"The Quote's the Thing"
Negotiating Copyright in Scholarly Criticism

Saturday, April 2, 511 O'Brian Hall, University at Buffalo

The symposium brings together scholars and practitioners from the intersecting fields of literary criticism, copyright law, and academic publishing to discuss the challenges of copyright compliance that the academy faces today and to engage some of the foremost scholars focused on the intersection of aesthetics, economics, and the law. The symposium takes place in the University at Buffalo Law School, O'Brian Hall, with a reception to follow in the Poetry Collection, Capen Hall.

The symposium will consist of a morning roundtable discussion and two afternoon lectures. The morning session will consist of brief remarks from three panelists, followed by an open Q&A with the audience. In the afternoon two noted scholars in the field of literature and the law will give formal presentations. All three sessions will encourage questions and responses from the audience. Presenters include: Michael Groden (Distinguished Professor of English, University of Western Ontario), Peter Potter (Editor in Chief, Cornell University Press), Robin Schulze (Professor of English, Penn State University), Robert Spoo (Associate Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law), and Martha Woodmansee (Professor of English and Law, Case Western Reserve University).

For the morning session Robin Schulze and Michael Groden will join Peter Potter for a roundtable discussion of the copyright issues faced by academics today. Both scholars are known for important editorial and archival work and will describe some of their copyright difficulties with literary estates (that of James Joyce and Marianne Moore, respectively) before Peter Potter, representing the academic presses, responds. The afternoon will consist of plenary talks from Robert Spoo and Martha Woodmansee. Each lecture will foreground the condition of copyright in scholarly criticism as a site of interdisciplinary research in its own right.

The symposium as a whole, then, will address the theoretical, historical, and pragmatic aspects of thinking about copyright and intellectual property over the course of the past two centuries. We hope to stage a conversation among practitioners and faculty across a range of departments and disciplines, all of whom deal with similar questions relating to intellectual property and all of whom face the practical aspects of quoting copyrighted material, whether textual, visual or auditory, in publication.

Mark Bartholomew (Associate Professor of Law)
Cristanne Miller (Professor of English)
Ronan Crowley (Graduate Student)