Call for Papers

Giants and Dwarfs in Science, Technology and Medicine

48th Symposium of ICOHTEC in Prague, Czech Republic, 25 – 31 July 2021

(this call in two-page PDF)

THE CALL IS CLOSED

The International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) will hold its 48th symposium as part of the 26th International Congress of the History of Science and Technology (ICHST) in Prague, Czech Republic, 25 – 31 July 2021 https://www.ichst2021.org/. Congress organizers require our programme by April 30, 2020, therefore proposals are due by March 1, 2020. Please go to http://www.icohtec.org/w-annual-meeting/prague-2021/  to submit proposals. Details below.

The general theme of the Congress is “Giants and Dwarfs in Science, Technology and Medicine” and ICOHTEC encourages proposals for sessions dealing with the history of technology within this broad framework. We offer the following sub-themes for the consideration of session organizers and individual contributors, and welcome proposals on other topics related to the general Congress theme within the broadly defined discipline of history of technology.

  1. Gender and Technological Systems
  2. Class, Poverty, and Technology
  3. Technology Usage by Minorities and Small States in a Global World
  4. Migration and Transportation
  5. Maintaining Technological Systems, Large and Small
  6. Politics, Protest, and Big Technology
  7. Technological Teams
  8. Global Military Technologies and Societies
  9. Art and Play – Technologies and Protest
  10. Environmental Change and Energy Systems
  11. Assistive Technologies and (Dis)ability Studies
  12. Sustainability and Economies of Scale
  13. Traditional Engineering and new IT Technologies
  14. Workers in Post-industrial Society
  15. Medical Technologies

We invite individual paper proposals and we urge contributors to organize full sessions or multiple related sessions of three papers each, with a named chair for each session. Session organizers should reflect diversity and, if possible, involve two organizers from different countries for each session. The programme committee encourages the organizers of sessions to announce their plans to compile sessions and communicate with potential collaborators through H-NET and other networks such as social media. ICOHTEC offers to publish an organizer’s call for an ICOHTEC session on our conference page http://www.icohtec.org/w-annual-meeting/prague-2021/. Calls concerning any topic of HoT are welcome. It is also possible to propose sessions unrelated to the general Congress theme.

We especially encourage graduate students and early career researchers to participate in the symposium and submit their proposals. Limited travel grants will be available.

SESSION proposals must include: (1) an abstract of the session (350 words maximum), listing the proposed papers (see individual paper proposal guidelines below), the organizers and the chairperson; (2) abstracts for each paper (250 words maximum); (3) a one-page CV (maximum) for each contributor and chairperson.

Sessions should consist of at least one set of presentations (90 minutes time slot) and they may include three or four papers in each, which might extend to a series of successive sections over more than one day. Each individual section should have a chairperson, and a commentator or reserved time for audience/speaker Q&A We also encourage proposing roundtables and other “new” as well as innovative, experimental session formats. Whatever the session format will be, organizers and chairs should to reserve enough time for general discussion between the presenters and audience.

INDIVIDUAL PAPER abstracts (250 words maximum) must include the author’s name and email address, a short informative title of the paper, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of expected conclusions. In preparing your paper, remember that presentations are not full-length articles. You will have no more than 15-20 minutes speaking time, which is roughly equivalent to 6-8 double-spaced typed pages. Contributors are encouraged to submit full-length versions of their papers after the congress for consideration by ICOHTEC’s journal ICON.  If you are submitting an independent paper proposal dealing with a particular sub-theme, please indicate this in your proposal.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Submit all session and individual paper proposals to:  http://www.icohtec.org/w-annual-meeting/prague-2021/. The final deadline for all submissions is Monday 1 March 2020. Please pay close attention to the instructions, particularly the word length of submitted documents.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

Susan Schmidt Horning, Chair (USA)
Florian Bettel (Austria)
Roberto Cantoni (Spain)
Jiri Janac (Czech Republic)
Fanxiang Min (China)
Peeter Müürsepp (Estonia)
Jan Musekamp (USA)
Jaroslav Svelach (Czech Republic)
Ewelina Twardoch (Poland)
Ruth Schwartz Cowan (USA)