[Discussion] Con/texts of Invention

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Con/texts of Invention: A Working Conference of the Society for Critical
Exchange

Ohio, United States

Con/texts of Invention

A working conference of the Society for Critical Exchange

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
April 20-22, 2006

This conference interrogates the social and cultural construction of 
invention
– the diverse ways in which invention has been conceptualized in 
the arts
and sciences in the broadest sense, including literature, the fine arts,
entertainment, the physical and life sciences, law, economics, medicine,
engineering, agriculture, education, communications, computation, 
finance, and
business. Emphasis will be on the institutional cultures, rhetorics, and
histories of invention across these fields. In this way the Society seeks to
extend and deepen the inquiry of its long-standing project on
“Intellectual Property and the Construction of Authorship” (see
www.cwru.edu/affil/sce/IPCA_main.html). Papers reflecting upon the 
impact of the
“critique of authorship” will thus be especially welcome. The
conference will include lectures and panel discussions; to facilitate
discussion, papers selected for panels will circulate in advance of the
conference.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

     * the author as inventor
     * the inventor as author
     * imitation and originality
     * psychologies of creativity
     * pathologies such as writer’s (or inventor’s) block
     * genius
     * hack(ing)
     * tradition and the individual talent, including the anxiety of 
influence
     * forgery
     * crimes such as plagiarism and piracy
     * the inventor as hero
     * invention vs. discovery
     * simultaneous discovery
     * joint/collective invention
     * useful and useless knowledge
     * the idea /expression distinction
     * invention vs. innovation
     * material and social inputs to invention
     * invention policy
     * narratives of invention
     * depictions of invention, including patent drawings
     * invisible invention
     * invention in rhetorical theory
     * genre and invention
     * invention and memory
     * invention in popular and children’s literature
     * pedagogies of invention
     * invention and self-help, including creativity workshops and invention
promotion services
     * cross-cultural perspectives on invention
     * invention and power
     * imperialism and invention
     * universities and invention
     * rhetorics of entrepreneurship
     * representations of collaboration
     * corporate authorship/invention
     * economies of invention
     * legal incentives and disincentives
     * private and public domains
     * discourses of intellectual commons, including free software and open
source
     * collage and sampling
     * geographies of invention
     * ethnography of invention
     * gender and invention

Please send paper abstracts (no full papers please), a CV of no more 
than three
pages, and any suggestions for panel topics by October 5 to the e-mail 
address
provided below.

Conference Organizers:
Olufunmilayo Arewa, Law, Case Western Reserve University
Mario Biagioli, History of Science, Harvard University
Peter Jaszi, Law, American University
Adrian Johns, History of Science, University of Chicago
Martha Woodmansee, English and Law, Case Western Reserve University

With support from the Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts at Case 
Western
Reserve University School of Law; the History of Science Department at 
Harvard
University; the Washington College of Law at American University; and the
Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the 
University of
Chicago

Martha Woodmansee
Executive Director
Society for Critical Exchange
Department of English
Case Western Reserve Univ.
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7117

Email: dar29@case.edu

Visit the website at http://www.case.edu/affil/sce