WITH Travel Award 2010

WITH TRAVEL AWARD – A Call for “New Voices” in Technological History

The SHOT Special Interest Group Women in Technological History [WITH] announces its travel award for 2010. The purpose of the award is to encourage participation of “new voices” at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology [SHOT]. WITH invites applications from scholars presenting topics or perspectives underrepresented in SHOT as well as from individuals who can contribute to the annual meeting’s geographic and cultural diversity.

The 2010 SHOT meeting will be held in Tacoma, Washington, September 30-October 3, 2010. See http://historyoftechnology.org.

Eligibility for the WITH Travel Award is open to individuals who are giving a paper at the SHOT annual meeting. Priorities for the WITH award will go to: (1) a scholar or graduate student new to SHOT belonging to a group underrepresented in SHOT, whose paper addresses issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and/or difference in the history of technology; (2) a non-US, non-Western graduate student or scholar new to SHOT presenting on any topic.

Up to two awards will be made.  Awardees will receive a check for $300, with the possibility of additional funds depending on the awardee’s stated need and WITH’s resources.

The winner(s) will also be honoured as our guest(s) at the annual WITH breakfast or lunch.  Application deadline for the WITH Travel Award is June 15, 2010. For more information and the application form, go to the WITH homepage at http://www.women-in-technological-history.net/ or contact Arwen Mohun, chair of the award committee, at Mohun@udel.edu.

Download the Announcement and Application:

2010 WITH Announcement (pdf) (doc)

2010 WITH Travel Award Application (pdf) (doc)

Article by WITH member Dobres in Technology Special Issue, Cambridge Journal of Economics

WITH:

Here’s an online set of articles (until Feb 19) about technology. Some nice summary work by Dobres, Ingold, Bijker, and for gender and technology, Wajcman. It is interesting that there is no overview about history of technology–even Wacjman who knows something of the field said nothing. It suggests there is need to make history more visible in this ahistorical time. I also think we need to work on the theory side of things (such as the “big picture history” I’ve been interested in).

kathleen ochs

***********************

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I wanted to let you know that I have a newly published article, “Archaeologies of Technology,” published by the Cambridge Journal of Economics. It is available for free download (until February 19, 2010) at: http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/current.dtl.  I welcome your feedback (gulp!).

peace,

marcia-anne

========================

Dr. Marcia-Anne Dobres
Faculty Associate
Department of Anthropology
University of Maine, Orono

Archives of Women in Science and Engineering at Iowa State University

WITH member Autumn Stanley’s research collection is now online at the Iowa State University Special Collections. The Archives of Women in Science and Engineering seeks to preserve the historical heritage of American women in science and engineering. To do this, the Archives solicits, collects, arranges, and describes the personal papers of women scientists and engineers as well as the records of national and regional women’s organizations in these fields.

http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/wise/wise.html

CFP: Berkshire Conference on Women’s History

CALL FOR PAPERS

“GENERATIONS:  Exploring Race, Sexuality, and Labor across Time and Space”

June 9-12, 2011, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Proposals due March 1, 2010

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is holding its next
conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12,
2011. 2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on Women’s History and
the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first
celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now
honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of
“Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and
organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related
questions such as:

• How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?
• What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?
• Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to reinscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?
• What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?

To engender further, open-ended engagement with these and other
issues, the 2011 conference will include workshops dedicated to
discussing precirculated papers on questions and problems
(epistemological, methodological, substantive) provoked by the notion
of “Generations.”

The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed
substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions
carefully.  To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be
principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and
therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of
scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than
geographic, field.  All proposals must be directed to ONE of the
following subcommittees and should be submitted electronically.
Please list a second choice for the subcommittee to vet your proposal
but do not submit to more than one subcommittee.  Instructions for
submission will be posted on the Berkshire Conference website (www.berksconference.org) by November 1, 2009.

Preference will be given to discussions of any
topic across national boundaries and to work that addresses sexuality,
race, and labor in any context, with special consideration for pre-
modern (ancient, medieval, early modern) periods.  However, unattached
papers and proposals that fall within a single nation/region will also
be given full consideration.  As a forum dedicated to encouraging
innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and transnational
conversation, the Berkshire conference continues to encourage
submissions from graduate students, international scholars,
independent scholars, filmmakers, and to welcome a variety of
disciplinary perspectives.  Paper abstracts should be no longer than
250 words; panel (2-3 papers and a comment), roundtable (3 or more
short papers) and workshop (1-2 precirculated papers) proposals should
also include a summary abstract of no more than 500 words.  Each
submission must include the cover form and a short cv for each
presenter. If you have questions about the most appropriate
subcommittee for your proposal or problems with electronic submission,
please direct them to Jennifer Spear (jms25@sfu.ca).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1, 2010.

*Beauty and the Body, Stephanie Camp

*Migrations : race, gender and activism, Annelise Orleck

*Economies, Labors, and Consumption, Tracey Deutsch

War, Violence, and Terror, Madhavi Kale

Youth and Aging, Jennifer Spear

*Race in Global Perspective, Marilyn Lake

*Health and Medicine, Julie Livingston

*Sexuality, Kathy Brown

Religion: belief, practice, communities, Madhavi Kale

Politics and the State, Margot Canaday

Call for Papers: WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly)

Special Issue: SAFE
Guest Editors:  Alyson M. Cole and Kyoo Lee

Bubble wrap, sanitizer, helmets, knee pads, H1N1 vaccines, mammograms,
protective goggles, preemptive strikes, the Patriot Act,
car/fire/health/home/laptop/life/renters’/travel insurance, condoms,
sunscreen, car seats, airbags, pensions, life vests, organic food, safe
drinking water, safe streets… Our lives are filled with devices,
organizations, and agreements to keep our bodies, loved ones, and belongings
“safe.” These practices appease our fears, but what does it mean to be or to
feel safe? Is safety synonymous with security, stability or stasis? Is it a
condition, or the negation of threat, risk and danger? Can we ever be truly
safe? If not, why does it endure as an ideal?

