Dr Eben Muse

Reader in Bookselling / Director of Teaching and Learning

Links

Contact info

Position: Reader in Bookselling
Email: e.muse@bangor.ac.uk
Skype: eben.muse
Twitter: ebenjmuse
Personal website: The Space of the Book
Phone: +44 (0)1248 388628

“A bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.” Jane Smiley’s oft-quoted description of the multitude of voices in a bookstore, and the freedom that complexity creates, echoes Doreen Massey’s description of “the chance of space”, a location where unexpected intersections, of people, ideas and cultures can create the opportunity for new connections and for action that is not restricted by pre-existing structures. This bookstore space can outwit the curator, the corporate chain, the academic and the bookseller, creating unexpected opportunities for action and change. As such, the bookstore as a meaningful location has historically been a meeting place for debate, planning and for action.

My research, The Space of Bookselling, examines physical bookstores and their digital counterparts as meaningful locations, a term John Agnew (Place and Politics, 1987) as “locale, location and, sense of place”. As a meaningful location, the bookstore, physical or digital, is a space created in a specific setting within a geographical and social context that has its own meaningful identity. The location and locale create a space that gathers elements and creates the potential for events. Osborne, in The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop, identified them as counter-spaces: “spaces that hijack dominant spaces and repurpose them to leisure or liberating ones”, spaces that “question or change the nature of that dominant space.” The Space of Bookselling looks at the evolution of these meaningful locations through interviews with booksellers in the UK and USA, corpus analysis of social and broadcast media text, and critical review of the representations of bookstores in film and literature, and historical studies of the inter-dependency between bookstore and community. The work has been presented at international conferences in the UK and United States, including SHARP, By the Book, and The Future Space of Bookselling. The Fantasy of the Bookstore (2022) explores these themes through a study of the bookstore novel.

I am interested in supervising postgraduate researchers in any aspect of the book trade, especially indie bookselling & publishing, artisanal publishing, book culture, or bookselling as a function of community.

  1. Angerdd dros Siopau LlyfrauPassion for Bookstores

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    28 Oct 2022

    Activity: Talk or presentationInvited talk

  2. Bookselling Research Network (External organisation)

    Eben Muse (Chair) & Samantha Rayner (Chair)

    2020 → …

    Activity: MembershipMembership of network

  3. Bookselling Research Network 2022 Annual Conference

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    7 Sept 20228 Sept 2022

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  4. Bookselling Research Network 2023 Annual Conference

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    3 Jul 2023

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic workshop, seminar, course

  5. Bookselling Research Network 2023 Annual Conference

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    3 Jul 20234 Jul 2023

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic workshop, seminar, course

  6. By the Book 4

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    2017

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  7. By the Book 5

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    2018

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  8. By the Book 7

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    22 Jun 2022

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  9. By the Book8

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    22 Jun 2023

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  10. Cambridge University Press (Publisher)

    Eben Muse (Editor)

    2017 → …

    Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial workEditorial activity

  11. Creating Second Lives 2011: Blurring Boundaries

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    9 Sept 201110 Sept 2011

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  12. Future Space of Bookselling

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    12 May 2016

    Activity: Talk or presentationInvited talk

  13. Future Space of Bookselling Conference

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    3 Jun 20164 Jun 2016

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  14. Independent Publishing Group Autumn Conference

    Eben Muse (Invited speaker)

    12 Nov 2015

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  15. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (Journal)

    Eben Muse (Editor)

    20072018

    Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial workEditorial activity

  16. Leafing Through the History of the Book

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    4 Apr 2018

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  17. SHARP 2022

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    15 Jul 2022

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  18. SHARP 2022

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    13 Jul 2022

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  19. Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space Conference

    Eben Muse (Participant)

    20 Jun 2014

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  20. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    18 Jul 2019

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  21. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) Annual Conference 2023

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    30 Jun 2023

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  22. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing 2019

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    2019

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  23. Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing 2021

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    28 Jul 2021

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  24. Technologies of Reading

    Eben Muse (Lecturer)

    11 Nov 2015

    Activity: OtherTypes of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar

  25. The Suffrage Symposium

    Sue Niebrzydowski (Organiser), Eben Muse (Member of programme committee) & Shan Robinson (Organiser)

    26 May 2018

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  26. The future of reading – possibilities in a world of speculation

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    7 Sept 2015

    Activity: OtherTypes of External academic engagement - Invited talk

  27. Under the Mask 2012

    Eben Muse (Participant)

    13 Jun 2012

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  28. University Press Redux conference

    Eben Muse (Speaker)

    17 Mar 2016

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  29. Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment 6th Global Conference

    Eben Muse (Participant)

    18 Jul 2014

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  30. Wandering Games

    Eben Muse (Organiser) & Melissa Kagen (Organiser)

    10 Jul 201912 Jul 2019

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference

  31. Women in Publishing Symposium

    Eben Muse (Organiser)

    15 Feb 2020

    Activity: Participating in or organising an eventParticipation in Academic conference