Category: News

CFP: Quality versus Quantity: Competing Visions of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Life

The Agricultural History Society Annual Conference Springfield, Illinois, June 15-18, 2011

Deadline for Submissions, October 1, 2010

Contemporary debates about food, agriculture, and rural life are often framed in opposition with little attention to historical context. Proponents of the local, slow, and organic often emphasize quality while advocates of the global, fast, and industrial stress quantity to satisfy world demand for food. The Agricultural History Society invites proposals for papers that engage or transcend these debates by examining questions about quality and quantity as they relate to food, farming, and/or rural life from a historical perspective. We especially welcome submissions that counter or reframe the accepted narratives of the field. Topics from any time period and location are welcome. Continue reading →

Envirotech book wins ASEH Marsh Prize

Timothy J. LeCain’s Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet won the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the ASEH because it is gutsy, eloquently written and narrated, and carefully argued. It is a fine example of “envirotech” scholarship, a sub-field within environmental history concerned with the intersection of technological systems and their inventors, the science that underscores those systems, the environments that comprise or fuel those systems and, more often than not, the landscapes that are utterly destroyed by them. Continue reading →

CFP: Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) 2010

2010 Annual Meeting – Tacoma, Washington

Deadline: 31 March 2010

The Society for the History of Technology will hold its annual meeting in Tacoma, Washington from September 30 to October 3, 2010. The Program Committee invites paper and panel proposals on any topic in the history of technology, broadly defined. Sessions dealing with non-Western technologies are particularly welcome. Of special interest for 2010 are proposals that engage in themes that resonate with the concerns of the specific locale. These include: Continue reading →

Tim LeCain’s book chosen as “Outstanding Academic Title for 2009”

Timothy LeCain’s new envirotech book, Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet (Rutgers University Press, 2009), has been chosen as an “Outstanding Academic Title for 2009” by Choice, the review journal of the American Library Association. Every year in the January issue, in print and online, Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best of the more than 7,000 scholarly titles reviewed by Choice that year and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community. Mass Destruction, the Choice review notes, is a “skillfully and eloquently written” work whose “clarity and reason . . . should appeal to a wide audience.” More information and all the latest reviews of Mass Destruction are available at the author’s website: http://www.timothyjameslecain.com/

CFP Reminder: Reusing the Industrial Past – ICOHTEC/TICCIH Joint Conference 2010

ICOHTEC & TICCIH Joint Conference 2010

Reusing the Industrial Past
Tampere, Finland
10–15 August 2010

A Joint Conference between the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) and The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). The International Association of the Labour Museums (WORKLAB) is a minor partner in the conference.

Deadline for Proposals is 16 November 2009.
Continue reading →

New exhibit – Edward Burtynsky: Oil

Rebecca Pinkus sent the following message:

Canadian industrial landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky’s newest project, “Oil” has recently opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, along with several related gallery shows in Amsterdam, New York, and Toronto. The Corcoran exhibit is on through mid-December, after which it will travel through 2011.

I was privileged to work as a Research Associate on this project for the past three years, and attended the exhibit opening in early October: the exhibit is fantastically curated and is a must-see for all envirotechies. It should be required viewing for just about everyone everywhere. The book (tome) that accompanies the exhibit is also worth examining if you can get hold of it. Dr. William Rees (University of British Columbia, and coiner of the term “ecological footprint”) has presented a thought-provoking essay on our relationship with oil, and Michael Mitchell (Canadian author and filmmaker) has supplied some great essays on the historical and social elements of the various “chapters” in Burtynsky’s project.

For those of you unable to make the trek to see the exhibit, you can find many of the images on Burtynsky’s site under “Galleries” or by checking the second Corcoran link listed below.

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

http://www.corcoran.org/burtynsky/index.php – this link will give you the exhibit images: http://www.corcoran.org/exhibitions/press%5Fburtynsky/

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/10/03/burtynsky-oil-corcoran.html

2010 ICOHTEC Prize for Young Scholars

The ICOHTEC-Prize is sponsored by the Juanelo Turriano Foundation and consists of 3,000 Euro. ICOHTEC, the International Committee for the History of Technology, is interested in the history of technology focusing on technological development as well as its relationship to science, society, economy, culture and the environment. The history of technology covers all periods of human history and all populated areas. There is no limitation as to theoretical or methodological approaches.

Eligible for the prize are original works in any of the official ICOHTEC languages (English, French, German, Russian or Spanish) in the history of technology (published or unpublished Ph.D. theses or other monographs — no articles or edited anthologies) written by scholars who, when applying for the prize, are not older than 37 years of age.

For the ICOHTEC Prize 2010, please send a copy of the work you wish to be con­sidered for the prize plus a 4500-word English summary of that work to each of the three Prize Committee members.  Your submissions must be postmarked not later than by 22 January 2010.

If the work is a PhD thesis, it should have been accepted by your university in 2008 or 2009; if it is a published work, the year of publication should be 2008 or 2009. The submission should be accompanied by a CV and, if applicable, a list of publications. Applicants are free to add references or reviews on the work submitted. Send a complete application by regular mail services (not electronically) to each of the following Prize Committee members:

Thomas Kaiserfeld, Prize Committee Chairperson (Email: thomas@kth.se)
Department of History of Science and Technology
Royal Institute of Technology
S-100 44 Stockholm
Sweden

Rebecca Herzig (Email: rherzig@bates.edu)
Program in Women and Gender Studies
209 Pettengill Hall
Bates College
Lewiston ME 04240
USA

Dick van Lente (Email: vanlente@fhk.eur.nl)
Prinses Margrietlaan 7
3051 AM Rotterdam
The Netherlands