Thinking Through Printing
A Symposium on Book Arts Studios and
Book History Scholarship
University of Toronto  |  June 4 – 6, 2026
www.ThinkingThroughPrinting2026.ca

Dates: June 4 – 6, 2026
Location: University of Toronto (in-person only)
Proposal due date: January 19th, 2026, 11:59 pm EST
Submit proposals to: Submission Form

For scholars of the history of books, reading, authorship, design, and publishing, first-hand experiences with the technologies and practices of the book arts have moved from the margins to the centre of their discipline. Experiential bibliography has flourished within academic programs in book history and adjacent fields, which are increasingly populated by aspiring printer-bibliographers, faculty and students alike. To that end, book arts studios are becoming vital spaces for book history education and research.

Essential for the long-term success of these initiatives is a coherent and focused conversation on the rationales, educational goals, and research potentials of print studios and other spaces for experiential bibliography. As a follow-up to the 2025 Building Book Labs symposium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, this event will gather present and future leaders working at the intersection of book history, research creation, and digital scholarship to reflect on achievements, share strategies, explore challenges, and plan future projects that combine book history scholarship and experiential learning in the book arts.

The Thinking Through Printing symposium will offer participants two full days of experiential workshops, roundtables, and exhibitions (June 5-6), plus a public keynote talk by Ryan Cordell (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; June 4), founding director of the Skeuomorph Press & Book Lab.

What are the research questions in book history that can only be answered via work in a print studio? How does experiential bibliography open up areas of inquiry for students and advanced researchers alike? In an age of unsettling technological change, what role do older printing technologies and practices have in helping society understand the power of words, images, and material artifacts? How might we understand the past differently by making bookish artifacts of our own within communities of practitioner-scholars? How can research creation projects that emerge from these book arts studios be better supported and recognized in academic contexts?

Our symposium will address these high-level questions through a multi-modal approach that reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the book arts and book history, combining roundtable discussions, experiential workshops, student-led poster sessions, rare book library tours, a keynote lecture and roundtable (both open to the public), and other activities.

We invite brief statements of interest (max. 300 words) which address: 1) your interest and experience in the field; and 2) a proposal for a specific topic, question, or experiential workshop that you would like to address or have addressed by the symposium. For those interested in facilitating a 90-minute workshop, please provide a short description of the activity, its goals, and tools, supplies, and other resources needed for the workshop. Workshops could be hands-on, discussion-based, or both.

Topics for workshops, roundtables, and subsequent discussions will be chosen by the program committee with the goal of representing a broad range of approaches and outputs in experiential bibliography.

Examples of workshop and roundtable topics include:

• Interdisciplinary research methods combining book arts, book history, and digital humanities;
• Book arts studios as sites for pedagogical research;
• Advocacy for and implementation of experiential, studio-based research creation in the humanities;
• Connections between contemporary and historical practices in printing;
• Material and practical challenges in the implementation of experiential activities;
• Productive connections (and tensions) between digital and analog technologies, practices, and ways of thinking about material texts; what can digital scholarship learn from the book arts (and vice versa)?
• Working and teaching with artifacts that have culturally specific histories (e.g. Indigenous type, as potential objects for repatriation), whose provenance is complex and raises ethical questions about their use

Please fill out this Submission Form to apply. The deadline for proposals is Monday, January 19, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST.

Any questions about the event or the application process may be sent to thinkingthroughprinting@utoronto.ca.

The Many Hands of Book History
Conference of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Société bibliographique du Canada
8-9 June 2026, University of Toronto

The Bibliographical Society of Canada invites proposals for its annual conference on the theme, The Many Hands of Book History. Drawing on Robert Darnton’s foundational article “What is the History of Books”(1985), this conference turns toward the expanded, evolving, and interdependent networks that shape book history. Darnton’s Communications Circuit model traced the movement of books through multiple hands and bibliographers today continue to stretch, challenge, and reimagine that circuit. This year’s theme considers books not simply as paper, ink, and binding, but as profoundly collaborative objects shaped at every stage by labour, creativity, culture, ownership, and interpretation.

We invite participants to explore the diverse social, material, and cultural processes through which books—broadly conceived—have been created, preserved, circulated, and transformed. We encourage papers that explore interactions between any hands involved with the book, including creators, artists, printers, illustrators, binders, publishers, booksellers, readers, collectors, archivists, scholars, and communities. We also welcome contributions that provoke new methodological, material, and theoretical questions—especially from disciplines and practitioners who may not always identify themselves as “book people.”

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Materiality and Meaning: How formats, illustration, binding, decoration, wear, repair, and digital remediation shape the interpretation, circulation, and preservation of textual objects.
• Books as Collaborative and Communal Objects: The ways in which book creation fosters shared identities, reflects or silences human experience, and emerges from the labour and creativity of diverse communities.
• Research Centered on Marginalized Voices: Studies of book culture by, for, and/or from 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, BIPOC communities, persons with disabilities, women, and/or religious or cultural groups.
• Analogue and Digital Materialities: From parchment, paper, ink, and leather to bits, bytes, algorithms, and born-digital forms; questions of reprinting, digitization, open access, and remediation.
• Tools, Methods, and Approaches: Bibliography, critical theory, scientific analysis, digital humanities, artificial intelligence, data-driven research, and other interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary methods.
• Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching with books and cultural heritage materials; hands-on learning; community-engaged scholarship; and the impact of archival and material encounters on students, communities, and other learners.
• The Diverse Forms and Functions of “The Book” Across Time and Place: Manuscripts, archives, zines, artists’ books, digital platforms, print ephemera, community publications, and experimental or hybrid forms.

This conference emphasizes welcoming participation across fields and career stages, including students, early-career researchers, conservators, librarians, book artists, digital humanists, bibliographers, and scholars working within or alongside book history and bibliography. Proposals may engage with material, visual, scientific, technological, or community-based approaches; with Canadian or international contexts; and with intersectional, cross-cultural, and transnational perspectives.

Proposals:

Proposals for twenty-minute conference presentations, entire panels (three presentations), or hour-long workshops may be submitted in English or French. Proposals, which must be submitted via the online form, must include the following elements:

• Title of presentation/panel/workshop
• Abstract indicating argument, context, and methods (max. 250 words)
• Bio (50-100 words) including full name, professional designation (e.g., graduate student, faculty, librarian, researcher etc.), and institutional affiliation or place

In order to accommodate financial and accessibility issues, this conference will be presented in a limited hybrid capacity. Please specify whether your proposal is for an in-person or online presentation when submitting. Priority will be given to in-person presentations, and online presentations must be recorded and submitted prior to the conference.

Applicants to the Emerging Scholar Prize must also include:

• Cover letter (1 p.) explaining the applicant’s suitability for the prize
• CV (max. 3 pp.)
• Proof of student status or of graduation within the past two years (copy of diploma, student identification, or official or unofficial transcript)

Deadline: 30 January 2026

For more information: https://event.fourwaves.com/bsc/pages