Recorded December 3, 2020.

In this episode, Siobhán Callaghan(School of English) speaks to Dr Alison Waller about the powerful act of rereading books from childhood. Alison is the author of Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics (2019), in which she explores what it means to return to texts from our childhood and develops a new model for understanding lifelong reading.

For many of us, the events of the past year have challenged how we perceive the passage of time. In our discussion, Siobhán and Alison explore how and why we return to the same texts throughout our lifespans. Alison discusses what first kindled her interest in rereading and how readers make memories of texts and shares the methodology that she used to undertake this work. They discuss the powerful emotions that can arise during the rereading experience, and Alison explains the particular “rereading attitudes” that she uncovered over the course of her research. Alison has also applied her expertise on rereading in a co-creative project, working with Gemma Seltzer and Wallis Eates on “Lifelong Reading: New Stories”, an initiative that invited older adults living with dementia to explore their childhood reading.

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