[Sighfis-l] SIGCIS Workshop 2012 - CFP

[Andrew Russell]

Greetings - Please see below for the abbreviated Call for Papers for the 2012 Workshop of the Society for the History of Technology's Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society.

Please contact me with any questions, and be sure to visit the full CFP at http://www.sigcis.org/workshop12.

Thanks!

Andy Russell

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CALL FOR PAPERS
SIGCIS Workshop 2012
Information Identities: Historical Perspectives on Technological and Social Change

For the latest updates and the full Call for Papers, see http://www.sigcis.org/workshop12.  

DEADLINE for submissions: 15 June 2012

The Society for the History of Technology's Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS – http://www.sigcis.org) welcomes submissions for a one-day scholarly workshop to be held on Sunday, October 7, 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  As in previous years, SIGCIS’s annual workshop will be held at the end of the SHOT annual meeting on the day that SHOT has reserved for SIG events. For more information on the main SHOT program, see http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual_meeting.html.

SIGCIS invites proposals that examine the relationships between computer and information technologies and changes to individual and/or group identities, such as those shared by a nation, company personnel, or members of a virtual community. Such papers might consider:

* Specific “information identities”—a term that we invite scholars to interpret broadly and creatively—that have been articulated in the recent or distant past
* Relationships between information technologies and political change
* The rhetoric and discourses of globalization that have been linked to information and computer technologies
* National identity and its relation to information technology
* National and transnational strategies for joining or creating an “information society,” a “network society,” an “information economy,” or related concepts
* Transnational and international organizations, such as IFIP, UNESCO, the European Union, or standard-setting committees.
* Ways in which particular information technologies acquired new meanings and fulfilled new roles through interaction with local practices and identities
* The emergence of new kinds of community and identity around information technologies.

SIGCIS encourages submissions along these and similar lines of inquiry, but it also maintains a proud tradition of welcoming all types of contributions related to the history of computing and information, whether or not there is an explicit connection with the annual theme.  Our membership is international and interdisciplinary, and our members examine the history of information technologies and their place within society. 

Proposals for entire sessions and individual presenters are both welcome. We hope to run special sessions featuring dissertations in progress and other works in progress. The workshop is a great opportunity to get helpful feedback on your projects in a relaxed and supportive environment. All proposals will be subject to a peer review process based on abstracts.

All submissions should be made online via the SIGCIS website, http://www.sigcis.org/workshop12.  Limited travel assistance for graduate students and other scholars without institutional support is available.  Questions about the 2012 SIGCIS workshop should be addressed to Andrew Russell (College of Arts & Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology), who is serving as chair of the workshop program committee. Email arussell at stevens.edu.