Call for Papers: for a Special Apparatus Publication: Pandemic Movies in Central and Eastern European Film and Television. Deadlines for abstracts: 19 June 2020

Guest edited by Raoul Eshelman, Mario Slugan, and Denise J. Youngblood

In the wake of the global outbreak of Covid-19, interest in films thematizing pandemics has surged in entertainment press and on streaming services alike with advice on which pandemic movies to watch during lockdown proliferating. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011), a film about an outbreak of an airborne virus not unlike Covid-19, has crystalized as the most popular among pandemic films by topping the HBO Now most viewed list in the first two weeks of March and currently sitting at number 38 of the IMDb most popular movies list. But there are, of course, other movies that have thematized pandemics. Within the regional remit of our journal, Variola vera (Goran Marković, 1982), a film depicting the last major outbreak of smallpox in Europe (i.e., Yugoslavia), comes immediately to mind. We can even track the subject matter to as far back as Die Pest in Florenz/The Plague in Florence (Otto Rippert, 1919) tackling the first outbreaks of the Black Death in 1348. Most recently, the Thessaloniki Film Festival commissioned 22 filmmakers to produce shorts about the lockdown experience. In order to understand how pandemics have been depicted on screen hitherto and what changes might the outbreak bring, Apparatus invites contribution for a Special Issue focusing on Pandemic Movies in Central and Eastern European Film and Television. Topics may include but are by no means limited to: - Close readings of specific films thematizing pandemics

- Common features of pandemic movies

- Relationship of pandemic films to established genres (horror, science-fiction, historical drama, etc.)

- Are pandemic movies a genre, subgenre, cycle?

- History of pandemic movies

- Thematizing pandemics in documentaries vs. in fiction film

- Pandemics in medical films

- Representational challenges that pandemics pose

- Ethical issues in representing pandemics

- Pandemic movies and national outbreaks

- Cultural importance of films thematizing pandemics

- The changes to national and regional film industries (production, distribution, exhibition) during and following the Covid-19 outbreak

- Responses of film festivals to Covid-19 The publication is scheduled for publication in late 2020/early 2021.

Please send abstracts of 300 to 500 words (in English, German or Russian), together with the title, up to 5 references, a short bio, contact details and institutional affiliation to the guest editors of the Special Issue of Apparatus at helpapparatus@gmail.com for initial selection. Although we ask for abstracts in English German or Russian, in line with the Apparatus policy to publish articles in all the languages of Central and Eastern Europe articles selected based on abstracts may be in any languages of the region. Selected articles should be 6000-8000 words in length. They will undergo an editorial and double-blind peer reviewed process before final acceptance. (Selection of an abstract for development into a full article does not guarantee publication.) Deadlines for abstracts: 19 June 2020 Notifications of acceptance: 29 June 2020 Deadlines for full articles: 2 October 2020

URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus/announcement/view/39?fbclid=IwAR2t25rzocJsSgkhnqq5knMRqZ0xURPJiqcyFyYdIkGk1SPhc0NVHLq6XWA

Цыганков А.С., Оболевич Т. Голландский эпизод в философской биографии С.Л. Франка (новые материалы) [The Holland Episode in the Philosophical Biography of S.L. Frank - New Materials] / А.С. Цыганков, Тереза Оболевич ; Рос. акад. наук, Ин-т философии. - М.: ИФ РАН, 2020. - 336 с. ISBN: 978-5-9540-0355-6

Table of Contents/Содержание [RU&ENG]: https://iphras.ru/uplfile/root/books/2020/Tcygankov_Obolevich_1.pdf

В книге рассматривается голландский эпизод философской биографии русского философа Семена Людвиговича Франка, реконструируется историко-философский контекст профессиональных и дружеских связей С.Л. Франка с голландскими коллегами. Отдельное внимание уделяется воссозданию истории лекционных поездок философа в Голландию, выпавших на 1930-е гг., а также «голландскому тексту» в его творчестве. В приложении к книге публикуются не переведенные прежде на русский язык голландские статьи С.Л. Франка, а также архивные конспекты его лекций, прочитанных в Голландии. Здесь же впервые издается переписка философа с его коллегами и друзьями - Бруно Беккером и Паулем Эрен- фестом и приводится хронологическая таблица лекционных поездок С.Л. Франка в Голландию.

