Region : Ontario
City : Toronto
Web site : www.stmikes.utoronto.ca
The University of St. Michael's College is a college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1852 by the Congregation of St. Basil of Annonay, France. While mainly an undergraduate college for liberal arts and sciences, St. Michael's retains its Roman Catholic affiliation through its postgraduate divinity school.
St. Michael's is most closely associated with teaching and research in the humanities. It is also known for being home to Marshall McLuhan throughout his influential career as a philosopher and communication theorist, from 1946 until his death in 1980. The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies resides within the college. St. Michael's College School is an affiliated boys school which was once the high school section of the college.
St. Michael's College comprises the Faculty of Theology, the Division of Continuing Education, and its namesake undergraduate division, St Michael's College. Within the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science, St. Michael's College sponsors the academic programs of book and media studies, Celtic studies, Christianity and Culture, Mediaeval studies and the Concurrent Teacher Religious Education Program. In 1996, the French and German departments of the University of Toronto took up residence on the St Michael?s campus, followed in 2000 by the departments of Italian and Slavic studies.
After a reorganization in 1954, degrees in theology have been through the Faculty of Theology of St. Michael's College. In 1969, the Faculty of Theology became one of the founding colleges of the Toronto School of Theology, an ecumenical federation of the theological colleges at the University of Toronto. The undergraduate division of St. Michael's College joined the undergraduate divisions of six other University of Toronto colleges in 1974 to reorganize its academic departments into the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. In 2005, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies was reconstituted as an affiliated institution of St. Michael's College.
Marshall McLuhan was hired as a member of faculty at St. Michael's College in 1946, and taught English literature at the college until his death in 1980. During this time he became famous and influential for his books The Mechanical Bride (1951), The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), and Understanding Media (1964), in addition to his oft-quoted aphorisms on communications and media such as "the medium is the message".
The John M. Kelly Library is the main library at St. Michael's College, and is part of the University of Toronto's mass digitization partnership with the Internet Archive. Although the library building was opened in 1969, the library collection dates back to the earliest days of the college. The collection has since been developed in support of undergraduate programmes in the Faculty of Arts and Science, graduate programmes in the Faculty of Theology, and programmes of the college's continuing education division. In addition to more than 300,000 bookform volumes, the library maintains subscriptions to almost 500 journals and magazines and has the largest suite of public computers on the east side of the University of Toronto campus.
The Kelly Library's collection has representation mainly in the areas of humanities and social sciences, particularly in book history, media studies, philosophy, Celtic history, languages and literature, Canadian history, English literature, and Medieval history. The theological collection emphasizes patristics, early and medieval church history, Thomism, the Bible (especially Canon, Johannine literature, and the history of criticism), liturgical renewal, religious education, and Catholic missions. There are also extensive archival special collections including substantial holdings of G. K. Chesterton, John Henry Newman, early printed books, and the papers of Henri Nouwen and Sheila Watson.
Sources : Wikipedia, www.stmikes.utoronto.ca
