How can performance help one to better understand reading?  Is reading simply an absorptive task, transporting the reader to a state beyond the awareness of their own body and its interactions with the material world?  In her talk on January 31, Honglan Huang ‘16 explored these questions through her methodology of reading as experimental performance. Huang is a Haverford alumna and the winner of the Barbara Riley Levin Prize for her Comparative Literature senior thesis in 2016. She completed her graduate studies in the spring of 2023 at Yale University, writing her dissertation on reading as performance. 

In her talk, Huang examines two books, Holdup by Ketih Godard & Emmett Williams, and Mirror by Suzy Lee, to challenge traditional views of reading as a static process. In these books, the physicality of the material book is incorporated into the storyline by serving as a prop. The authors ask the reader to acknowledge the book's presence and its contribution to the story playing out as the relationship between the reader and the book switches from passive to active.  Huang explains that when viewing reading through the lens of experimental performance, a reader’s tactile experience with and acknowledgement of the material book can be a contributing factor to their literacy; the book and reader both become active participants in the unfolding plot. 

View her full presentation here!