BHPC Program Events

BHPC’s annual events program is organized by the BHPC Events Committee. To keep informed of BHPC events, contact our Program Coordinator to be added to our email list.

Visitors’ Day
Friday, 21 March 2025, 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Online event open to the public. Contact our Program Coordinator to register.
Details

Are you a graduate student at the University of Toronto? Got an interest in book history and print culture that overlaps with your studies? BHPC is hosting an informal Q&A session to discuss the program with prospective students. The Director of the program, Yulia Ryzhik, will answer any questions you might have and present some highlights of the BHPC program.

2025 BHPC Graduate Student Colloquium
Saturday, 22 March 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Massey College Upper Library
Wine and cheese reception follows from 5:00 – 6:00 pm.

Scandalous Book History: The Public Lives of Books
Keynote Speaker: Juan Carlos Mezo González

Events from Fall 2024

Orientation for Incoming Students
Thursday, 12 September 2024, 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Massey College Lower Library and Upper Library

The Twelfth Annual BHPC J. R. de J. Jackson Lecture
Finding Women Authors in Publisher Archives
Michelle Levy (Simon Fraser University)
Thursday, 17 October 2024, 4:00 pm
Charbonnel Lounge, 81 St. Mary St., St. Michael’s College

Presented by the Book History & Print Culture Collaborative Specialization, in association with the Book & Media Studies Program of the University of St. Michael’s College
Details

Although intact archives exist only for a few major publishers of the period, including Longman, John Murray, and Bentley/Colburn, collectively they published hundreds of women writers during the long eighteenth century and provide a wealth of mostly unexamined material. These archives contain correspondence, expense ledgers, copyright assignments and commission ledgers that offer detailed information about women’s direct involvement in the making of their books, yet most extant scholarship on these publishers ignores their engagements with women writers. Beyond these major archives, there are collections of correspondence and copyrights by antiquarians and bibliophiles, letter-books kept by other publishers, and correspondence, though rarely are these gathered in a single archive. These sources can be combined with examinations of women’s printed books to support a detailed reconstruction of women’s long-standing engagements with their publishers. Professor Levy’s work in these archives demonstrates the careful attention and expert knowledge women brought to their publications, as they actively sought to shape their books as material and commercial objects.

In addition, Professor Levy will lead a special seminar for students the day after the lecture (Friday, October 18, 10:00 am) in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. This seminar will draw on materials from the Fisher collection and will develop themes from her talk. This seminar is open to all graduate students in BHPC’s participating units, including students not enrolled in the BHPC program, and to upper-year undergraduates in the BMS program. Advance registration for the seminar is required. To register, contact our Program Coordinator. Space is limited, so please sign up only if you know you can attend.

Michelle Levy is a Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. Her recent books are Literary Manuscript Culture in Romantic Britain (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and How and Why To do things with Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts (co-authored with Betty Schellenberg, Cambridge University Press). Dorothy Wordsworth’s Lake District, a new edition of the Lake District writing of Dorothy Wordsworth (co-edited with Paul Westover and Nicholas Mason), was published by Romantic Circles in 2024. She is currently working on a new edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing for Oxford University Press, and her current monograph project is titled Women’s Books, 1750-1830. She directs The Women’s Print History Project, a bibliographical database of women’s contributions to print for the period 1700 to 1830.

Librorum
Thursday, 28 November 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Massey College Upper Library

This year’s Librorum will showcase the BKS2001 practicum projects of BHPC PhD students. It is open to students, faculty, and friends of the BHPC Collaborative Specialization.

Speakers:
Ayla Morland (Information), “Unfolding a Feminist Library: Creating a Digital Exhibit of the Ursula Franklin Library Collection”
Bud Roach (Music), “Engaging with Text in Historical Performance”
Devon Sherwood (History), “‘Pour le salut de leurs ammes‘: Special Prayers from Fifteenth-Century French Women’s Books of Hours”
Robbie Steele (English), “Deep Cuts: Activating Massey College’s Collection of Victorian Engraved Woodblocks”

Transcribe-a-thon: Recipes from the Seventeenth Century
Wednesday, 5 March 2025, 2:10 – 4:00 pm
Location to be announced upon registration

Led by Misha Teramura (Department of English) and Liz Ridolfo (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library)

Registration is free and open to all U of T students, although space is limited; to request registration, please complete this form by Wednesday, February 19 (a certain number of spaces will be reserved for students in BHPC and in the Book & Media Studies program).

Co-sponsored by the Book History & Print Culture Collaborative Specialization and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
Details

Come explore the recipes in a seventeenth-century manuscript cookbook! In this event, participants will learn about early modern handwriting, paleography, and digital scholarship, while collaborating together on a digital transcription of an early modern English cookbook preserved at U of T’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. This will be a relaxed event, and no prior experience working with manuscripts is required.