Episode 58: The Social Science of Reading with Dr. Tamara Bhalla & Jean Kim

7:34PM Jul 22, 2024

Speakers:

Dr. Ian Anson

Jean Kim

Dr. Tamara Bhalla

Keywords:

reading

book

social science

project

umbc

podcast

communities

jean

research

literature

question

learning

work

research assistant

readers

social

interested

methods

read

talk

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences we bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

One thing that unites most academics is our love for reading. In fact, one of the weird frustrations of the job of a professor is that we're often so busy researching, teaching, and sometimes even podcasting that we find we don't have much time to engage in this delightful pastime. And no, not all of us spend our evenings curled up on the couch with a relaxing linear algebra textbook. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it, though. Linear Algebra is pretty cool.

But academics also read, dare I say it, fiction and nonfiction that isn't directly related to their own fields. I actually have a pension for sci fi and speculative fiction among many other genres. If you want some recommendations, maybe I'll throw a few of them in the shownotes. But while professional scholars are understandably enamored with reading, the social context of reading and the general public is a far more complex topic. While we might have some stereotypes in our heads about the nation's bookworms, the social reality, as usual, is far more complex. Take the BookTok trend on social media, which has served to overturn assumptions that Gen Z Americans are too preoccupied with their smartphones and video games to pick up something by Nabokov or Jane Austen or Octavia Butler.

To better understand the social science of reading for pleasure, it is my pleasure to bring you today's conversation with Dr. Tamara Bhalla and our very own production assistant Jean Kim. Dr. Bhalla is an associate professor and the chair of the department of American Studies and an affiliate faculty member in the Asian Studies program at UMBC. Her work has focused on the social, cultural, and community building uses and values of multi-ethnic literatures. Other research interests include Asian American and South Asian American literary and cultural studies, Afro-Asian feminisms, ethnic American reading communities, and literary reception. Her forthcoming book project is all about how social context interacts with reading habits in the American public. Jean has contributed to this work by serving as an undergraduate research assistant, all while doing this very podcast. Impressive work Jean, I'm delighted to bring you our conversation right now.

All right, today, we have two wonderful guests to the podcast, one that you're very familiar with. If you're a longtime listener to the show, we have Jean Kim here, our wonderful production assistant. And then we also have Dr. Tamara Bhalla, who is here to join us from the American Studies Department at UMBC. Thanks to both of you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, awesome. So to get started with this topic, which is something that I really have thought about a lot and the weeks and months since we said that we wanted to do this episode, I really want to understand Dr. Bala, the sort of ideas that led you to begin thinking about this, this book project in the first place, and sort of how those ideas and inspirations kind of lead to the overall product.

Okay, great. No, I love that question. So, okay, so I have always been a reader, always, like, when I was starting from when I was young, I've been the kid who has the flashlight reading, you know, past their bedtime. So reading has always been very important to me. And I got this crazy idea that hey, why don't I study reading in grad school? So I got a PhD in English. What I didn't know at the time, though, is that most traditional English departments are very interested in literature as an object of study, but they're not actually that interested in reading as a practice, right. That's kind of a more cultural studies question. So I have a PhD in literature, but I was always kind of operating on the fringes of a traditional lit department. And so I landed in American Studies, which is where I am now. And that's kind of been my professional home for a long time. And again, you know, I was really interested in reading is kind of the central question like the question of how people use literature rather than what literature means or the kind of more interpretive work that a literary scholar does. So my first book was on this question of reading, I also my other kind of field of study is Asian American literature and Cultural Studies. And I specify within that for South Asian American cultural studies, so I focused in my first book on this massive Book Club in Washington, DC, that is order I organized around South Asian identity in South Asian diasporic literature. And there, I was looking at how South Asian readers in the United States use literature as a way to kind of talk about and form a sense of ethnic identity and community identity and belonging. So you can see that sort of cultural studies, questions that are beyond just literature. And this project that I'm working on right now, is abroad, it kind of widens the scope of that first research. It's still about reading. It's all about race and representation. But it's looking a little bit more expansively at 21st century us literary fiction right now. So yeah, I mean, starts with, I just was always a reader, and ended up studying and as many of us do with our favorite topics. So our favorite activities.

