[STS-Africa] Help shape agendas for the history of technology

[Gabrielle Hecht]

Dear Colleagues,

Some of my colleagues and I have been leading a grass-roots effort to encourage intellectual and administrative renewal within the Society for the History of Technology. These efforts are beginning to bear fruit; there is now a website which contains a variety of "think pieces." These pieces -- along with online responses to them -- will serve as a basis for intensive discussion at the upcoming SHOT meeting in Portland, Maine, USA, 10-13 October.

The next step is to get responses. Some SHOT leaders are skeptical that there will be any significant conversation generated online. I would like to prove them wrong! I am especially eager to make SHOT an interesting and worthwhile location for Africanist scholarship.

I know we're all insanely busy. Nevertheless, it would be so great if -- sometime before October 8/9 -- those of you committed to technology studies (regardless of discipline) could take even 30 minutes to go online, read a couple of the postings, and post a response to just one of them. Your response need not be long -- in fact, it's probably better if it's short, so as not to raise the stakes of participation.

Please do this even if -- indeed, especially if -- you're not attending the meeting.

Please also encourage your colleagues to do the same, either by forwarding this email or using it as a template for your own. If we can each manage a single response, and can persuade even 1-2 others to do the same, we can help shape not only this year's agenda, but (with any luck) SHOT activities for several years to come.

Again, the website is: http://shot-talk.org/?page_id=30

Thanks so much!
Gabrielle

Gabrielle Hecht
Professor of History, University of Michigan
Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Associate Director, African Studies Center



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