Сергей Николаевич Булгаков [Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov], под редакцией А.П. Козырева. Москва: Росспен 2020. ISBN: 978-5-8243-2374-0

Настоящий том посвящен выдающемуся мыслителю, представителю русской философской традиции первой половины XX века – Сергею Николаевичу Булгакову (1871–1944), проделавшему впечатляющий путь от «легального» марксиста к священнику и богослову в «русском Париже». Его философские, богословские, социологические, политико-экономические идеи и сегодня продолжают вызывать большой интерес и в то же время острые споры как в России, так и за рубежом. В томе собраны статьи современных философов, религиоведов, литературоведов, в которых актуализируется интеллектуальное наследие С. Н. Булгакова. Ряд статей посвящен его личности и судьбе, в которой выражаются все трагические события первой половины ХХ века.

Книга адресована широкому кругу читателей, интересующихся философией, общественной и религиозной христианской мыслью, историей русской эмиграции в Европе.

URL: https://rosspen.su/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1732

Call for Papers: Toolbox of Environmental Governance: Numbers, Metrics, and Acronyms, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 02.12.2020 - 04.12.2020. Deadline: 12.06.2020

Discourses of environmental governance make conspicuous use of what can be described as abridged, standardized objects. Whether it is calls to limit the average global temperature rise to “1.5 degrees Celsius” in accordance with the “IPCC report,” keep CO2 emissions “below 2 tons” per person per year “by 2050,” heed “GDP growth” in relation to environmental welfare, save the world’s rainforests, which have dwindled by “1.3 million square miles” in “the last 25 years,” or relocate Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta, which is sinking “5 to 10 cm” every year, assertions about ways to govern the environment are inundated with numbers, metrics, and acronyms of various kinds. Although in policy or advocacy communication, such expressions tend to be invoked authoritatively, to forceful practical and rhetorical effect, they arguably do not merely represent self-evident facts about the environment. Rather, they are produced and propagated through protracted scientific and political work, render environmental entities governable by subjecting them to acts of quantification, simplification, standardization, and prognostication, and, once firmly cemented into the broader framework of environmental governance, appear to fossilize into elements that bear a life and potency of their own. They may be deployed to rouse a sense of threat, project imminent futures, gather political support, promote particular conduct, or otherwise evoke action or affect.

This workshop aims to explore numbers, metrics, and acronyms (one could append to this indefinitely; e.g. units, quotas, targets, indicators, thresholds, …) as basic instruments that make up the Toolbox of Environmental Governance. The workshop seeks to investigate the many ways in which such devices have been used to construct and maintain the environment as a governable entity. How did they enter the “toolbox” to begin with and become fixtures of environmental governance—through what kinds of social, political, scientific, and historical processes? How might a particular number, metric, or acronym be seen to acquire significance beyond the surface level scientific information it apparently denotes?

Toolbox of Environmental Governance is organized in affiliation with SPHERE, an ERC-funded project that examines the rise of global environmental governance in historical perspective. If you, too, are keen to engage in critical and comprehensive conversations surrounding the themes and questions described above, let us know! Please submit an abstract (max. 400 words) and a brief biography to Gloria Samosir: gloria.samosir@abe.kth.se by June 12, 2020. We welcome submissions from a broad range of disciplines, including but not limited to History of Science, Environmental History, Environmental Humanities, Science & Technology Studies, Geography, Law and Legal History, Development Studies, and Political Science. It is our ambition that the workshop will result in a publication with contributions from participants.

We expect the workshop to be face to face as a first hand alternative. Costs of travel and accommodation for invited speakers will be covered by the workshop organizers. Remote participation will be possible. If travel is restricted, we will adapt accordingly.

For any further questions or concerns, please contact Gloria Samosir: gloria.samosir@abe.kth.se

Call for Papers: Dealing with Disasters: Cultural Representations of Catastrophes, c. 1500-1900. Thursday 14 – Friday 15 January 2021; Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Deadline 1 June 2020

Nowadays, we are constantly confronted with frantic reports on natural calamities. Major news outlets describe the potentially cataclysmic effects of the latest forest fires, floods, and storms – and due to the ongoing climate crisis, extreme weather events can be expected to have ever greater impacts on our lives. If we are left wondering how we should deal with these disasters, we should also acknowledge that natural calamities have always occurred and have affected human experience in myriad ways.

For many centuries, news about catastrophic events has been disseminated via media such as pamphlets, chronicles, poems, and prints. This conference seeks to address the cultural representations that reflected and shaped the ways in which people learned and thought about disasters that occurred either nearby or far away, both in time and space.

This conference welcomes contributions that engage with the cultural dimensions of disasters and reflect on representations of catastrophes in different media. In doing so, we offer a platform to scholars from various backgrounds to adopt multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to reconceptualising the broader socio-cultural consequences of disasters.

Without denying the very real and immediate impact that calamities have on people’s lives, we consider disasters to be as much cultural phenomena as natural events. The power of cultural discourses to shape the perception of disasters is therefore key to understanding their wider societal impact. Such representations are not only profoundly influenced by specific cultural habits and beliefs, but also by the media that communicate these events.

To foreground understudied areas of research, we want to turn away from disasters that humans deliberately inflicted upon each other. In other words, we are excluding calamities that were a direct result of warfare, genocide or terrorism. Instead, we will focus on unplanned catastrophes: those fateful moments when nature and culture clashed.

The period that we will be examining (c. 1500- 1900) is roughly demarcated by two media transformations: the introduction of the printing press on the one hand, and the invention of radio, television, and film on the other. This conference thus covers all the cultural manifestations of disasters in the intervening period, mediated, for example, by pamphlets, prints and newspapers, but also through letters and diaries.

Themes

Themes that could be explored include, but are not limited to:

- representations of disasters in different media - religious and ritual responses to disasters - scientific understandings of disasters and technological innovation - literary and artistic responses to catastrophes - remembrance and memory culture surrounding disasters - material culture of disasters, including disaster relics - political and societal dimensions of representations of disasters - human-nature relations in the context of disasters - history of emotions in the context of disasters - appropriation of disasters and (collective) identity formation - solidarity and conflict in the wake of disasters

Proposal

Paper proposals (max. 300 words) should reach the conference committee by 1 June 2020 via email: dealingwithdisasters@let.ru.nl.

Please enclose a 100-word biographical note.

Organising committee

The conference is organised by the members of the Dealing with Disasters in the Netherlands: The Shaping of Local and National Identities, 1421-1890 research project, which is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This project is part of the Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH) at Radboud University. Further information about the project can be found on our website: www.dealingwithdisasters.nl.

Committee:

- Prof. Lotte Jensen - Dr Hanneke van Asperen - Marieke van Egeraat MA - Adriaan Duiveman MA - Fons Meijer MA - Lilian Nijhuis MA

hps.cesee book talk: Travelling Microbes in Central Europe: with Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (Vienna) and Katrin Steffen (Lüneburg)

The international platform HPS.CESEE and IGITI are proud to invite you to the first hps.cesee global book talk, Travelling Microbes in Central Europe: with Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen (Vienna) and Katrin Steffen (Lüneburg). It is first in a series of open zoom events, aiming at fostering the discussion of new books and approaches in, and about, the broadly understood history of science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

TIME: 29.05.2020, 9 a.m.-11 a.m (EDT), 15:00-17:00 (CET), 16:00-18:00 (MSK)

The meeting is open to the public. To receive the link, please fill the contact data here: https://forms.gle/9TqX4MXqwBYRd6Td9 or write to Jan Surman jsurman@hse.ru

