“Gray and Johnson have brought together a stellar group of authors whose works deftly explicate the complexities of negotiating ‘authorship’ across a range of cultural production sites. This definitive collection is an important and long-overdue contribution to contemporary media studies.”
Serra Tinic, author of On Location: Canada’s Television Industry in a Global Market

“Wide-ranging and global, historical and contemporary, brimming with insights enlarging our understanding of media production and reception, this book is an important contribution to the study of authorship.”
Michael Z. Newman, author of Indie: An American Film Culture

While the idea of authorship has transcended the literary to play a meaningful role in the cultures of film, television, games, comics, and other emerging digital forms, our understanding of it is still too often limited to assumptions about solitary geniuses and individual creative expression. A Companion to Media Authorship is a ground-breaking collection that reframes media authorship as a question of culture in which authorship is as much a construction tied to authority and power as it is a constructive and creative force of its own.

Gathering together the insights of leading media scholars and practitioners, 28 original chapters map the field of authorship in a cutting-edge, multi-perspective, and truly authoritative manner. The contributors develop new and innovative ways of thinking about the practices, attributions, and meanings of authorship. They situate and examine authorship within collaborative models of industrial production, socially networked media platforms, globally diverse traditions of creativity, complex consumption practices, and a host of institutional and social contexts. Together, the essays provide the definitive study on the subject by demonstrating that authorship is a field in which media culture can be transformed, revitalized, and reimagined.

Jonathan Gray is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is author of Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (2006), Television Entertainment (2008), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010), and Television Studies (with Amanda Lotz, 2012). He is co-editor of amongst others, Battleground: The Media (with Robin Andersen, 2008), and Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era (with Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson, 2009).

Derek Johnson is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison.  His research focuses on production cultures and creative identities in the media industries. He is the author of Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries (2013), as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Intermediaries: Management of Culture and Cultures of Management (with Avi Santo and Derek Kompare, 2014).

1. Introduction: The Problem of Media Authorship (Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson)

I. Theorizing and Historicizing Authorship

2. Authorship and the Narrative of the Self (John Hartley)

3. The Return of the Author: Ethos and Identity Politics (Kristina Busse)

4. Making Music: Copyright Law and Creative Process (Olufunmilayo B. Arewa)

5. When is the Author? (Jonathan Gray)

6. Hidden Hands At Work: Authorship, the Intentional Flux, and the Dynamics of Collaboration (Colin Burnett)

II. Contesting Authorship

7. Participation is Magic: Collaboration, Authorial Legitimacy, and the Audience Function (Derek Johnson)

8. Telling Whose Stories? Reexamining Author Agency in Self-Representational Media in the Slums of Nairobi (Brian Ekdale)

9. Never Ending Story: Authorship, Seriality, and the Radio Writers Guild (Michele Hilmes)

10. From Chris Chibnall to Fox: Torchwood's Marginalized Authors and Counter-Discourses of TV Authorship (Matt Hills)

11. Comics, Creators, and Copyright: On the Ownership of Serial Narratives by Multiple Authors (Ian Gordon)

III. Industrializing Authorship

12. Benny Hill Theatre: "Race," Commodification, and the Politics of Representation (Anamik Saha)

13. Cynical Authorship and the Hong Kong Studio System: Li Hanxiang and his Shaw Brothers Erotic Films (Stephen Teo)

14. The Authorial Function of the Television Channel: Augmentation and Identity (Catherine Johnson)

15. The Mouse House of Cards: Disney Tween Stars and Questions of Institutional Authorship (Lindsay Hogan)

16. Transmedia Architectures of Creation: An Interview with Ivan Askwith (Jonathan Gray)

17. Dubbing the Noise: Square Enix and Corporate Creation of Videogames (Mia Consalvo)

IV. Expanding Authorship

18. Authorship Below-The-Line (John T. Caldwell)

19. Production Design and the Invisible Arts of Seeing (David Brisbin)

20. Scoring Authorship: An Interview with Bear McCreary (Derek Johnson)

21. Bowdown to Your New God: Misha Collins and Decentered Authorship in the Digital Age (Louisa Stein)

22. Collaboration and Co-Creation in Networked Environments: An Interview with Molly Wright Steenson (Megan Sapnar Ankerson)

23. Dawn of the Undead Author: Fanboy Auteurism and Zack Snyder’s "Vision" (Suzanne Scott)

V. Relocating Authorship

24. Authoring Hype in Bollywood (Aswin Punathambekar)

25. Auteurs at the Video Store (Daniel Herbert)

26. Authorship and the State: Narcocorridos in Mexico and the New Aesthetics of Nation (Hector Amaya)

27. Scripting Kinshasa’s Teleserials: Reflections on Authorship, Creativity, and Ownership (Katrien Pype)

28. "We Never Do Anything Alone": An Interview on Academic Authorship with Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson)