Con/texts of Invention
A working conference of the Society for Critical Exchange

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

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:
dar29_at_case.edu.

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

________________________________

Kurt Koenigsberger
Assistant Professor of English
Associate Director
Society for Critical Exchange
Case Western Reserve University
222 Guilford House
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7117

216.368.6994
kurt.koenigsberger_at_case.edu

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Received on Wed May 11 2005 - 15:51:22 EDT