Wow, so you can really see why I was so interested in learning about the kind of the history of this project and how it evolved, right. And it's super interesting, from my perspective, as somebody who's got a podcast about the social sciences. Because, you know, we're all, at least, you know, in academia, readers, we all like to read for fun, for pleasure, for various reasons. But you know, this project is really bringing a social scientific angle to the question of what is reading for what is it about, right, and you can see how it's quite a different approach than studying rhetoric or studying, you know, literacy, that kind of thing, which, you know, there's probably a lot of research out there that I don't even know about, about how people learn to read and how people use reading in their lives for functional kinds of tasks. There's much more about what reading means to people. Is that kind of the idea?

Of, absolutely, yeah, it's less about interpretation, which is a lot of what lit departments kind of do. I mean, I'm being reductive here, but it's less about kind of close reading. And it's more about Yeah, exactly. Like, how do people use this as an everyday practice of meaning making and shaping their lives? Yeah. And you're right, it does include social science techniques, which, and methods which I, I'm happy to talk more about, I am obviously not an expert, remember, my PhD comes squarely from a humanities field, in which they don't really welcome necessarily interdisciplinary methods all the time. So I had to learn, and I'm still learning how to incorporate those social science methods. Absolutely.

And that's something that on the podcast, you know, this is an ongoing theme, I think, and Jean can certainly speak to this is that a lot of folks who have come on the podcast have talked about these disciplinary boundaries, and sort of blurring them or kicking them down, and how we might be able to use different techniques for generating knowledge, right, that come across these different fields to build interesting projects that speak to important stuff for people. I want to talk to Jean as well as we get thinking about this project. Jean, first of all, tell us a little bit about your role in the project, what you've been doing, to help support the project and kind of your take on on what this project means to you.

Yeah, so I'm Dr. Balls research assistant. I've been her research assistant for like the past year and I've been helping out with kind of like organizational stuff like helping out with all of like, their research documents, like we have so many books that I've been like, transferring from the library to Dr. molars office and then I help with like her reading notes, just to like, organize basically everything that's going into the book. I'm also we also tried this new, like social science software called Zotero. And that was kind of a process. One of my favorite parts of the whole like, one of my favorite parts of being a research assistant was when we did this when we researched the book, American dirt. So basically, I went through Goodreads, which is like a social media like a reading social media website, and I basically took down the comments of the book For, like 200 users, and we kind of from there use that to like, quantitatively, like, analyze those comments, and a little bit of lore behind the book. It's basically the experience of like, a Mexican immigrant to the US. But it was told through the story of like, the author was a white woman, basically. So I thought that was really interesting, because, like, learning about that sort of stuff is like something that I would probably do in my free time. Like reading through all the social media comments was really interesting. And it made me think a lot about the question of like, who owns knowledge and whether like knowledge is more on like experience or empirical data like the author was? Her basically her argument for being able to write a story like that through immigrants perspective was because she had done research and she knew about the experience. But I think it was really interesting learning about, like, the nuanced dynamics of knowledge ownership. And yeah, it's just been really instrumental on my understanding of research ethics. So yeah.

Wow, that's a fascinating account. And certainly an interesting example, my mind just kind of really thinking about the process of going through all of these comments. And, you know, it's one of the reasons why also, I was so excited about this episode, because, you know, I'm a, an avid Kindle user, you know, I have the the Libby app, for those of you who don't know about it, who are listening, it's a great way to patronize your public library and get a lot of free ebooks, which can really fuel that reading habit. But I know that I'm not alone in this. So there's a lot of people out there who are using, you know, book talk, right, or social media, or good reads, as well as kind of this way of learning about new things to read, but also generating these online communities, which have, let's say, maybe sort of eccentric features in some cases. And those online discussions can really be very striking sometimes in terms of their content. And so Traduction razza, if you would mind telling us a bit more about so is this emblematic of the kind of data collection that you're doing in the, in the, in the book itself? And are you primarily interested in these online communities or other sort of social dynamics within the sort of readership of contemporary literature?

