Violet Spurlock

Violet Spurlock is a PhD student in the Department of English, with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. Her dissertation research examines discourses of obviousness in literature and literary criticism alongside the development of the non-obviousness requirement in US patent law, positing a connection between the aesthetic category of obviousness and legal categories of intellectual property. Expanding on legal arguments about the unique eligibility of non-obvious ideas to serve as intellectual property, her research argues that critics' aesthetic judgments of non-obviousness construct extralegal forms of intellectual property for certain authors who are held to have ownership over not merely their texts, but the signature style with which they write (a property claim informally recognized in expressions like 'Steinian'). Her research also proposes a reconsideration of the aesthetic elements informing legal notions of intellectual property and obviousness in the history of patent law. Her critical essays are published or forthcoming in Chicago Review, Post45 Contemporaries, Qui Parle, and elsewhere. Additionally, she is a poet. Her first book, In Lieu of Solutions, was the recipient of the Other Futures Award, and her second book, This Reasonable Habit (co-written with Rainer Diana Hamilton) is forthcoming in Fall 2025.