Welcome to BHPC

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