Yeah, I. So a lot, as you said, a lot of our reading culture right now is happening online and a lot. So a kind of corollary that I've always been interested in is social forms of reading. So we always think of reading as something that you do alone, right? It has this kind of historical, it's been historically constructed as something that we do an alone. But if you think about it, reading is an incredibly social activity. It's shaped by our schools, by libraries by families. So one of the things I'm interested in looking at in the book, too, is the kind of social space of reading. And right now that social space is really happening online on social media. And it was very fun hearing, Gene's account of that chapter because she did so much work with me on that chapter. And that chapter is the one where I think I tried my, I try out my social science chops the most. Because, you know, as Dean was saying, we scraped 300 Goodreads reviews. Let me back up, actually, let me tell you kind of the big question of the chapter before I start talking about the method. So as Jean explained, this book, American dirt was a very controversial book, A, it was a Oprah's book club selection, in 2020, hit right before the pandemic. And right when it came out, it was, you know, incredibly popular, huge bestseller. But there was very quickly a backlash to this book, because it was written by this woman Janine commons, who at the time, she started talking about how she had a Puerto Rican grandmother, but previously had identified as white. So people kind of picked up on this strategic identification that she was doing to make this book about Central American migrations even more authentic. And there was this huge backlash where Latin X writers were saying, you know, we're elevating these stories by white authors and at the expense of elevating Latin X voices. So we knew all the reasons that this book was something that people didn't like. But what I was interested in is why was this book so incredibly influential in terms of being a best seller, aside from just Oprah, it kept it stayed on the bestseller list, and it still sells very well. So I wanted to know why do people love this book? And that was where Goodreads came in. So cheap scraped, you actually undersold, Gu scrapes, 300 Goodreads reviews, sorted them by the most popular because I thought those would be the most representative. And thank you Goodreads for having these kinds of filters. And it all has to be done by hand, because Goodreads does not allow for any kind of automated capturing, whereas there's other kinds of online sites where you can do that. So Jeanne went through, scraped as much data as she could about each of these individual entries. And then we coded that data. And I will we use a software called de Deus, which is a little bit more user friendly, then NVivo, which I was not going to learn how to use. And we I actually, I will tell you, I, I hired an expert in this to help me with the coding, which I think is the responsible thing to do, since that was the a deeper kind of qualitative research than I, I think I have the expertise for. And then I analyze that coded data. So what we found is that readers were primarily white women really identified with the plight of the author. And the fact that the author as a white woman was being maligned and kind of criticized for telling the story, readers, though, what I found in the kind of a coincidence of codes is that readers really strongly identified with Jeanine Cummins and her hopes and sort of like this narrative of wanting to empathize with marginalized others. So that in that way, it is emblematic, I can talk a little bit more about the bigger stakes of the project. But um, you know, that chapter, I would say, has the kind of most intense social science methods, but I do think for this kind of social media research, those methods are really, I think you can't really do it without because it's so much data, right?

