BKS 1001 HF: Introduction to Book History. Fall 2015. Mondays 2 to 5. MacLean Hunter Room, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Instructor: Heather Murray. heather.murray@utoronto.ca Office (for office hours): Room 620 JHB. Telephone 417 978 0036. Drop-in office hours (at 620 JHB): Thursdays 1 to 3 (except Oct. 26 and Nov. 5), or by appointment. Course description: This foundational course will introduce students to basic topics such as the semiotics of the book; orality and writing systems; book production from manuscript to the latest computer technology; the development of printing; the concept of authorship; copyright; censorship; the economics of book production and distribution; libraries and the organization of information; principles of bibliographical description; genres of print; reading and readership; editorial theory and practice. We also will study many artifacts and tools of the trade at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Massey College (and the Massey College Printing Room), and the Osborne Collection. The course also will be linked to the fall lectures offered by the Toronto Centre for the Book. Preparation for the course: Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading. Required text: The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Leslie Howsam. Ordered through the Bob Miller Bookroom, 180 Bloor Street West. All other readings for the course are available through University of Toronto Library e-resources, although almost all also are available in hard-copy book or journal form. Secondary sources for terminology: A quick source for books and bibliography terms is the Glossary of Book Terms at Alibris alibris.com/glossary/glossary-home A more technical source for terminology relating to archives, libraries, books, printing and digital publication is in searchable form at the Society of American Archivists website www2.archivists.org with the authoritative and extensive source for bibliographical terms being Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (rev. ed 1995). Recommended reading: The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. Neil Fraistat and Julia Flanders. D.C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. Leslie Howsam, Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Book History and Print Culture. Assignments and grading: Seminar participation assessed for regular, informed, classroom discussion displaying knowledge of the weekly readings, contribution of zeitgeist items, short presentations, 20%, dates various. Author s papers assignment 30%, due Oct. 26. Final essay (comparative study of editions) proposal 10%, due Nov. 16. Final essay 40%, due Dec. 21.
Class Monday September 14: Introduction to the course. Overview of the course syllabus and assignments. Overview of the University of Toronto Library system. Accessing e-resources. Tricks for using the catalogue. Preliminary introduction to Book History as a field. Overview of the major journals, organizations, and resources for the field. Preliminary introduction to analytical bibliography. Book history and print culture resources and events in the Toronto area. Hour three: PhD students discussion. Class Monday September 21. Key readings in Book History (and some models for the field). Tour of the Fisher Library. Preparation for this class: Please visit the website of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and read the instructions for accessing the collections (under FAQ). Familiarize yourself with the Manuscript holdings, going through alphabetically, looking out especially for authors papers. Please begin learning the list of Technical Terms in the Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 268-72. Thomas R. Adams and Nicholas Barker. A New Model for the Study of the Book. A Potencie of Life: Books in Society: The Clark Lectures, 1986-1987, ed. Nicholas Barker. London: British Library, 2001. Robert Darnton, What is the History of Books? Daedalus 111, 3 (1982): 65-83.. What is the History of Books Revisted. Modern Intellectual History 4,3 (2007): 495-508. Leslie Howsam, The Study of Book History. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 1-16. BHPC Event Monday September 21: BHPC Program Orientation for incoming students. 5 to 7 pm. Upper Library, Massey College. (Optional) Event Saturday September 27: Word on the Street Festival. Class Monday September 28: Visit to Fisher Library I. What is an author? Authors and their papers. Guest instructors: Natalya Ratan, Processing Archivist, Fisher Library, and John Shoesmith, Outreach Librarian, Fisher Library. Jennifer Douglas and Heather MacNeil. Arranging the Self: Literary and Archival Perspectives on Writers Archives. Archivaria 67 (Spring 2009): 25-39. (cont.) Jennifer Douglas, The Archiving I : A Close Look at the Archives of Writers. Archivaria 79 (spring 2015): 53-89.
(Sept. 28 cont.) Carole Gerson, Dragged at Anne s Chariot Wheels L.M. Montgomery and the Sequels to Anne of Green Gables. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 35, 2 (1997): 143-60. Juliet Gardiner, Recuperating the Author: Consuming Fictions of the 1990s. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 92, 2 (2000): 255-74. Third hour: MISt students discussion. Class Monday October 5: Visit to Fisher Library II. Introduction to the material book. Guest instructor: P.J. Carefoot, Librarian for Medieval manuscripts, incunabula, early books, Fisher Library. M. T. Clancy, Hearing and Seeing. From Memory to Written Record. London: Arnold, 1979. 202-230. Adrian Johns, The Coming of Print to Europe. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 107-24. D.F. Mackenzie, The Book as an Expressive Form. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge UP, 1999. 9-30. M.B. Parkes, The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilation on the Development of the Book. Scribes, Scripts, and Readers. London: Hambledon, 1991. 35-70. Johanna Drucker, Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation. Narrative 16, no. 2 (May 2008): 121-39. (To be discussed in advance of the October 8 lecture.) Third hour: MA students discussion. (Optional) Lecture Tuesday October 6. The John Seltzer and Mark Seltzer Memorial lecture, Friends of the Fisher Library. Jonathan Hill (antiquarian book dealer, New York.), Now How Did I Get Into This Racket? (A Bookseller s Progress). 8 pm. Fisher Library. (Required) Lecture Thursday October 8: The Fourth Annual J.R. de J. Jackson Lecture, Toronto Centre for the Book. Johanna Drucker (UCLA). Analogue and Digital Histories of the Alphabet. 4:15 to 6 pm. Faculty of Information 728. No class Oct. 12: Thanksgiving.
