Characters before Copyright: The Rise and Regulation of Fan Fiction in Eighteenth-Century Germany, published by Oxford University Press, was selected from a shortlist of seven excellent academic monographs as the winner of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies prize for the best first book published in 2019. Congratulations Professor Birkhold!

The prize includes a cash award of CAD $3,000. 

Birkhold’s intriguing investigation of 18th-century German book and literary culture earned the admiration of the award jury. The originality of Birkhold’s “new approach to forgotten, neglected, overlooked material . . . . recovers a thriving literary culture and sees it has doing something really important: debating and creating new norms around what constitutes ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ use.” The jurors thought this “superb” and “brilliant” book also deserved recognition for its ability to make “connections to today’s copyright questions such as Star Wars and Harry Potter.”  

Matthew H. Birkhold is Associate Professor of German at The Ohio State University where he is also Affiliated Faculty in the Moritz College of Law. 

The Waterloo Centre for German Studies takes great pride in sponsoring an award that celebrates the dynamic and engaging scholarship occurring in all fields of German Studies.