Collaborative Program in Book History & Print Culture

Book History alumna Claire Battershill on her 2017 SSHRC Talent Award

Alan Galey — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 14:44:31 +0000

Banting Fellow and former Printing Fellow Claire Battershill has recently won a SSHRC Talent Award. “Her research has significant real-world implications, shedding light on the rapidly-shifting structures of the publishing industry as it moves into the digital era. And, in a great SFU tradition, Claire, as an author of prose and poetry, both studies and produces literature.” You can read more here.

BHPC alumna Eva Mroczek wins the George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize 2017

bhpctoronto — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 20:51:11 +0000

“The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) is delighted to announce the award of the 2017 DeLong Book History Book Prize to Eva Mroczek of UC Davis, USA, for her title The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (published by Oxford University Press) … The book is breathtaking and beautifully written, taking issue with the notion of both ‘the Bible’ and ‘the book’. Stripping away scholarly assumptions about early Jewish literary culture, this study tackles the scraps, fragments and scrolls that have, over the centuries, been imaginatively ordered – often, as Mroczek shows, erroneously – into a coherent canon. The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity asks readers to explore the literature of early Judaism on its own terms, and, in doing so, prompts us to rethink dominant paradigms which structure our imaginative approach to biblical literature and textual circulation. Despite its impressive and wide-ranging scholarship, the book is deft of touch, enjoyable and accessible, and should be read by any scholar interested in the history of the Bible, early Jewish literature, and the idea of the book.”

You can view Eva’s acceptance statement, with memories of her BHPC studies in Toronto, here. See also the prize announcement and press release on the SHARP website.

Welcome to BHPC

bhpctoronto — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 16:00:48 +0000

Histoire du livre, History of the Book, Textual Studies, Print Culture, Sociology of the Text: all these names have been used to describe an international academic movement that rose to prominence in the late twentieth century and continues to expand today. Book History creates and applies knowledge of the material, cultural, and theoretical aspects of the book, including manuscript, print, and digital media, along with associated practices of authorship, reading and collecting, within different disciplines in the humanities and information sciences. The Collaborative Specialization admitted its first cohort of graduate students in September 2000, and now has a flourishing network of alumni in academia, library and information sciences, publishing and related fields in Canada and around the world. An exhibition to celebrate the founding of BHPC was held in 2001 at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library; selected pages from the catalogue are available online here.

Sponsored by the Department of English and the Faculty of Information in conjunction with Massey College, and now involving more than a dozen further participating units, BHPC is an interdisciplinary graduate program in which the rich physical and human resources of the University of Toronto are brought to bear on multiple aspects of the creation, transmission, and reception of the written word. Students apply first for admission to the master’s or doctoral program in their prospective home unit and then to the BHPC program. All students are therefore registered in a master’s or doctoral program in one of our participating graduate units (listed below) as well as in BHPC. During their time in the Collaborative Specialization, BHPC students gain a distinctive approach to the materials of their home subject, a methodology fostered by course work, public lectures, student focused workshops, hands-on experience with special collections and the five iron hand-presses in the Bibliography Room at Massey, and intellectual exchange among members of a diverse community. Students who satisfy the requirements of both programs receive their degree with a notation on the transcript “Collaborative Specialization in Book History and Print Culture.”

Travaux et thèses peuvent être soumis en français, avec l’approbation des instructeurs et/ou du département d’attache. Les étudiants travaillant en domaine français sont spécialement encouragés à le faire.

Participating Units:

Department of Art	Department of Classics	Centre for Comparative Literature
Department of East Asian Studies	Department of English	Department of French
Department of German	Department of History	Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
Faculty of Information	Department of Italian Studies	Centre for Medieval Studies
Faculty of Music	Department for the Study of Religion	Department of Spanish & Portuguese

Professors Alan Galey, Peter Blayney and Scott Schofield among winners of prestigious award for Fisher Library Shakespeare catalogue

bhpctoronto — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 21:05:35 +0000

‘”The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) has selected five winners and one honorable mention for the 2017 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab “American Book Prices Current” Exhibition Awards. The awards, funded by an endowment established by Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, editors of “American Book Prices Current,” recognize outstanding printed exhibition catalogs and guides, and electronic exhibitions, produced by North American and Caribbean institutions. … The Division One (expensive) winner is the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library for So Long Lives This: A Celebration of Shakespeare’s Life and Works 1616-2016. “The committee praised ‘So Long Lives This’ for its outstanding scholarship on Shakespeare, his legacy, and the England of his day, all of which offer new insights on materials and topics that are frequently exhibited and discussed,” said Alexander C. Johnston, chair of the RBMS Exhibition Awards committee and senior assistant librarian at the University of Delaware. “The committee was impressed with the arrangement, format, and printing. The catalog includes a great variety of illustrative material spanning several centuries; the committee was especially impressed with the section on hand press printing, which includes illustrative examples of the printing process, as drawn from contemporary works. Finally, ‘So Long Lives This’ is printed to mimic the size of the same 1623 First Folio that was displayed in the actual exhibit, which creates an interesting tangible takeaway.”’ You can read more here and here.

