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Sarah Pelletier

• M.A. (University of Toronto), B.A. (Toronto Metropolitan University)
• Email Sarah Pelletier

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Print History and Culture, Labour in Literary and Material Production, Material Culture, Authorship, Periodical Studies, Books about Books, Experiential Learning, Book Arts, Technology and Print.

CURRENT RESEARCH:
My research focuses on the transnational typographical trade of the mid-to-late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Northeastern North America, with specific attention to typographical trade journals. I approach these periodicals through a feminist and transnational book historical lens that is attentive to the dynamics of race making. I examine the ways in which definitions and conceptualizations of “skill” are constructed by white male printers and compositors in Canada and the United States (and, to an extent, in Britain) at the end of the century, both in union policies/documents and in the trade’s journals. Expanding upon scholarship that has tended to focus on the relationship of “skill” to gender/sex, I consider the ways that the continued re-definition of “skill” in the North American trade during the period excluded those folks who were often deemed “unskilled” and threats or outsiders to the white, male-dominated trade’s masculine craft identity, such as white women, other white men (i.e.: apprentices), immigrants, and racialized minorities. Additionally, my work considers the important contributions these excluded groups made to fin-de-siècle print culture to de-center the white male as the protagonist of nineteenth-century print culture in North America.

PUBLICATIONS:

Peer-Reviewed Articles
– Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier. “‘Singular Plurality’: Settler Colonial Transcendence and Canada’s 2021 Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the Frankfurt Book Fair.” Book History 26, no. 2 (Fall 2023): 467-96. .

Book Reviews
– Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier. Review of The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business, by Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires. Publishing History 87 (2023): 87-92.

Other
– Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier, “Survey of Indigenous-Owned Publishers in Canada and Report for Government Stakeholders in Canada’s Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2020/21,” Book History Unbound (2023), .

CONFERENCES:

Sarah Pelletier. “Wives, Sisters, Daughters, and Sometimes Workers: Women Typesetters and the Patriarchal Voice of The Printer’s Miscellany.” Paper presented on the panel “Workers’ Voices in and Behind the Periodical Press” at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals’ Annual Conference, Voices and Visions of the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press. 10-12 July 2025. Loyola University, Chicago, USA. .

Sarah Pelletier. “Nineteenth-Century Canadian Typographical Trade Journals and the (Trans)National Significance of the International Art Printer (Owen Sound, Ontario 1895-189?).” Paper presented on the panel “Ships, Missions, Settlements: Nineteenth-Century Printers” at the Bibliographical Society of Canada’s Annual Conference, New Histories of the Small Press / Nouvelles histoires des petites maisons d’édition. 5-6 June 2025. George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario, Congress 2025. .

Sarah Pelletier. “‘Can Canada support such a printers’ magazine, or is our country too small for that?’: Plotting a (Trans)National Trade Through the Typographical Trade Press, 1873-1895.” Paper presented on the panel “Trades and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Periodical Production” at the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals’ Annual Conference, Place in the Victorian Periodical Press. 13-15 June, 2024. University of Stirling, Scotland. .

Sarah Pelletier. “A Network of Roots: the sun and her flowers, Instagram, and Rupi Kaur’s Diasporic Multimodal Authorship.” English Graduate Student Society (EGSS) Annual Conference, Community/Solitude: The Poetics and Praxis of Life in Transition. 5-6 May, 2023. �Ӱ�ԭ�� University (Ottawa, Ontario).

Sarah Pelletier. “Interrogating the ‘Art Preservative’: Letterpress Printing Today and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association 44^th Annual Conference, Remaking the Past. 30 March – 01 April, 2023. Sacramento, California. .

Jody Mason and Sarah Pelletier. “‘Singular Plurality’: Settler Colonial Transcendence and Canada’s 2021 Guest-of-Honour Campaign at the Frankfurt Book Fair.” Paper presented on the panel “(Re)Presenting Indigenous Literatures in Canada and Quebec: Defining, Publishing, Promoting” at the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) Annual Conference, Power of the Written Word. 11-15 July 2022. Amsterdam/Online Hybrid. Forthcoming. .

Sarah Pelletier. “Printing and Pedagogy.” Presentation delivered at the panel and showcase “Cultures of the Small Press in Canada: Broadsides in the BAL” at the EGSS �Ӱ�ԭ�� Annual Conference, The Literary Ordinary: Normality, Banality, and the Cultural Production of the Everyday. 01 May 2022. Ottawa, Ontario.

Sarah Pelletier. “‘Composed, I only give the hint, / Of multifarious small things’: The Everyday Work Behind Letterpress-Printed Objects.” Presentation delivered at: The EGSS �Ӱ�ԭ�� Annual Conference, The Literary Ordinary: Normality, Banality, and the Cultural Production of the Everyday. 30 April 2022. Online Conference.

Sarah Pelletier. “‘Neither boy nor man’: Historicizing the Ironic Gendering of the Canadian Modernist Little Magazine.” Paper presented at: The Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL), ACQL Annual Conference. 29-31 May 2021. Online Conference.

Sarah Pelletier and Julia Warren. “The Tragicomedy of Saturday Night and the Exploration of the Narrative of Archives.” Panelists at the Book History and Print Culture Graduate Student Colloquium, Books Beyond Reading. 10 March 2018. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. .

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:
– Research Assistant for Janice Schroeder. Department of English, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Summer 2022 and Summer 2023.
– Research Assistant for Jody Mason. Department of English, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Sept 2020 – May 2022.

TEACHING AND RELATED EXPERIENCE:
Course Instructor
– ENGL 3500B: Literatures and Cultures, 1700-1900 (Winter 2024)
  Topic: Reading Like It’s 1700-1900: Transatlantic Print Culture, Periodicals, Books, and Authorship

Other
– Senior Book Arts Lab Assistant. MacOdrum Library, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. November 2023 – Present.
– Book Arts Lab Assistant. MacOdrum Library, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Jan 2022 – November 2023.

 SERVICE:
– Outreach Coordinator. SHARP News. 2024 – Present.
– Co-Founder and President, �Ӱ�ԭ�� Book Arts Society. �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. 2023-24.

AWARDS:

• Directors’ Scholarship. Rare Book School. 2024-25.
• Marie Tremaine Fellowship. Bibliographical Society of Canada. 2023.
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2022-2025)
• 2018 Printing Apprentice, Robertson Davies Library Printing Fellowship Program (Massey College, University of Toronto)