What Matters Who Writes?
What Matters Who Responds?
Andrea Lunsford, Rebecca Rickly, Michael Salvo,
and Susan West
Martha Woodmansee's now-classic essay, "The Genius and the Copyright,"
appeared during the time Lisa Ede and I were doing research for the
project that later became our book on collaboration. Martha's
excavation of the eighteenth-century debate over who should "own" the
copyright and how this debate figured into the construction of the "author"
that has so dominated our understanding of what it means to write was
enormously illuminating to us. I think Lisa and I may have sent Martha a
copy of our book as a thank-you present for all her work. At any rate, we
have been in close touch since 1990, and I have had the opportunity to
participate in several conferences Martha has organized to address the
issue of authorship and copyright in relation to legal, literary, and
composition studies. Shortly after I gave the presentation this text is
based on, Martha and Peter Jaszi published what I hope will be another very
influential essay -- in College English. In it, they outline
the legal struggles that I touch on in this hypertext.
Back
Postmodern (un)grounding *
Collaboration *
Copy(w)right/Ownership *
Possible Futures
Title Page *
Conclusions