Core Aims

  • Give visibility to the study of the book, including all of its diverse categories of content, in all of its forms, and from all perspectives that offer new insights;
  • Galvanise the activity of SAS affiliates in the broad field, amplify existing SAS projects, and promote cross-disciplinary research collaborations across SAS and its collections;
  • Facilitate discussions across institutional and disciplinary boundaries, including outreach to scholarly and new audiences;
  • Train the next generation of scholars in the field by supporting MA, MRes, and MPhil programmes and PhD research at SAS, as well as promoting and facilitating research externally;
  • Promote larger, external research collaborations that otherwise would not be possible

Background

SAS’s member institutes have long provided international research leadership in the history of the book. The Institute of English Studies (and its London Rare Books School) defined the field in the UK. SAS expanded the field of the History of the Book to include deeply interdisciplinary methodologies, which is one reason why the topic is of growing importance across the humanities and social sciences but rarely taught elsewhere.

SAS continues to pioneer ways of understanding books as material objects (analytical bibliography, printing techniques, economic histories), social and cultural objects (the history of reading, the history of communication), and textual, pictorial and informational objects (text, illustrations, diagrams, marginalia).