For some, safety is a condition of living, as in “better safe than sorry”;
for others, safe signals the refusal of life itself, as in the Nietzschean
revision of the Socratic ideal of examined life, “an unexplored life is not
worth living.” What are the aesthetics, metaphysics and metaphorics of the
dynamic multivalency of safe? Is safe a place (“safe house,” “safe box”), a
moment (“safe and sound”), a practice/norm (“safe sex”), a feeling, a
cognitive state, a number/figure (“savings”), a status (“sauf”: “save” as in
“exception”) or a visible logos (“saved document”)? What sort of politics
does the ambition to be safe entail? In what ways is safe imbricated with
class, race, sexuality and gender? Can we feel safe without restricting
ourselves to a prophylactic existence?

This special issue of WSQ invites work that will contribute to an
exploration of safety and security, broadly conceived. We welcome academic
papers from a variety of disciplinary approaches including theory, empirical
research, literary and cultural studies, as well as creative prose, poetry,
artwork, memoir and biography.  Suggested topics may include but are not
limited to:

- Bioethics, biopolitics
- Children, childhood, family and safety
- Crisis and resolution, memory
- Discipline; docility; drill; habit-formation
- Domestic space, domestic violence, haven, home, shelter, retreat,
refugees
- The politics of food safety
- Geography and mapping, enclosures/prisons, harbors and asylums
- Security state, homeland security, environmental security, job security
- Illnesses, epidemics, preventions, screenings, health risks, health
care
- Otherness, ethnicized and marginalized populations, borders and
enclosures
- Risk society, theories of risk, technology, prediction
- Sex, pain, pleasure and risk
- Terror and/of terrorism, war & trauma, treaty and alliance, recovery

If submitting academic work, please send articles by March 15, 2010 to the
guest editors, Alyson M. Cole and Kyoo Lee at WSQSafeIssue@gmail.com.
Submission should not exceed 20 double spaced, 12 point font pages.

Poetry submissions should be sent to WSQ’s poetry editor, Kathleen Ossip, at
WSQpoetry@gmail.com by March 15, 2010.  Please review previous issues of WSQ
to see what type of submissions we prefer before submitting poems. Please
note that poetry submissions may be held for six months or longer.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the poetry editor is notified
immediately of acceptance elsewhere. We do not accept work that has been
previously published. Please paste poetry submissions into the body of the
e-mail along with all contact information.

Fiction, essay, and memoir submissions should be sent to WSQ’s
fiction/nonfiction editor, Jocelyn Lieu, at WSQCreativeProse@gmail.com by
March 15, 2010. Please review previous issues of WSQ to see what type of
submissions we prefer before submitting prose. Please note that prose
submissions may be held for six months or longer. Simultaneous submissions
are acceptable if the prose editor is notified immediately of acceptance
elsewhere. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Please
provide all contact information in the body of the e-mail.

Art submissions should be sent to the guest editors, Alyson M. Cole and Kyoo
Lee, at WSQSafeIssue@gmail.com by March 15, 2010. After art is reviewed and
accepted, accepted art must be sent to the journal’s managing editor on a CD
that includes all artwork of 300 DPI or greater, saved as 4.25 inches wide
or larger. These files should be saved as individual JPEGS or TIFFS.

–
Zoe Meleo-Erwin
Administrative Associate
WSQ
at the Feminist Press
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY  10016
212.817.7926
www.feministpress.org/wsq

“Gender and Career Perspectives in the History of Technology:” a WITH panel discussion

WITH PANEL DISCUSSION, PITTSBURGH SHOT MEETING 2009

“Gender and Career Perspectives in the History of Technology”

MODERATOR: Molly Berger, Case Western Reserve University

PARTICIPANTS:
Ruth Cowan, University of Pennsylvania
Rebecca Herzig, Bates College
Amy Slaton, Drexel University
Min Suh Son, Johns Hopkins University
Nina Wormbs, Royal Institute of Stockholm

This panel addresses what it means to be a woman in the history
of technology. It invites especially students and young scholars to
raise questions about the past and present role of gender in our
profession, such as: What experiences have women and men had
in our field? Have they been able to mobilize their gender to their
advantage, and how? Or have they seen dangers of being pigeonholed,
for example when choosing gendered research topics? What role does
gender play for historians of technology working in different institutional
contexts today? Are there certain niches in which being a woman or
working on gender is of advantage, particularly in the current economic
environment? The panel seeks to open an inter-generational dialogue
to explore career perspectives in the history of technology.

Ruth noted that there are times in academia and in the history of technology
when she doesn’t see gender any more.

Amy suggested that we can still use gender as a lens on other categories
of difference, such as race, and that it remains important to think about
how we bring our own identity into our work.

Nina added that it may be different at different times, whether we bring
women in as our primary identity, reflecting factors such as career path.

Min Suh also noted other factors such as racial stereotypes affecting
identity and others’ perceptions.

Rebecca commented that historians of technology confronting the issue
of technological determinism may have interesting angles as parallel to
scholars of women’s studies confronting the issue of biological determinism.

The panel went on to discuss issues of age, disability, class, and race,
and ways that WITH might adapt its identity and activities in future to
reflect a broader inclusiveness (identity, diversity) and remain intellectually
and socially relevant for a wide range of SHOT members. Specific
enthusiasm was expressed  for some kind of future WITH sponsored panel
on biological determinism and its parallels with technological determinism.
Rebecca and Nina agreed to  lead some work on writing a WITH
mission statement.

yours, amy bix