AUS Ed Talks: Author Talk with Dr. Kristen Highland (April 2025)

Celebrate World Book Day with us!

Dr. Kristen Highland will discuss her publication, The Spaces of Bookselling: Stores, Streets, and Pages!

Drawing on her recent book on bookstore spaces, this talk will explore the “monumental bookstore” as both a physical type and a symbolic ideal. Depicted in online listicles, Instagram posts, and news articles, monumental bookstores, like the well-known Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires or Rizzoli’s in New York City, loom large on their streets and in the collective imagination, asserting both physical and symbolic prominence. She will discuss the dynamics of monumentality and its implications for understanding the social and cultural roles of the bookstore. The talk will look both at historical examples of theses stores as well as the ways that contemporary social and popular media shape understanding and experiences of the monumental bookstore. Considered both in physical and digital space, monumentality transforms the bookstore itself into an aesthetic commodity and a symbolic ideal of aspirational values centered around the book and community.

You can read her book through the AUS Library: https://aus.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1372570709

About the speaker
Dr. Kristen Highland ([email protected])
Associate Professor
Department of English