Libraries

Abstract

Library reading rooms--humanists' fieldwork sites--are black boxes for private invention and contemplation yet also redolent soundscapes. By switching the paradigm from knowledge repository to durational performance, ‘Libraries’ elucidates how the materiality of reading rooms and the performative acts of library users create a symphony for books, furniture, note-taking implements, hands, mouths, and feet that add up to a fugue of hushed sound.