Knowledge does not travel just by itself. It needs laboratories, but also logistics to be moved. Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen’s monograph [*], published in 2018, looks at the circulation of knowledge from the perspective of the material turn, tracing techniques applied by Polish physicians to mobilize microbes in laboratories, make them moveable, and then finally move them. The book presents a multilayered history of medicalization in Central Europe from the end of the 19th century to 1939: It ranges from a global perspective on the exchange between laboratories in Paris, Tunis or Lwów, through the history of mobilizing medicine for cultural and state nationalism, to the inclusion of bacteriology into the daily practice of physicians. It integrates Central Europe into a global history of knowledge and leads us to rethink the categories center and periphery in the history of knowledge production.

Katharina’s book should serve us as the point of departure for a discussion of the potential of the material turn for the history of science in Central and Eastern Europe, which will be introduced by Katrin Steffen (Lüneburg).

The event is hosted by the platform hps.cesee: History of Science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, Higher School of Economics, Moscow.

[*] Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen: Wie man Mikroben auf Reisen schickt: Zirkulierendes bakteriologisches Wissen und die polnische Medizin 1885–1939 [How to Make Microbes Travel: Circulating bacteriological knowledge and the Polish Medicine 1885-1939] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2018)

Dr. Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen is a research and teaching fellow in contemporary history at Vienna University. She received her PhD from the University of Giessen (Germany) and held fellowships, among others, with the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. Her book was awarded the dissertation prize of the German Historical Association as well as the dissertation prize of the German Association of Historians of Science, Medicine and Technology. She is currently pursuing a second book project in the global history of large construction sites.

PD Dr. Katrin Steffen is a historian at the Northeast Institute Lüneburg at the University of Hamburg. She works on the transnational history of Poland in 19th-20th centuries, Jewish history and history of scientific knowledge and mobility. In her current project, she works on the parallel, transnational biographies of Jan Czochralski and Ludwik Hirszfeld spanning the German‐speaking countries and Poland.

Call for papers – Teorie vědy / Theory of Science: Current health crisis from the perspective of science studies

Teorie vědy / Theory of Science invites the authors to reflect on the current health crisis from the perspective of science studies broadly conceived (philosophy of science, STS, history of science, anthropology of science, etc.). In a series of short essays (up to 3000 words) we would like to offer not only regular readers of our journal, but also a wider public insight into the current situation informed by the approaches that science studies have developed and by the knowledge it has reached. In addition to opening the question of what science studies have to say about the current situation, we also call for a discussion on the possible impact the current crisis may have on the field of science studies.

The manuscripts will be processed by the Teorie vědy / Theory of Science editorial team, that will also decide on their acceptance and publication on the journal’s website. The journal Teorie vědy / Theory of Science won't claim exclusivity and will actively promote the valorisation of these texts in other wide-ranging media.

Due to the non-standard format of expected papers, but also with regard to the way of their processing (manuscripts will not be subjected to standard peer review), accepted texts will be published on the journal’s website only with the stats of "non-reviewed online articles". Any subsequent use of these papers for the journal Teorie vědy / Theory of Science (in its electronic and printed form) will be negotiated individually with the authors.

We ask authors not to use the editorial system of Teorie vědy / Theory of Science to submit their manuscripts. Submissions should be made directly to the editor of the series, Jan Maršálek (marsalek@flu.cas.cz).

Boel Berner (2020) Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond. (OPEN ACCESS)

Boel Berner (2020) Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th Century Medicine and Beyond. Bielefeld: Transcript. Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5163-8; PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5163-2; ttps://doi.org/10.14361/9783839451632

URL: https://www.transcript-publishing.com/media/pdf/81/f4/ee/oa9783839451632eAdETX8EEvd58.pdf

In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for tuberculosis, pellagra and anemia; proposed it as a means to reanimate seemingly dead soldiers on the battlefield. It was a contested therapy because it meant crossing boundaries and challenging taboos. Was the transfusion of lamb blood into desperately sick humans really defensible?

