Room: 238 BAC
Monday & Wednesday, 2:30 - 4:00

If you are a student with a documented disability who anticipates needing accommodations in this course, please inform me after you meet with Jill or Suzanne in Disability/Access Services, in the Student Resource Centre, lower floor of the old SUB.Ê Êjill.davies@acadiau.ca 585-1127 or suzanne.robicheau@acadiau.ca Ê585-1913.

In this course students will be introduced to bibliography, histoire du livre, the sociology of the text, editorial principles, and the present and future of textual / book studies. Each of the aforementioned components of the course will be delivered as a more-or-less self-contained module. In the bibliography module students will become familiar with enumerative, descriptive, and analytical bibliography. In the book history module students will be introduced to the processes of production as well as the products (texts) of the handpress period. The sociology of the text module will follow D.F. McKenzie’s lead in considering how the material form of texts determines their meaning by, keeping with McKenzie, examining the roles of all concerned with the making, distribution, and reception of the text. Through this module students will be introduced to work being done in the history of reading. The introduction to editorial principles will provide students with the ability to distinguish between the activities appropriate to producing scholarly, diplomatic, or “camera-ready” editions, and the uses to which each approach is aimed. From the preceding modules students will acquire the necessary vocabulary and theoretical underpinnings to examine and critique the current state of “the text” in the module devoted to the present and future of textual studies. In this final module students will be introduced to principles of editorial responsibility through xml encoding, as well as being introduced to recent concepts of electronic textuality.