ICOHTEC Maurice Daumas Prize on History of Technology

 Announcement: ICOHTEC Maurice Daumas Prize on History of Technology. 

The International Committee for the History of Technology welcomes submissions for the Maurice Daumas Prize, which aims to encourage innovative scholarship in the history of technology.

ICOHTEC, a Scientific Commission of the Division of History of Science and Technology/IUHPST, is interested in the history of technological development as well as its relationship to science, society, economy, culture, and the environment. 

The Prize is generously sponsored by the Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM), France.

The deadline is March 3rd. Please check further information: https://www.icohtec.org/prizes/maurice-daumas-prize/2025-maurice-daumas-prize/

Hybrid event: Animals and the Age of Empires: Local Histories and Global Trends

Hybrid event:  Animals and the Age of Empires: Local Histories and Global Trends, 4.4.2025

Explore the intertwined history of human-animal relations during the international conference that shifts the focus onto the regions and countries once ruled by the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Ottomans.

URL: https://www.sh.se/kalender/kalenderposter/2025-04-04-animals-and-the-age-of-empires-local-histories-and-global-trends

The concept of the conference

Animals were part of colonial expansion, empire building and empire maintenance in Western and non-Western empires. Although the intertwined history of human-animal relations is global, with some shared dynamics and pathways, the practices and patterns were hardly unified. With regard to the increasingly challenged Anglophone bias and Western-centrism of scholarly work on empire and animals, this proposed conference shifts the focus onto the regions and countries once ruled by the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Ottomans. 

Focusing on the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, the conference aims to explore the intertwined histories of animals and empires in the countries and regions that once belonged to the Russian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires. With three empires as its prime analytical concern, the conference’s ambition is not only to explore the dynamics between the empires’ localities and regions, as well as individual empires, but also to transcend the usual boundaries of Area Studies and provide a more global view on the intertwined histories. The overarching purpose of the conference is to advance this area of research. Chronologically, the conference focuses on colonial expansion and globalization in the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. 

Animals and the Age of Empires: Local Histories and Global Trends

Explore the intertwined history of human-animal relations during the international conference that shifts the focus onto the regions and countries once ruled by the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Ottomans.

The concept of the conference

Animals were part of colonial expansion, empire building and empire maintenance in Western and non-Western empires. Although the intertwined history of human-animal relations is global, with some shared dynamics and pathways, the practices and patterns were hardly unified. With regard to the increasingly challenged Anglophone bias and Western-centrism of scholarly work on empire and animals, this proposed conference shifts the focus onto the regions and countries once ruled by the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Ottomans. 

Focusing on the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, the conference aims to explore the intertwined histories of animals and empires in the countries and regions that once belonged to the Russian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires. With three empires as its prime analytical concern, the conference’s ambition is not only to explore the dynamics between the empires’ localities and regions, as well as individual empires, but also to transcend the usual boundaries of Area Studies and provide a more global view on the intertwined histories. The overarching purpose of the conference is to advance this area of research. Chronologically, the conference focuses on colonial expansion and globalization in the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. 

“Minority Science” in the Short 20th Century, guest edited by Jan Surman and Galina Babak

Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries  2024, volume 16, issue 2, is online. English, open access. Thematic issue: “Minority Science” in the Short 20th Century, guest edited by Jan Surman and Galina Babak. URL: https://asjournals.lib.cas.cz/Stred/actual?lang=en

Preface

Surman, Jan - Babak, Galina | s. 5 - 7

Hlavní články

Squares, circles and triangulations. Roman Jakobson, the Prague Linguistic Circle and the intellectual configurations of interwar Prague

Flack, Patrick | s. 8 - 28

The “General Science of Art”

an impossible science? A path through this almost forgotten discipline with the Czech philosopher Emil Utitz (1883-1956)

Bonneau, Lara | s. 29 - 54

"Religious affiliation: Dissident.” Josef Doppler, a political scholar on the margins of academia?

Ruttner, Florian |  s. 55 - 75

Reviews

Förderpreis der GWMT

Die Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin und der Technik e. V. (GWMT) vergibt jährlich einen Förderpreis für Forschungsarbeiten von Wissenschaftler*innen aus ihrem Gebiet. Der Preis ist mit 1.250,- Euro dotiert und wird im Rahmen der Jahrestagung der GWMT (jährlich im September) verliehen. Die Reisekosten zur Preisverleihung werden bis zur Höhe der Bahnfahrt 2. Klasse zzgl. der Übernachtungskosten übernommen.

