From snippets to series: historical writing and the book historians, book talk

In the 19th and 20th-century British world, readers received a remarkable amount of historical knowledge in the form of newspaper snippets, reviews in journals, and brief magazine articles – more than from the multi-volume series to which professional historians were oriented. Periodical and newspaper trades did much to shape historical writing. This talk by Dr. Leslie Howsam, Distinguished University Professor Emerita, University of Windsor will explore the challenge of incorporating accounts of the past into book history, by using the genre to critique both well-worn and novel theories in our field of study. The talk will also address the daunting challenge of how to capture a good bibliographical sense of what was published, by whom and where – and consider how relational databases or data-mining might help us to structure and visualize the historiographical/bibliographical networks made up of readers, books, publishers, periodicals, and authors.

Location: Room A003, Lower Level, Mearns Centre for Learning - McPherson Library

Start time: 4:00 p.m., February 18th

This event is part of a SSHRC-supported speaker series Unravelling the Code(x): History of the Book, an interdisciplinary series that explores book history scholarship and the creation, circulation, and reception of knowledge.