The SHOT Program Committee is pleased to issue the Call for Papers and Sessions for the SHOT 2018 Annual Meeting to be held 11-14 October, 2018 in St. Louis, Missouri, US.
SHOT is an interdisciplinary and international organization concerned not only with the history of technological devices and processes but also with technology in history and society. We explore the production, circulation, appropriation, maintenance and abandonment of technology under specific historical circumstances. And we scrutinize the epistemic, economic, social, cultural and political conditions of this development. Our approaches are informed by a broad concept of technology encompassing knowledge resources, practices, artifacts and biofacts (artifacts in the realm of the living). Accordingly, the Committee invites paper and session proposals on any topic in a broadly defined history of technology, including topics that push the boundaries of the discipline.
SHOT is committed to a policy of diversity. In addition to intellectual quality, we warmly welcome proposals that reflect diversity in their line-up of speakers, in particular with regard to career level, gender, and geography. The Program Committee will prioritize proposals that make a conscious effort to increase diversity by fulfilling these criteria: for example, proposals that include at least one female speaker, and speakers at different stages of their professional careers, with different institutional affiliations and/or different nationalities.
To pay tribute to the venue of the 2018 annual meeting -St. Louis, the Gateway to the West- we want to encourage proposals that engage topics related to a broadly-interpreted theme of "Gateways: Passages, Openings, and Enclosures in the History of Technology."
St. Louis is uniquely situated in the United States, both geographically and historically. Known as "the Gateway to the West," St. Louis played key roles in the Louisiana Purchase and westward expansion. St. Louis remained a major transport and manufacturing center, where a rich agricultural hinterland, transformed by modern monoculture, connects with transportation links from river to road, rail, and air. This multi-dimensional story makes St. Louis a natural focus for scholarly analysis of the many ways technology impacts, and is impacted by, place, space, and culture. The pre-industrial, industrial, and postindustrial history of the region, from Native American Cahokia mounds to the African-American experience in suburban Ferguson, also suggests topics further analyzing technology, power, and democracy, race, gender, and ethnicity.
For the 2018 meeting the Program Committee welcomes proposals of three types:
Traditional sessions:
Sessions of 3 or 4 papers, with a chair and a commentator.
Deadline: March 31, 2018.
Unconventional sessions:
Sessions with formats that diverge in useful ways from the typical 3 or 4 papers with comment. These might include round-table sessions, workshop-style sessions with pre-circulated papers, and poster sessions (poster proposals should include a description of the content and the visual material they will use in the poster. Individuals whose posters are accepted must be available to talk about them in a lunch/evening slot to be decided by the program committee).
The Program Committee encourages other creative formats that could facilitate communication, dialogue and audience involvement. A variety of new presentation formats are appearing in the academic arena. This year we want to explore a new type of session at SHOT: “you write, I present.” Authors will submit a paper to the discussant in advance as usual, but it will be the paired discussant who presents for the author and comments on the paper, with authors on-site to respond to comments, take questions from the audience, and join overall discussions. This “flipped” presentation format is intended to facilitate clear paper writing and deep engagement between writer and reader. In this type of panel, one paper is usually paired with one presenter/discussant, or alternatively, the paper-givers can present and comment on one another’s papers in the same panel. Deadline: March 31, 2018.
Open sessions:
Individuals interested in finding others to join panel sessions may propose Open Sessions, starting January 31, with a final deadline of March 15. Open Sessions descriptions, along with organizer’s contact information, will appear as soon as possible on the SHOT website (the earlier the proposal is sent to SHOT, the earlier it will be posted to the website.) For individuals who want to join a proposed panel from the Open Sessions list, please contact the organizer for that panel, not the Program Committee. In order to give the session organizer sufficient time to select proposals and assemble the final panel, the deadline for submitting your paper proposal to the organizer is March 24, 2018. Open Session organizers will then assemble full panel sessions and submit them to SHOT by March 31, 2018.
Proposals for individual papers:
Proposals for individual papers will be considered, but the Program Committee in general will give preference to pre-organized sessions (traditional, unconventional, or open sessions). Those scholars who might ordinarily propose an individual paper are encouraged to propose Open Sessions themselves or to join an Open Session. Deadline: March 31, 2018.
***Please note: All pre-organized panels should include a chair and discussant(s) in their final proposal.