Zur Bewerbung aufgefordert und berechtigt sind Forschende, die sich in ihren Qualifikationsarbeiten (Masterarbeiten bzw. Dissertationen; keine Habilitationen) mit Themen aus den Gebieten der Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin oder der Technik befasst haben. Die eingereichten Arbeiten sollen einen innovativen Beitrag (z. B. in Hinsicht auf Fragestellung, Quellenmaterial oder methodisches Vorgehen) zum Fach leisten; dies gilt gleichermaßen für theoretisch, methodisch oder empirisch ausgerichtete Arbeiten.

Die Qualifikationsarbeiten sollten nicht älter sein als zwei Jahre nach der Disputation bzw. Abschlusspräsentation. Eingereicht werden können Arbeiten in deutscher und englischer Sprache.

Der Bewerbung sind eine elektronische (pdf) Version der Qualifikationsarbeit sowie ein Lebenslauf beizufügen.

Die Bewerbungen müssen bis zum 15. Februar 2025 bei dem Vorsitzenden des Preisvergabekomitees der GWMT, Dr. Jan Surman, eingehen:

surman@mua.cas.cz

Summer school: Habsburg Central Europe in Global History, 17th–20th centuries

Call for participants / Summer school: Habsburg Central Europe in Global History, 17th–20th centuries. Prague, 05.05.2025 - 07.05.2025, Deadline 28.02.2025. 

Organisers: Austrian Academy of Sciences; Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic; Johann Gottfried Herder-Forschungsrat (Johannes Feichtinger / Franz L. Fillafer, Vienna; Michael Wögerbauer, Prague; Steffen Höhne, Weimar-Jena)

Global history has established itself as a particularly fertile field of scholarly enquiry from which Habsburg Central Europe still remains strangely absent. To redress this imbalance, our summer school seeks to rediscover Habsburg Central Europe as a switchboard for the circulation of ideas, practices and objects across the globe. It tries to do so by bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines who work on the history of the region since the 17th century: Our event is geared to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from the humanities (historians and literary scholars, historians of culture and the arts, of science and the humanities, anthropologists etc.) whose research resonates with the overall aim of our meeting described above. Our event will consist of two subsections: A mini-series of seminars hosted by our faculty in which a pre-circulated reader will be discussed and a subsequent set of workshops that will allow participants to present and discuss their research.

Faculty: Amy Colin (Pittsburgh), Marketa Křížová (Praha), Johannes Mattes (Vienna), Ulrich Schmid (Basel), Jonathan Singerton (Amsterdam), Jan Surman (Praha)

We plan to cover participants’ travel and accommodation costs.

We invite papers by doctoral and post-doctoral researchers that contribute to one or several of the following thematic fields:

- the global history of Central European institutions (administrative bodies, learned societies, academies, universities, sacred institutions and religious orders, museums, theatres etc.)

- the social history of Central Europe’s interactions with the world, including, but not restricted to the activities of go-betweens, brokers, and liaison agents

- the interplay of regional and global literatures (translations, travelling forms, medias and genres)

- the practises of erudition, science, scholarship and cultural production

Special attention will be given to Bohemia as an interface between the various regions of the Habsburg lands and as a clearing house between Central Europe and the globe.

In spotlighting the global entanglements of Habsburg Central Europe, our event pursues two broader agendas, the first is historiographical, the second methodological.

First, much of global history is still marked by a Franco- or Anglocentric bias: Its categories of imperial rule, national culture, sovereignty, and the production of scientific truth are derived from the study of Britain and France, as well as of their respective overseas possessions. Acting as a welcome incentive for further research, several excellent recent studies of Habsburg Central Europe show that these categories are not only inadequate for grasping the past of the region, but that the latter produced a set of alternative concepts, ideas and practises for engaging with the world whose trans-regional impact and ramifications are yet to be discovered. What does this rediscovery imply for a fresh understanding of modern history?

Second, the summer school will provide ample opportunity for reflecting on what a “global” perspective implies for the methods of the humanities: In what ways does this perspective force us to rethink our habitual units of enquiry (regions, empires, states, cultural systems, disciplines, genres and forms)? How can we avoid the pitfalls of connectivity talk, i.e. the appeal to allegedly self-propelled, benignly liquid “flows” and processes of effortless “circulation”? What conceptual lexicon and what explanatory devises do we find particularly helpful in researching and presenting our findings? What challenges and potential benefits does this global perspective entail for interdisciplinary work in the humanities?