The book takes the reader on a journey into hospital wards and lunatic asylums, physiological laboratories and 19th century wars. It presents a fascinating story of medical knowledge, ambitions and concerns – a story that provides lessons for current debates on the morality of medical experimentation and care.

Marcin Moskalewicz, Ute Caumanns, Fritz Dross (eds): Jewish Medicine and Healthcare in Central Eastern Europe: Shared Identities, Entangled Histories, Cham: Springer 2019. Print ISBN 978-3-319-92479-3; Online ISBN 978-3-319-92480-9

• Jewish– German–Polish: Histories and Traditions in Medical Culture, Marcin Moskalewicz, Ute Caumanns, Fritz Dross, 1-9

BETWEEN RELIGIOUS AND MEDICAL AUTHORITY: EARLY MODERN JEWISH CARE FOR BODY AND SOUL

• Yiddish “Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum” From Early Modern Poland: A Humanistic Symbiosis of Latin Medicine and Jewish Thought; Ewa Geller; 13-25
• ‘When the Rabbi Meets the Doctor’: Differing Attitudes to Medical Diagnosis Among Halakhic Authorities in Eastern and Central Europe in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century, Eliezer Sariel, 27-39
• The Debate over Early Burial Amongst Jews in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the 1790s, Hans-Uwe Lammel, 41-60

MODERN JEWISH HEALTHCARE: COMMUNITY AND THE STATE

• German Medicine, Folklore and Language in Popular Medical Practices of the Eastern European Jews (Nineteenth to Twentieth Century), Marek Tuszewicki, 63-78
• Jewish Bodies and Jewish Doctors During the Cholera Years of the Polish Kingdom, Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen, 79-95
• Work of Jewish Medical Community and the Health Culture at School in the Second Republic of Poland (1918–1939), Beata Szczepańska, 97-108
• A Survey of Jewish Healthcare in Poland After WWII, Ignacy Einhorn, Jakub Einhorn, 109-127

SHARED IDENTITIES

• German-Jewish Doctors as Members of the Colonial Health Service in the Dutch East Indies in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, Philipp Teichfischer, 131-153
• Jewish Students from Silesia Studying at the Medical Faculty of Vienna University in the Years 1850–1938 According to the Records Regarding University Promotion and Requirements, Joanna Lusek, Horst Doležal, 155-186
• Between ‘Here’ and ‘There’: The Dual Identity of Dr. Izrael Milejkowski, Naomi Menuhin, 187-198
• A Doctor’s War Testimony: The Four Incarnations of “Dr. Twardy”, Monika Rice, 199-217
• “Ich bin ein Koszaliner”? Struggles with Belongings in Borderlands. Leslie Baruch Brent’s Autobiography Sunday’s Child? A Memoire, Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, 219-233

JEWISH DOCTORS IN THE FACE OF TERROR AND EXTERMINATION

• Jewish Doctors: A Place in Holocaust History, Ross W. Halpin, 237-248
• Fate of the Jewish Doctors – Members of the Jewish Chamber of Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto (1940–1943), Maria Ciesielska, 249-260
• Coping with the Impossible: The Developmental Roots of the Jewish Medical System in the Ghettos, Miriam Offer, 261-277

URL: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-92480-9#toc

Jens Herlth / Edward M. Swiderski (eds.) Stanislaw Brzozowski and the Migration of Ideas. Transnational Perspectives on the Intellectual Field in Twentieth-Century Poland and Beyond. Bielefeld: transcript 2019. ISBN: 978-3-8376-4641-2 (OPEN ACCESS)

As a writer, critic, and philosopher, Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) left a lasting imprint on Polish culture. He absorbed virtually all topical intellectual trends of his time, adapting them for the needs of what he saw as his primary mission: the modernization of Polish culture. The essays of the volume reassess and contextualize Brzozowski's writings from a distinctly transnational vantage point. They shed light on often surprising and hitherto underrated affinities between Brzozowski and intellectual figures and movements in Eastern and Western Europe. Furthermore, they explore the presence of his ideas in twentieth-century century literary criticism and theory.

