Call for Papers: Composition and Copyright (edited collection)

Eds. Steve Westbrook, Ph.D. & Timothy Hodge, Esq.

We are seeking 500-word proposals for an interdisciplinary collection of articles that examines the relationship between copyright law and the activities of writing, researching, teaching, and learning. Regardless of the particular activity or combination of activities under discussion, we are concerned primarily with the legal, questionably legal, and illegal production and distribution of texts, which we define broadly to include verbal, print, auditory, visual, and new media, as well as computer code.

We have divided the collection into three major sections. Section One is concerned primarily with the law itself. It contains essays that discuss recent developments in legislation (e.g. the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and examine implications for the public commons, the academy, and writers and artists who rely on practices of appropriation. Section Two focuses specifically on English studies and explores the challenges that current copyright law presents to the rapidly changing discipline and increasingly media-literate population of English majors. Section Three offers a range of perspectives from across the curriculum. It offers evidence of the ways in which professionals, teachers, and students within fields as diverse as art history and biology have been affected by and responded to the enforcement of copyright and intellectual property laws. We welcome contributions to any of the three sections listed above.

Articles may take a variety of forms: e.g., textual studies, case studies, theoretical examinations, experiential and historical narratives, experimental research. Deadline for submission is August 10, 2006. Please email proposals and queries to Dr. Steve Westbrook at the following address:
swestbrook@fullerton.edu

Steve Westbrook, Assistant Professor
Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics
California State University, Fullerton
800 N. State College Blvd.
Fullerton, CA 92834.