Dr. Alan Galey

• Thu, 03/08/2012 - 7:00pm

2011-2012 DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS SERIES

Dr. ALAN GALEY
University of Toronto

 “Ebooks in the Bibliographical Imagination: The Case of The Sentimentalists and the Giller Prize”

In November 2010, Johanna Skibsrud’s novel The Sentimentalists was announced as the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, which promptly embroiled the work, its author, and its publishers in a clash between different modes of book publishing. The novel’s publication as a limited-run book from a small press (Gaspereau), then as an ebook (Kobo), then as a mass-market paperback (Douglas & MacIntyre) sparked public interest in the kinds of questions usually asked by bibliographers. How do the published versions of The Sentimentalists differ in their print and digital forms? How do those different forms affect (and effect) meaning? With the 2010 Giller controversy, the normally specialized subject matter of textual scholars and digital humanists became matters of debate in the mainstream media. This talk will explore the role of ebooks in the bibliographical imagination, using The Sentimentalists as a case study that demands a synthesis of bibliography, digital humanities, and the history of the book.