Professor Alexandra Gillespie on the shift from manuscript to print and the digitization of medieval books

bhpctoronto — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:09:53 +0000

“Researcher in English and Medieval Studies focuses on the history of the book, but is also forging new ground in the digital age and manuscript studies. Professor Alex Gillespie is a renowned scholar of the literary works of 14th-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer, and she specializes in medieval and early modern texts and books, with a focus on the shift from manuscript to print, the relationship between book history, literary criticism, and literary theory, and the digitization of medieval books. Listen to the View to the U podcast that features Professor Gillespie as she explains the work she is doing in this area. A full transcript of the podcast is available.” You can find out more here.

How 18-year-old engineering students saved U of T’s rarest books

bhpctoronto — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 23:31:18 +0000

“Yewon Son craned her neck, looking up at the high ceilings and packed shelves of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library — a building that holds, among other treasures, a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet, papyrus from the time of Christ and medieval manuscripts that come from the fourth century. It was the 21-year-old University of Toronto engineering student’s first time looking carefully at the books and manuscripts she helped save back when she was just 18 and in a first-year class.” You can read the CBC News article here.

A very short history of the Massey College printing presses

bhpctoronto — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 17:25:59 +0000

“Fine printing, which has always been strong in Canada, is especially strong at Massey College. The Bibliography Room of the Robertson Davies Library is particularly active during the school year, when a dedicated group of volunteers, apprentices, fellows, and members of the printing community come together to continue that tradition of fine printing. None of this would be possible, however, without the antique Victorian presses that are housed in the room. These presses, which are used today for teaching as well as printing, have unique individual histories.” You can read more here (pp. 15, 17).

Sonnets 2016 initiative: Massey-printed sonnet at the Bodleian Library

bhpctoronto — Sat, 02 Jul 2016 02:13:59 +0000

“In a cycle of 154 short, 14-line poems first published in 1609, William Shakespeare meditated on themes of love, death, and desire. During 2016, the Bodleian Libraries will be producing and collecting newly printed copies of each of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The Bodleian is seeking examples from hand-press printers worldwide made in this, the 400th year since the death of William Shakespeare … These should be created by hand, using any means of relief printing. Selected submissions, forming at least one complete collection of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, will be added to the Bodleian’s permanent collection.” You can find out more about the Sonnets 2016 project here, and you can see the contribution printed at Massey by BHPC alumna Julia King here.

Rare books: Thomas Fisher Library has Canada’s largest collection

bhpctoronto — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 22:56:09 +0000

‘The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library feels like a shrine for the written word. But John Shoesmith dismisses the idea.“It’s not just here as a shrine. [The books] don’t come here to die,” said the outreach librarian. “It’s a working library.” The Fisher, as it’s commonly called, is the largest rare book library in Canada and it’s open to the public. Situated within Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, over 700,000 volumes are available to anyone with a library card … Heavily annotated books belonging to famous Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan and musician Leonard Cohen’s personal notebooks are just some of the books that are made rare by their association. A common misconception is that an old book makes a book rare. And while the Fisher does have material even from before the time of Christ, he says modern books aren’t out of the norm. “We would have books that would’ve been published last week, because we do collect modern Canadian fiction,” said Shoesmith. “We collect as many modern Canadian imprints as we can.” Some modern Canadian manuscripts exclusive to the Fisher are the handwritten first drafts of Margaret Atwood’s novels The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye.’ You can read more here.

BHPC alumna Rebecca Niles on her career at the Folger Shakespeare Library

bhpctoronto — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 20:51:45 +0000

“Cool Job: Digital Texts Co-editor and Interface Architect at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. By the time she graduated from the Faculty of Information (after having earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in English at U of T), Rebecca Niles had already landed a job at the Folger Shakespeare Library – home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials – on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.” You can read the interview with her in UofT Magazine here.