Abstract

Ghost Readings are durational, performative, and collective practices of listening. The story of how their methods evolved – and exactly when the ghost entered – is a long story, or rather a series of stories, intertwined with the early years of SpokenWeb and with SpokenWeb’s series of events called “Performing the Archive.” Let’s begin with the durational, performative, and collective dimensions of this listening practice, specifically the question of what we are doing when we listen. How do we as literary scholars tend to listen to literary audio from the past?