New Books Network Podcast: „We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature“

Im New Books Network Podcast in der Reihe „New Books in Literary Studies“ sprach Aarthi Vadde am 15.8.2025 über ihre Forschung rund um aktuelle Entwicklungen im Literaturmarkt:

We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia University Press 2026) by Aarthi Vadde is a groundbreaking account of mass writing in the twenty-first century, identifying rarely recognized forms of literary possibility amid the profound upheavals in traditional publishing.
Aarthi Vadde examines the explosion of textuality across digital platforms: countless writers, diverse publishing formats, and vast communities of readers responding to stories publicly and instantly.
Countering ubiquitous decline narratives, she offers powerful examples of literary innovation, adaptation, and survival. Among them are Jonathan Lethem and Lauren Oyler’s challenges to individualist ideas of authorship, the Twitter fiction of Jennifer Egan and Teju Cole, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s collaborative writing on Wattpad, conceptual projects like Book from the Ground, and the experimental use of chatbots by authors including Sheila Heti.
Through nuanced and illuminating readings, We the Platform shows how platform-based writing has altered cornerstone concepts of authorship, aesthetic form, and craft, delivering a bold new understanding of literature now.

Das Buch „We the platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature“ ist unter der Signatur LIT AE 2026:1 in unserer Bibliothek im Englischen Seminar verfügbar.