positions of the reader that derive from this dialogue. The study provides insight into how rhetorical devices influence the ways in which narrative fiction is interpreted, looking at how writers use narrative techniques and linguistic structures to attract readers, persuade them, and direct their reading. Thus, the book delves into the motivation behind the communicative goal that underlies all fiction, as well as the reader's collaborative role in deconstructing meaning, prompting a reevaluation of the relationship between reception and the narrative method.
Another major direction in Dr. Schneider’s scholarly work was the representation of women’s bodies in the contemporary novel, Anne Enright’s writings in particular, to whom she dedicated a monograph. Understanding Anne Enright (2020) analyzes the way in which the Irish novelist represented women, their corporeality in particular. The critic comments on the themes the novelist has dealt with - identity, gender, embodiment - indicating how these themes resurface in her fiction under various guises. Diverse critical approaches are combined, from psycho-analytical to feminist or trauma readings, together with highly used and abused concepts such as postmodernism, post-feminism and post-nationalism, which have been variously applied to Enright.
Dr. Schneider’s interest in Romanian literary studies, comparative literature, translation and the reception of English literature in Romania were all part of her focus on English studies at Romanian universities. They took the form of participation in international research projects, invitations to give lectures at various universities both in Romania and abroad, publication of ground-breaking articles, as well as a concern with the improvement of teaching methods. Equally important, they were incorporated in the unstinting editorial work Dr Schneider did for American, British and Canadian Studies for over 15 years, a journal that she brought to excellence and that she transformed into an international platform for inter and cross-disciplinary research.
Our volume, therefore, proposes to celebrate Dr. Schneider’s scholarly legacy and encourage enquiries into the ethics and aesthetics of reading, as much as into cognitive and pedagogical aspects. We invite contributors to explore these issues from theoretical and/or text-based, interdisciplinary perspectives.
Topics might include (but are by no means limited to):
▪ cultures of literacy / cultures of reading
▪ reading prose/ poetry/ drama/ children’s literature/ film / theory etc.
▪ reading (in) translation
▪ teaching reading: the making of a reader
▪ spaces of reading
▪ reading and citizenship
▪ literacy as resistance
▪ reading identity
▪ reading in the ‘post-reading’ age
▪ literacy and technology
▪ reading across disciplines
▪ reading Shakespeare in the 21st century
▪ reading Anne Enright
▪ reading the International Faulkner
▪ reading Jane Austen anew
▪ reading practices: literary tourism vs. world literature, etc.
The first page of the manuscript should carry the title, names of authors, institutional affiliations, a brief but detailed 200-word abstract, and ten key words/concepts. The normal word-limit for articles is 7500 words including notes. Please include a brief 200-word biography for our Notes on Contributors along with contact information. Only the materials styled according to the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers will be considered for publication.
A selection of the manuscripts submitted will be published with Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Deadline for submission of articles: 1 June 2026.
Please send the articles to Dr. Alexandra Mitrea and Dr. Anca-Luminița Iancu:
We look forward to receiving your contributions!