TBA
The History of Technology Working Group meets monthly to discuss a colleague’s works-in-progress or to discuss readings that are of particular interest to participants.
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Upcoming Meetings
Tuesday, January 28, 2025, 1:00 - 2:30 pm EST
Tuesday, February 25, 2025, 1:00 - 2:30 pm EST
TBA
Tuesday, March 25, 2025, 1:00 - 2:30 pm EDT
Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California
"A Modest Proposal for a 4-Criteria Canon"
Abstract: Instead of questioning whether the history of technology has a canon, I inquire about what characteristics a history of technology canon should possess. A canon typically refers to a set of key characteristics or criteria that define a particular standard or body of work. In this specific case, it means a conception of what history of technology is and ought to be, and of what historians of technology do and should do. I suggest 4 criteria to define a canon of history of technology: (1) a series of canonical authors; (2) a way or style of arguing and writing; (3) a way of relating history of technology to the extra-historical, that is, technology, science, culture generally intended (literature, cinema, art), the public sphere (politics, and public debate); (4) a way of conceiving the historical practice. The four key characteristics are not listed in order of importance. In my presentation, I will provide details on each of these four characteristics and argue that the history of technology may encompass multiple canons, each grounded in distinct methodological approaches and metahistorical perspectives. The proposed paper is the preliminary version of the first chapter of a book on historiography of technology. I hope to discuss the 4-criteria canon and receive as much feedback as I can.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025, 1:00 - 2:30 pm EDT
TBA
Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 1:00 - 2:30 pm EDT
TBA
Past Meetings
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Jaipreet Virdi, University of Delaware, "Dorothy Brett's 'Ear Machines': Disability, Technology and Representation"
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Tech Working Group will not meet on October 15, due to the upcoming international SHOT conference
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What is the history of technology and who gets to decide?
The group will discuss Eric Schatzberg's conclusion and manifesto from his Technology: Critical History of a Concept, and Jennifer Lieberman's essay "Finding a Place for Technology."
Benjamin Twagira, Emory University, paper title "'We Are What What We Know': Radio, Rumor, Identity and Politics in Militarized Kampala"
Meredith Sattler, Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, "Knowledge Space Eco-Technics: Designing Life-Forms and Life Ways at Biosphere 2, 1974-1994"
Whitney Laemmli, Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities, "The Lilt in Labour: Movement, Efficiency, and Pleasure in Mid-Century British Industry"
James Esposito, Ohio State University, "The Airplane as Breathing Machine: Aviation Medicine and Human Experimentation at the Royal Air Force Physiological Laboratory 1939-1954"
We will be reading Lee Vinsel and Andy Russell's Technology and Culture article "After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance." Jennifer Alexander will share some thoughts to share some thoughts to start the conversation.
Peter Sachs Collopy, Caltech Archives, "When Computer Animation was Analog: Scanimation Outside the Digital Paradigm"
NOTE SPECIAL DATE
Yuan Yi, Columbia University, "Custom-Made Machines in the Era of Mass Production" (dissertation chapter)
Alicia Maggard, Brown University, presenting "Pacific Mail, Industrial Empire:
Steam Infrastructure and U.S. Power", a chapter from her dissertation.
Edward Jones-Imhotep, York University, presenting "The Image of Work: Charting Human and Machine Failures at the Dawn of the Jazz Age," a chapter from his book project Reliable Humans, Trustworthy Machines.
Philip Scranton, Rutgers University, discussed his current project, A Business History of Communism: Enterprise and Experiment in China, 1950-71.
Christopher Otter, Ohio State, presented an excerpt from his book-in-progress "Diet for a Large Planet: Food Systems, World-Ecology and the Making of Industrialized Britain."
Note Special Day
Greg Eghigian (Penn State and co-convener of CHSTM's Human Sciences group) presented on UFOs in post-World War II culture.
Note Special Day
Katie Boyce-Jacino (Johns Hopkins) presented on planetariums in Weimar Germany
Phil Tiemeyer (Kansas State) shared from his book manuscript, Aerial Ambassadors: National Airlines and US Power in the Jet Age, the chapter "The “Love Bird” Takes Flight: Independence, Neo-¬Imperialism, and the Founding of Air Jamaica, 1960-¬1977."
Matt Wisnioski, Virginia Tech, "Big Bird and the Artificial Kidney," presented a chapter from his book in-progress Every American an Innovator
Amy Slaton, Drexel University, presented "Knowable Selves in a Knowable World," a chapter from her book in-progress All Good People: Diversity, Difference and Opportunity in High-Tech America
Steven Harris, University of Mary Washington, "A Soviet Anxiety of Influence: What Harold Bloom Can Tell Us about Aeroflot’s History of Technological Development”
Group Conveners
Jennifer Alexander
Jennifer Alexander is an Associate Professor of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, with specialization in technology and religion; industrial culture; and engineering, ethics, and society. Her publications include The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Her current project is a book manuscript analyzing the international religious critique of technology that developed following WWII. She asks how religious and theological interpretations of technology have changed over time; how, over time, technologies and engineering have extended their reach into the human world over time through a developing technological orthodoxy; and how these changes have affected each other.
Benjamin Gross
Benjamin Gross is Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. He is responsible for managing the Library’s scholarly outreach initiatives, including its fellowship program. Before relocating to the Midwest in 2016, he was a research fellow at the Science History Institute and consulting curator of the Sarnoff Collection at the College of New Jersey. His book, The TVs of Tomorrow: How RCA’s Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs, was published in 2018 by the University of Chicago Press.
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