I’m working on a paper that is required to devote a hefty portion to methodology, which isn’t an easy task for an authorship studies person. So far, I’ve found it most expedient to define the field by what it’s not:

My subfield, authorship studies, is a hybrid that falls in between several larger disciplinary and methodological schools. It studies the historical production of texts and texts themselves, but it is not book history, historicism, or textual criticism. It considers economic and political factors that influence the production of texts and the varied ways we conceive of the Author, but it is not economics, political science, or cultural criticism. It relies heavily on copyright law and legal theory related to textual ownership, but it is not legal criticism or pure law scholarship. It delves into reader response theory and collaborative process issues, but it is not psychology or sociology. It examines issues of responsibility and liability, but it is not ethics. Rather, it is the careful application of one or more of these factors as they relate to authorship to a specific textual site, whether it be Quintillian’s Institutio Oratoria, problems of student plagiarism, or networked texts such as Wikipedia. Practitioners generally specialize in one particular area of analysis.

I’ve run it past a couple of authorship geeks I trust and they seem to think it flies. Sometimes I look at it and think it works, and sometimes just the opposite. Comments and suggestions are welcome.