Absolutely, yeah, it really speaks to just the the difficulties and some of the inherent challenges of trying to grasp the just kind of firehose of content that's out there. And I definitely think it's an interesting strategy to try to hone in on specific books or specific conversations about books that you have, or these flash points, or that create these specific case studies. And to your point on NVivo, and about to do's and all this stuff. For sure. I read I think another common theme that's emerged on this podcast, is that, you know, doing this kind of research is incredibly difficult. And, you know, I think that it's, it's refreshing to hear, you know, this idea that like, yeah, we can collaborate with people who are, you know, methods experts on some of this stuff and not feel, you know, oh, no, we're not doing it ourselves. And that's, you know, somehow, not off limits, or something. That's somebody that we've heard over and over, as well as the partnership like this. And, you know, maybe it's through some sort of, you know, pay consultancy, or maybe it's through co authorship, right is a really, really great way to sort of reach some of those those conclusions, without having to feel like you have to go through, you know, intensive methods training, when you're already midstream into projects that you've got to do, you know, 100 other things. So that's absolutely refreshing. And definitely, I think, an important takeaway for any of our listeners who are thinking about starting a project on which there, they have some expertise, but then also, there's methodological considerations that are beyond the scope of what they did before. Definitely an important part of the social sciences today is those those forms of collaboration. So

I love hearing about that, just because as an aside, I, this person who she was a consultant, she helped me code come up, set up the codes for this dataset, and she and I are gonna collaborate now, using that dataset. So out of this kind of, like paid partnership and collaboration, we're gonna, you know, we feel like we collected so much information, we're gonna co author something, so I

love it. Yeah, that's, that's music to my ears, right? These kinds of collaborations. That's exactly the kind of thing that gets me so excited when I think about research and just ongoing projects. And on that note, you know, I thought maybe it might be nice to hear from both of you about kind of the biggest takeaways, maybe from this project that you've that you've reached thus far, right? What are the biggest things that have stood out to you as the most impactful findings? Maybe we'll start with Jean, maybe hear a little bit about what what Jean thinks about the most impactful or important ideas that she's taken away from this experience?

Yeah, um, I mean, I love to read, but learning about contemporary readership is like not something that I was like, I really knew much about going into this research position. So I was a little hesitant honestly to even apply for the position. So, um, I think one of my biggest takeaways from just being a research assistant, I guess this doesn't really have to do with like the whole big picture thing we're talking about, but as from a research perspective, a research assistant perspective for any student into might want to try branching out learning more about social science scholarship and like learning how to conduct research and partnering with professors like, definitely just try it out, reach out, apply for this opportunities. I've definitely learned a lot from what I've done with Dr. Bala so yeah.

Well, Jean's been, I could not have made this kind of progress without your help. And your you, I feel like you're the social scientists between the two. So it's been really nice having having your support. And that was another nice thing about the deduced training is jeanne was able to come to the trainings with me to learn a little bit more, and I was happy to have her there, because then I could knew I could be like, Okay, let's tackle this to like, if we need to, let's tackle this together, have another set of ears. So I suppose I never so the the larger project is called decentering whiteness in contemporary us literature. And it's a working title. But the the overarching argument is that we've really looked at how publishing there's been a lot of pressure on publishing to diversify in recent years, to think more about the voices that it elevates. We have not looked, though, at how we mediate reading in different public sites, to also incorporate those questions of diversity. And I look at different sites in which we've actually really centered the taste of white women readers in particular, who have always been the largest reading public in the United States. For reasons, you know, historical reasons, much of which is that literacy was denied to others, but also because white women in even starting the 19th century would use reading for different types of political ends. So I'm looking at celebrity book clubs, at social media. And at this current wave of book bands, to examine how white womens desires and needs from reading are what we've been kind of centering, and we need to disrupt that if we actually ever want to diversify our literary cultures. Yeah, so that's kind of the big, that's the big state of the book. Right now, I'm working on the book bands chapter. And we're looking at this organization called Moms for liberty, and how they've been driving a lot of the book bands. And his argument is very, is really bearing out and all of these different sites. And yeah, it just has me looking at how some of the values that we bring to reading, like empathy are values that in ways also need to be examined and disrupted, because empathy is an emotion that we think of is like this very positive thing. But if you think about empathy, it's actually a very hierarchical emotion. You know, you don't feel empathy necessarily, for folks who you who are, you feel are more fortunate. So anyways, getting into some of the weeds of the project, but I yeah, that's kind of the big picture of what I'm looking at these different sites and the last chapter, I hope to look at sites like online black reading communities, and youth reading culture, to look at sites where we are actually doing the work to D center, whiteness, and normative styles and breeding.

