Authorship: Rhet/Comp Perspectives

Disciplinary Perspectives

CCR 747: S13

Sunday, February 24, 13


Authors of work published in the journal are attentive to the legal and economic landscape in which their professional lives happen. This may seem a relatively mundane and obvious claim, but it’s an important one. We are not, nor have we ever been, naive about the ways in which we are surrounded by and implicated by issues of Intellectual Property--in terms of our work (Corbin; Francis; Nagourney; Nagourney and Steiner), the porous boundary of academia and the world beyond (Bourque; Corbin, Hastings, Robinson; Wheeler) and the impact of the decisions we make on our students and our classrooms (Cargill; Corbin, Frederick; Kolich; Nilsen; Nydahl; Poulin; Turner.) (540)


When did all this start?


DeVoss: 1943


Corbin, 1965

As a profession, we must educate ourselves about the whole business of copyright. As users of books, it is very much our business, in fact. Under the present law we have been guaranteed by the courts certain fair and necessary uses of copyrighted materials in our classrooms and scholarly pursuits ... Our first responsibility, therefore, is to inform ourselves about the issues involved in the proposed revision of the law.


Borque,“The Humanist as Computer Specialist” (1983)


1994: CCCC IP Caucus


6 threads (1994-2012)• Romantic notions of authorship anchor us in dangerous ways

and align to the ways in which copyright restricts texts.

• IP is problematic in the way that authorship and/or property is situated along race, class, and gendered divisions.

• Digital networks and changing technologies are transforming the textual landscape.

• Writing is a commodity that can be owned and sold; authorship is murky and complex, and authrorship is held by companies more than by individuals.

• Visual rhetoric and visual studies demands more focused attention ... to issues of copyright and IP.

• English studies scholars have a significant stake in copyright issues. (544).


Lunsford & West, 1996


chilling effects


Specifically, this document would make browsing among electronic databases (simply viewing documents on a computer screen) tantamount to copying and thus subject to a fee ... Those corporations would be encouraged, in other words, to keep records on who reads what on whose network... Even more important, such a reading regime would exert largely silent but powerful controls over what gets read and how, and, eventually, over what gets written.

According to the WSJ, the president of the Software Publishers Association called the document’s proposals “great news. Our greatest fear is that the Internet will become a vehicle of free distribution of information” (Cooper) (386-87)


is that just then? a concern of nearly

20 years ago?


Composition’s position in this debate is all the more problematic, we will argue, because of the field’s silent complicity in shrinking the intellectual commons. After all, the teaching of writing has traditionally been invested in a model of composing that makes solitary reflection central to the production of “original” texts absolutely “owned’ by their creators, a model of singular authorship and ownership perpetuated effectively by teachers of writing (and educational systems in general). (387)


Such an argument focuses attention once again on the Western privileging of the Romantic conception of “creation”: in this case, a corporate inventor/author may claim property rights that are denied to those whose discoveries are the results of collective action or a process of cultural transmission. (393)


international information economy (Boyle)


cultural commons


What might a reimagined system look like from the perspective of Rhet/Comp?


Lindsey:First I wanted to discuss if the trade off of "new ideas and expressions" instead of monetary gain is realistic in terms of "where the values lies in terms of our discipline." I realize teachers do not necessary make a lot of money from teaching or academic publications, but our students are not indoctrinated that way. As they point out, the battle cry seems to be "mine." In a digital age I'm wondering if this will be a trickle down effect or a trickle up effect. Will we teach our students to move away from "mine" and value new ideas, or will we be forced to move into a position where "mine" because our go to response.


Jess:–What does collaborative authorship look like in a classroom? What is the role of the teacher?

–How does the concept of community engagement help us re-imagine teaching in this newly constructed space L & W describe? [See also: “extracurriculum.”]


Lindsey:

Finally, in regards to "added to information" and "added value" I couldn't help but think of how academics write their articles. Articles and dissertations operate under the idea that new work is being produced. But often times when an author introduces their project at the beginning of an article they make a move that states they are "extending, building, complicating, etc" so-and-so's work. They establish a "gap," and new place, but they also (like we teach our students) strongly establish their ethos and their right to be occupying that space by hitching their work to someone else's wagon. Thus, their new work isn't wholly original but "exists in the connections the rhetor poses between certain taken-for-granted bits of knowledge" (402). Again this relates back to my question of what are we actually valuing.(esp considering this article was written in 1996 and its 2013).


pedagogical responsibilities (397+)


Documents

Authorship: Rhet/Comp Perspectives