Aliyah Michaela Bixby-Driesen

ALIYAH BIXBY-DRIESEN, then a graduate student at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was approved funding in April 2022 to aid research on “Suspended Animation: The Politics of Reading in Taipei,“ supervised by Dr. Asif Agha. Research for this project consisted of twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in reading groups, libraries, and bookstores in Taipei, Taiwan, from February 2023 through February 2024. Observations and digital photographs were taken on visits to approximately twenty-five bookstores and fifteen library branches throughout the city and close suburbs of New Taipei City. The researcher participated in ten distinct reading groups, attending between one and thirty-five sessions of each, and recording over sixty hours of audio from these groups. In addition, the researcher attended numerous talks and book fair events hosted at bookstores and libraries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five book club participants, five book club organizers, and two bookstore owners.