Kontakt

Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena)

Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna)

Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna)

Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

or: summerschool@oeaw.ac.at

Application: Abstract of your contribution/research project (250-300 words) and a brief CV (preferably as a PDF), please write to: summerschool@oeaw.ac.at

or to the organizers Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena), Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna), Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna), Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

Call for papers: From beauty to utility or green and greenery for all falls..., 24-25 April 2025, University of Pardubice

Call for papers: From beauty to utility or green and greenery for all falls..., 24-25 April 2025, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Pardubice

In the words of the French historian Michel Pastoureau, some of whose books are familiar to the Czech reader, green is not an honest colour - it is cunning, it does not allow one to look at one's cards, it hypocritically changes its symbolism according to one's needs... It has always been relatively easy to obtain it from natural raw materials, which is why it has received less recognition than the colours red, blue or even gold. Green was fickle, and held up badly on fabrics and painting grounds. This instability led to it becoming a symbol of everything that moves and changes, the colour of chance, of play, of fate. 

It was rehabilitated in the 19th century: hypertrophied cities, "centres of stench", took a liking to greenery and promoted it in all the free spaces that remained. Green became the dichotomous antithesis of civilization. It meant life. And it was in the urban environment that green was used to create a new symbolism: a colour that signifies consent, permission, safety, a colour whose opposite is red, signifying prohibition, restriction, danger. With the explosive growth of urban agglomerations during the Industrial Revolution and at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, urbanism gave birth to the theme of living and living in the green, the birth of landscape architecture and the need to balance built-up and multi-functional areas with the green "lungs" of the city - urban gardens and parks with ornamental lawns. These - alongside traditional hospitality establishments - became the new epicentres of social communication, entertainment and spectacle; places where the private and the public (picnics, banquets, sport) mixed. 

While greenery and green spaces were to some extent 'riparian' in cities, they reigned supreme in the open air and needed no human intervention in their realm. The utilitarian value of vast open spaces harnessed greenery to the service of man: greenery came to be shackled, controlled and ultimately devastated. The greenery in the castle parks also had a human face; however, from the point of view of utility, there was a waste of grass, water and human energy. But only until scarcity set in. Then not only castle gardens, city parks, but any, even small ornamental areas turned green: they turned into useful vegetable beds. And a starving population began to "graze" in the wild what it had originally left to dumb faces ... 

Our topics:

A) Greenery as one of the motifs of the paradigmatic turn in historiography: from ontological, cognitive and value anthropocentrism to biocentrism in the humanities

- The ecological crisis and its (historical) context.

- Man as part of nature. 

- The "green" turn in historiography.

B) Greenery and green in communication

- Symbolism of green and greenery in history, language and communication (sacred trees and groves; green elements in heraldry, symbolic communication and representation; "green" sayings, proverbs and idioms; flowery language and its symbolism); 

- Green as a symbol of freedom, permission and security in art and literature vs. green as a paradigm of discipline.

- Greenery (green) in social and political communication.

C) Living and living green, living in green 

- Garden city urbanism; the place and role of green elements in 19th and 20th century urban planning and housing theory; ecological architecture.

- Public parks and orchards, their typology and concepts of planting with trees and flower nests, their creators.

- Courtyards. Introduction of ornamental trees. Gardens, gardens (including botanical gardens) and allotments.

D) Green food, cuisine and medicine.

- Vegetables and natural products in the diet from the Middle Ages to the present; green cuisine; genesis and development of the organic cookbook genre.

- Applied greens - cuisine, beverages. Expanding the portfolio of consumer greens in times of supply crises.

- "Green history of the world" or "Will you have some weed with us?": history of the cultivation and use of cannabis.

Dear colleagues, if the topic of greenery catches your attention, we will be happy to welcome you in Pardubice for the traditional biennial. 

In advance, please send the title of your paper with a brief annotation (up to 800 characters) by 31 January 2025 to the address below.

Best regards

Martin Čapský, Milena Lenderová, Pavel Panoch

Department of Historical Sciences, Faculty of Arts, University of Pardubice

milena.lenderova@upce.cz