In two planned monographs on the "Media History of Author Reading" and on the "Theories and Practices of Reading," theories, histories, practices, and media of reading that shape our society will be presented in their complex interrelationship.

The project starts from the simple assumption that reading consists of a multitude of different practices, which are at first hardly visible as such. Texts can be browsed, skimmed, read to, read aloud or silently, read partially or as a whole - and all of these different forms of reading also make a difference to reading as a cultural technique. A simple history of the decline of reading, as cultivated by cultural-critical and media-Darwinist narratives, does not seem to be able to adequately describe this reality. For, on the one hand, the practices of reading remain astonishingly constant; on the other hand, their effects change quite considerably as the ages and media change. How this simultaneity of the non-simultaneous is to be understood is to be elucidated in the two monographs.

Especially reading aloud, today mostly present only in its didactic function, seems to be a good example for this. In order to mark the different meanings of reading aloud also conceptually, Roger Chartier has made the suggestion to distinguish lecturing and reading aloud. If one follows this suggestion, then reading aloud appears as a cultural technique with its own history and systematics, which has only been explored in rudimentary form. The history of literary reading occupies a central position.