Class Monday October 19: Visit to the Osborne Collection of Early Children s Books, 239 Guest instructor: Martha Scott, Librarian, Osborne Collection. Preparation for this class: Please familiarize yourself with the Osborne Collection and its holdings by going to torontopubliclibrary.ca/osborne/ James Raven, The Industrial Revolution of the Book. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 142-161. Alistair McCleerey, The Book in the Long Twentieth-Century. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 181-98. Peter Stoicheff, Materials and Meanings. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 73-89. Class Monday October 26: Visit to the Robertson Davies Library and the Printing Room, Massey College. Due date: author s papers assignment due in class today. Guest instructors: P.J. McDougall, Librarian, Massey College, and Nelson Adams, College Printer, assisted by Printing Fellows. Preparation for this class: Please read the brief description of the Robertson Davies Library and its holdings on the Massey College website. No readings this week. (Optional) Lecture Tuesday October 27: The Alexander C. Pathy Lecture on the Book Arts, Friends of the Fisher. Celebrating Fifty Years of Coach House Press. Dennis Reid, David Hylinsky, Stan Bevington, and others. 8 pm. Fisher Library. Class Monday November 2: How to do things with books; the organization of books. Some uses of descriptive, analytical, and forensic bibliography. Karen Attar, Books in the Library. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 17-35. Eli MacLaren, The North American Copyright Divide: Black Rock and the Magnification of Ralph Connor. Dominion and Agency: Copyright and the Structure of the Canadian Book Trade, 1867-1918. Toronto: U Toronto Press, 2011. D.F. McKenzie, The Sociology of a Text: Orality, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand. The Library VI 6:4 (1984): 333-65. Michael Suarez, Book History from Descriptive Bibliographies. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 199-218. Short presentations of author s papers projects. No class November 9: Fall break.
Required Lecture Thursday November 12: Toronto Centre for the Book. Alan Galey (U Toronto), Bibliography for a Used Future: Finding the Human Presence in E-Books and Other Digital Artifacts. 4:15 to 6 pm. Upper Library, Massey College. Class Monday November 16: The E -word (and the D -word). Due date: Proposal for final essay due in class today. Preparation for this class: Please familiarize yourself with the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) project (inke.ca); the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (cwrc.ca);http://www.cwrc.ca), The ORLANDO project (artsrn.ualberta.ca and orlando.cambridge.org); and the University of Toronto Cluster (Making Medieval Manuscripts) of the Manuscript Studies in an Interoperable Digital Environment project (under web.stanford.edu). Jon Bath and Scott Schofield, The Digital Book. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 181-89. Alan Galey, The Enkindling Reciter: E-Books in the Bibliographical Imagination. Book History 15 (2012): 210-47. *Lisa Gitelman, Searching and Thinking About Searching JSTOR. Representations 127, 1 (2014): 73-82. Third hour: meeting with PhD students. Class Monday November 23: Book use: what is a reader? Preparation for this class: Please familiarize yourself with the Beyond the Book project (DeNel Sedo, Mount Allison; Danielle Fuller, Birmingham) and website at beyondthebook.bham.ac.uk Mary Hammond, Book History in the Reading Experience. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 237-52. H.J. Jackson, selections from Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven CT: Yale U Press, 2002. Introduction 1-17; Chapter 1 Physical Features 18-43; Chapter 8 Book Use or Book Abuse 234-58. And we will revisit Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading. Thidrd hour: meeting with PhD students.
Class Monday November 30: Book use: readership formations and national readers. Work in Progress sessions I. Preparation for this class: Please familiarize yourself with the contents of all three volumes of the History of the Book in Canada (multiple hard copies in campus libraries) and read the Murray selection in vol I (see below): Trish Loughran, Books in the Nation. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book. 36-52. Mary Hammond, Book History in the Reading Experience. Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, 237-52. Heather Murray, Readers and Society, History of the Book in Canada I: 172-81. Class Monday December 7: Copyright, Intellectual Property, and Authorial Labour. Work-in-progress sessions II. Preparation for this class: please visit the website and blog posts of Michael Geist, University of Ottawa, for recent news on the copyright front. Sarah Brouillette, Contemporary Literature, Post Industrial Capital, and the UK Creative Industries. Literary Compass 4 (2007) [on-line] Mark Rose, The Author as Proprietor: Donaldson v. Becket and the Geneology of Modern Authorship. Representations 23 (1988): 51-85. Paul K. Saint-Amour, Your Right to What s Mine: On Personal Intellectual Property. Law and Literature 25,1 (2013): 103-21. BHPC Event Wednesday December 9: Librorum. 5 to 7 pm. Upper Library, Massey College. Class Monday December 14: Where are Books (and Book History) Going? Note changed class location to JHB 616. This class will give us a chance to debate some timely topics and to try to predict the future. For example: will indie bookstores and small presses have a resurgence? Will Amazon collapse? Does copyright matter anymore? What is next after born digital writing? Due Date Monday December 21, before noon. Final papers to be put in the essay drop box, Department of English, 6 th floor, JHB (near the elevator). Please note that university closes December 23; late essays may not be emailed. Acknowledgements: BKS 1001HF (a course that originated with BKS 1000Y in the early years of the BHPC program) has developed over time, and so this syllabus builds upon the work of earlier instructors including Sandra Alston, Patricia Fleming, Alan Galey, David Galbraith, Greta
Golick, and Scott Schofield.