Following the announcement on this blog in January, CREATe is delighted to present the third entry in our working paper series released in 2021: Copyright History in Review, which is a re-print of four reviews of recent scholarly books by CREATe’s Dr Elena Cooper published in The Burlington Magazine, Law and History Review, Law, Culture and the Humanities and the Modern Law Review. Elena comments as follows:
In the first three reviews, concerning the work of Katie Scott (Becoming Property, 2018, Yale University Press), Derek Miller (Copyright and the Value of Performance , 2018, CUP) and Will Slauter (Who Owns the News?, 2019, Stanford University Press) I chart a change in recent copyright history scholarship: a shift in the focus of copyright history away from books and literary works to other subject matter (visual art, drama and news). These reviews can be read in conjunction with the forthcoming CREATe Working Paper Introduction to Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (CUP, 2018), which is a re-print of the introductory chapter of my own recent monograph Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (the first in depth and longitudinal study of copyright and the visual arts, concerning painting, engraving and photography the UK, 1850-1911). The final review concerns a collection of essays concerning the history of intellectual property more generally edited by Claudy Op den Kamp and Dan Hunter (A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects, 2019, CUP) which examines the history of intellectual property law through the lens of 50 different objects. Taken together, the reviews reveal the depth and breadth of historical work in the field and the richness of historical perspectives as a terrain for future study. Those interested to learn more about recent developments in copyright history may wish to attend the Roundtable discussion Copyright History, Book History and Art History: An Interdisciplinary Conversation organised by Will Slauter, and forming part of the annual conference the Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (26-30 July 2021) – to which I will be contributing, along with Katie Scott, Oren Bracha, Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire, Ian Gadd and Will Slauter. Further details about this event will be released later this year.
The full paper can be downloaded here.
