Submission Deadline – October 31, 2016

Broadly considered, critical race IP brings together two strands of scholarship: critical race theory and IP. Scholarship in critical race IP, which engages a variety of topics and texts, focuses on questions which thematically examine the relationship between race and racial formation and the study of copyrights, trademarks, patents, rights of publicity and trade secrets. Issues such as the trademarking of #BlackLivesMatter, the creation of race-based patents, the deployment of rhetorics of piracy demonstrate that race and IP intersect in important and complex ways. Regardless of their chosen topic of study, Race IP Crits do work which implicates thematic questions such as:

• What are/should be the aims and goals of the intellectual project of critical race IP?
• What are the implications of the predominant law and economics frame of theorizing intellectual properties?
• What can we learn by applying CRT to intellectual properties, particularly about the management of knowledge and identity?
• What intersectional questions are implicated by and through the study critical race IP?
• What methodologies might we use to study critical race IP and what are their implications?
• How does IP produce racialized subjects and contribute to processes of racial formation?
• How do legal doctrinal commitments in IP reinforce whiteness and white supremacy in law?
• How does critical race IP help us connect the struggles of the Global North and Global South?
• How does knowledge produced in the Global South become articulated in the global economy via international IP regimes (such as TRIPs)?
• How do IPR implicate the works of subaltern knowledge makers/holders (such as indigenous peoples, peasants, and artisans)?
• What are the links between (de)coloniality and IP?
• What alternative models of IP can help to combat racialization?
• How can critical race IP help us understand the relationship between IP and social justice?

For full consideration, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words of the proposed submission with your name, position, and affiliation to raceipconference@gmail.com. We welcome submissions in the form of videos, podcasts, and other non-paper formats, and from participants at all stages in their careers. Junior faculty members and graduate students that indicate their positions on their submissions will be considered for slots set aside for emerging scholars. All abstracts must be received by October 31, 2016.

Accepted participants will be expected to circulate completed submission (approximately 8,500 words in case of papers) by March 15, 2017 so that they may be distributed to moderators and panelists. Submissions must be original and unpublished (not in print at the time of the conference). A selection of conference papers will be published in an edited collection which outlines the theoretical investments, aims, methods, and directions of study of critical race IP.

Please feel free to email the organizers with abstracts or questions: raceipconference@gmail.com

We look forward to seeing you in April 2017!

The Race + IP conference organizing committee:
Anjali Vats, Boston College
Deidre Keller, Ohio Northern University
Jessica Silbey, Northeastern University
Amit Basole, University of Massachusetts, Boston