The film director or `auteur' has been central in film theory and criticism over the past thirty years. Theories of Authorship documents the major stages in the debate about film authorship, and introduces recent writing on film to suggest important ways in which the debate might be reconsidered.

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In this wide ranging collection of essays, eleven literary scholars and creative writers examine authorship and authority in relation to the production and reception of cultural texts. Ranging in time from the Renaissance to the era of digital publishing, the essays invite us to reconsider the influential theories of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu for our understanding of writers such as Philip Sidney, Thomas Hardy, Laura Riding, W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, and J.M. Coetzee. Shedding new light on authority’s complex role in the generation of cultural meaning, the essays will be of interest to students and teachers of literary history and critical theory alike.

Theories of authorship and material culture provide the framework for this study. It maps Anglo-American authorship as it shifts from a theoretical to a more material approach to its study in contexts recognized as key to its development: the nineteenth-century literary market-place, twentieth-century experimentalism and postmodern culture.

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published "The need for a theory of citing" —a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact.