As in many other parts of the world, "academic literacy" has emerged as both a concern and a contested concept in South African universities. In this article we focus specifically on academic reading, which we argue is a relatively underemphasized aspect of academic literacy. This article is the product of reflections on academic reading during and subsequent to the development and presentation of a postgraduate module presented at Stellenbosch University. It briefly explores the literature on academic literacy; develops the Bourdieusian perspective on academic reading that we used to develop the module; and concludes with a discussion of the module. Our intention was to make "reading as social practice" more visible to students. Bourdieu's concepts of "competence", "habitus" and "field" set the scene for a discussion of the role of reading in different disciples and more generally within the social sciences and humanities.