Lesekreise. Kollektive Praktiken der Lektüre
Reading groups are currently experiencing a renaissance. They can be found in libraries, queer bookshops, prisons, and online reading groups as well as in the context of trade union work: Communal reading has different effects to individual reading. But what specific forms does it take—and what spaces of experience and possibility does it facilitate?
Assuming that practices of collective reading intertwine the aesthetic, community-building, and political dimensions of reading in unique ways, this workshop will explore the format of the reading group. We want to highlight historical as well as contemporary forms of collective reading within political, academic, artistic, or trade union contexts.
The workshop brings together academics from different disciplines with facilitators and members of reading circles, librarians, booksellers, and publishers. Drawing on their respective areas of expertise, experiences, and perspectives, they will collectively reflect on the practices and potential of collective reading. The format of the reading group will be explored in two ways: Through presentations and panel discussions, but also through explorative formats in which modes of reading will be tried and discussed together on site.
A cooperation between the cluster of excellence 2020 Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective with the ZfL, the Literaturforum im Brechthaus as part of the AK Politische Ästhetiken, and diffrakt | centre for political periphery.
Program
Tuesday, 21 Oct 2025
Literaturforum im Brechthaus
13.30
Lesekreise als Herausforderung der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Welcomee & introduction by Barbara Bausch (FU Berlin), Ivana Perica (ZfL), Moritz Gansen (ZfL/CMB)
14.00
Reading Otherwise
READING GROUP* with Rebekka Kiesewetter (Coventry University)
16.00
Lesezeug kuratieren
KEYNOTES & TALK with Christiane Hahn (Buchhandlung Anakoluth), Birgit Ziener (Helle Panke), Patrik Graeb (Reading List Berlin), Nele Mailin Obermüller (Literaturhaus Neukölln)
Moderation: Moritz Gansen (ZfL/CMB)
19.00
Lesekreise als Orte der Vergemeinschaftung und Politisierung
PANEL with Ivo Garbe (ver.di), Phil Butland (The Left Berlin), Maja Gebhardt (BKS reading group)
Moderation: Ivana Perica (ZfL)
Wednesday, 22 Oct 2025
diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie
13.30
Lesekreise als Infrastruktur
LECTURE & TALK with Laura Bieger & Natalie Erkel (Ruhr University Bochum)
Moderation: Barbara Bausch (FU Berlin)
15.15
Werkzeuge des Widerstands
READING GROUP* with Hannah Wallenfels (diffrakt)
17.00
Round of reflections
Moderation: Barbara Bausch (FU Berlin), Ivana Perica (ZfL), Moritz Gansen (ZfL/CMB)
19.30
Kollektive feministische Lesepraktiken seit den 70er Jahren
PANEL with Hannah Wallenfels (diffrakt) & Sabine_ Hark (TU Berlin)
*To participate in the reading groups, please register at anmeldung@zfl-berlin.org, as the number of participants is limited. No registration is required for the other parts of the program.