Wow, this is such an interesting idea. And just as got my mind, really thinking about all of the applications of this and the consequences for your findings for kind of broadcasting this to the broader kind of reading community, and especially to think about inclusion and in reading communities, and how that might play out in the future. So there's, there's real stakes behind this project. And I really look forward to hopefully seeing it, you know, come out in the near future and make an impact. And it's also going to be kind of fun for you because it's also a meta because people potentially will be reading this book, and it's a book about reading books. I love a love of good meta narrative. I think that's, that's really cool to think about, you know, getting together maybe as a scholarly book book club at some point in reading this book, and, and leaving some insights from it. Yeah, really fascinating stuff. And, you know, I was really heartened to also to think about all the kind of diversity of different methods and approaches that you're bringing to these various topics and chapters. So yeah, you know, congratulations on the work that you've done thus far. And again, we really look forward to seeing the progress that you're going to make in the near future. Before we let you go, I just have a quick question that I wanted to ask of both of you. This is a question that I asked him just about every interviewee every guest that comes on the podcast, although I guess, Jean I'm not sure that qualifying you as a guest is necessarily the right designation, given obviously your incredible and long standing work on the on the podcast itself, but I always ask my guests if they have any advice for Student listeners who might be listening in who might be interested in developing skills or even becoming sort of a pro in the social sciences and in terms of, you know, creating research like this. So what advice might you give to student listeners in just just a couple of minutes?

Well, I love Jean's advice of just, you know, looking for these opportunities and applying even if you don't feel like you have expertise in the area. The other thing I always try to think about a lot is, especially if you're trying to think in a more interdisciplinary way, or you want to, you know, try a new kind of method or skill that you're not used to is, I tried to always focus on like, the object of study. So like, what is the thing I want to know more about? So like, in my case, it was reading, it wasn't literature, it was how people read? And then what are the different tools that I need to study that to figure that out? And to kind of get those questions. So I like to start, that's how I start, like research projects. I tell students that, you know, even in sort of senior seminar classes and capstone research projects, start with just like, What is your object of study? And that's gonna tell you what the methods are that, you

WellI kind of already touched on that touched on this question before. But yeah, just trying to put your just explore different things. I didn't think I really had any expertise in this sort of field. But it really did connect to like, a lot of the overarching things that I'm like, really interested in, for example, like, I'm really interested in the Korean diaspora community. And I feel like I learned a lot, especially learning about, like, different readership, communities in America. So yeah, just try branching out there, a lot of things are a lot more interdisciplinary than you might think. So you'll probably learn a lot.

Yeah, I like that Jean. It's like go down the rabbit holes. Sometimes, they'll lead you to good places. That's what I've been trying to do with this project.

Well said to both of you, and I will say that when I get to go down the rabbit hole with my wonderful podcast guests, I learned a lot too. And it's been wonderful to be able to branch out in my knowledge as well and to learn a bit about social science of reading and how this all works in the contemporary context, especially given sort of our racial and racialized history and ongoing issues related to that. So thank you again, so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Jean. Thank you again for your ongoing work on the podcast and Dr. Bala, thanks again for being here.

Thank you so much for the invitation, it was great talking.

Thank you.

I hope that you enjoy thinking about the social science of reading and as you settle in to turn off your podcasting device and pick up your next summer read. I hope you'll remember to keep questioning. retrieving the social sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science scholarship. Our director is Dr. Christine Melanson, our Associate Director is Dr. Philippe Filomeno. And our undergraduate production assistant is Jean Kim. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Diwan Moreland, find out more about CS three at Social Science dot UMBC that edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, where you can find full video recordings of recent CS three sponsored events. Until next time, keep questioning