Literary Collaboration and Control

Citation: Hill, Benjamin Mako. 2003. “Literary collaboration and control: A socio-historic, technological and legal analysis.” Bachelors Thesis, Amherst, Massachusetts: Hampshire College http://mako.cc/academic/collablit/.  

This project was my final undergraduate project (Division III [1]) at Hampshire College. It was completed in April, 2003 and passed by my committee in the first week of May. The project sought to leverage an analysis of collaborative literary creation from historical, technologic al, and legal philosophical perspectives toward a critique of individualized literary control. It focuses on the way that literary collaboration is affected by social conceptions of authorship, the technological terms on which we communicate, and copyright.

I have received help and advice from a wide range of individuals. At the top of this list are the members of my academic committee:

The project has four chapters:

Finished Document

This is the full document. In addition to the four chapters described above and a bibliography, I've included Software (,) Politics and Indymedia (see this page for additional formats) as an appendix. (Version 1.0 - Updated Wed, 7 May 2003)

Available: pdf | html |html (single page) | txt | ps | ps.gz | rtf | source (tar.bz2) | source (tar.gz)

Related Documents

Preliminary Papers, Notes, and Documents

Due to the scope and length of this project, I've posted papers and notes at several intermediary steps.

THESE ARE UNPUBLISHED DRAFTS. PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE THEM WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM ME. Ask first and I'll be willing to let you do almost anything with them.

Proposals & RFCs

The following current version of the project proposal are posted:


[1] During their final year at Hampshire College, students work exclusively on an intensive advanced studies project called Division III. This project began as my Division III project.