Faculty Profiles

Rosemary Coombe

Media and Culture/ Politics and Policy

University		York University
E-Mail Address		rcoombe@yorku.ca
Phone Number		416-736-2100; ext 30157
Office Location		TEL Building, 2017
Office Hours		TBA
Website		http://www.yorku.ca/rcoombe

Education

B.A. (Western); LL.B. (Western); LL.M. (Stanford); J.S.D. (Stanford)

Biography

Rosemary Coombe was awarded York University's first Senior Canada Research Chair in 2001 where she became a full professor in the Faculty of Arts (with a cross appointment to the Faculty of Law, School of Graduate Studies). Before assuming the position of Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Culture, she was Full Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. She is the author of a major study of intellectual property and has written articles in legal and political theory, cultural anthropology and cultural studies.

Research Interests

Intellectual property, indigenous peoples, cultural and biological diversity, publics, public domains and public sphere, human rights, cultural rights, postcolonial theory, theories of information, civil society, transnationalism, neoliberalism, informational capital.

Research Projects:
An open-source arts content management system for a Canadian cultural archive called ARTMOB with an accompanying Centre for Digital and Cultural Rights Policy Initiatives, working on a seven year MCRI-funded project called Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage, writing a book titled INFORMATION CAPITAL AND THE WORK OF CULTURE. Designing a project on emerging legal geographies of cultural rights.

Selected Publications

2009 “A Broken Record: Subjecting ‘Music’ to Cultural Rights,” (with Elizabeth B. Coleman and Fiona MacAlrault) in James C. Young and Conrad Brunck, eds., Ethics of Cultural Appropriation (forthcoming, Blackwell Publishers).

2008 “First Nations’ Intangible Cultural Heritage Concerns: Prospects for Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions in International Law.” In Catherine Bell & Robert Patterson, eds., Protection of First Nations’ Cultural Heritage: Laws, Policy and Reform (Vancouver:University of British Columbia Press) 313-362.

2006 “Your Second Life? The Performativity of Intellectual Property in Online Games” (with Andrew Herman and Lewis Kaye). Cultural Studies 20 (2&3): 184-210.

2005 “Legal Claims to Culture in and Against the Market: Neoliberalism and the Global Proliferation of Meaningful Difference” Law, Culture and Humanities 1(1): 32-55. Reprinted in Eve Darian-Smith, ed., Ethnography and Law (a volume in the International Library of Essays in Law and Society, Aldershott: Ashgate Publishing, 2007) 95-115.

2005 “Bearing Cultural Distinction: Informational Capital and New Expectations for Intellectual Property” (with Steven Schnoor and Mohsen al atar Ahmed). In J. Brinkhof and F. Willem Grosheide, eds., Articles in Intellectual Property: Crossing Boundaries (Antwerp: Intersentia) 191-211. Reprinted in “Intellectual Property and Social Justice” Symposium Issue. University of California-Davis Law Review 40(3): 891-917 (2007).

Link to Personal Website: http://www.yorku.ca/rcoombe

By Field of Study

Alphabetical

Lorraine Janzen-Kooistra
Jennifer Jenson

Wendy Wong

Harold [Innis] taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias, or distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.

~ Marshall McLuhan

Graduate Program in Communication & Culture