(to access the text, click on the individual chapters, or click here: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/d8/02/4d/oa9783839446416FbQ8cWL761rpm.pdf)

Table of contents

• Seiten 1 - 4
• Frontmatter, 5 - 6
• Table of Contents, 7 - 20
• On Brzozowski's Presence and Absence in Poland and Beyond, 23 - 38

TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

• "Sounding out idols": Brzozowski and Strindberg as Nietzsche Readers, 39 - 56
• "Ibsen! Oh, let us not invoke this name in vain!" Brzozowski's Ibsen Not-quite-read, 57 - 76
• Stanisław Brzozowski and Die Neue Zeit, 77 - 106
• Les Déracinés: Brzozowski and Barrès, 107 - 132
• The Cult of Will and Power: Did Brzozowski Inspire Ukrainian Nationalism?, 133 - 138
• Brzozowski and Cioran: The Legend of Young Poland and The Transformation of Romania, 139 - 158
• Brzozowski and the Italians, 159 - 184
• Brzozowski and Rorty: Coping with the Contingent Self, 187 - 208

BRZOZOWSKI'S PRESENCE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY

• Stanisław Brzozowski and Romantic Revision (Meyer Howard Abrams, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom): Prolegomena, 209 - 236
• Brzozowski as Precursor to Contemporary Studies on Cyprian Norwid's Legacy, 237 - 248
• Brzozowskianism: The Trouble with the "Great" Brzozowski and His Followers, 249 - 272
• "…actually speaking, this man converted me": Jerzy Liebert, Brzozowski, and the Question of a Modern Religous Poetry, 273 - 302
• Stanisław Brzozowski as Harbinger and Enabler of Modern Literary Theory in Poland and the West, 303 - 320
• The Stalinist Reception of Stanisław Brzozowski's Philosophy: The Case of Paweł Hoffman, 321 - 338
• Brzozowski and the Question of Engagement: On a Different Concept of the Autonomy of Art, 339 - 350
• Brzozowski or Plots of the Future, 351 - 358
• Epilogue, 359 - 360
• Contributors

Call for Papers: Knowledge Personae and Regime Changes: Central and Eastern Europe 1945-1991. ICHST, July 25-31 2021, Prague. Deadline May 28th 2020.

As “models of scholarly selfhood” (Algazi 2016) scholarly persona have recently gained momentum in the history of science (Paul 2019; Daston, Sibum 2003; on CEE: Báar 2019). In our section we intend to revisit the concept and direct it at Soviet- and Post-Soviet spaces. It seems that in the second half of the 20th century classical figures of knowledge that are connected to the academic world have been joined by figures that do not rely on academic recognition. In fact, self-taught historians, popular science writers, representatives of non-standard medicine etc. have become socially acknowledged authority figures.

We argue that during the times of regime changes, the norms of scholarship and expertise were fluid, which allowed new knowledge personas to gain acknowledgment more easily. New figures of knowledge could arise through strategic actions of individual authors trying to assert their positions, but also could be demanded by new political elites, as happened with post-1945 experts in Marxism-Leninism. However, as it was the case with dissidents, they could also oppose the episteme of the ruling. Such processes involved renegotiation of vices and virtues, but also new strategies of presentation and justification of expertise, be it scholarly or not.

We are particularly interested in case studies addressing the issues of public and individual renegotiations of expertise in Central and Eastern Europe around 1945/48, 1968, and 1989/91. We especially welcome papers focusing on questions such as:

• How did “new experts” and “old experts” justify their value for the new societal expectations? Which knowledge/medial/political strategies did they use to claim, regain or keep their expert status?
• How did this process affect epistemic values and virtues, epistemic tools, and scientific programs?
• What role might new knowledge personae have played during the build-up of regime changes?
• To which extent did regime changes result in tensions between new and old knowledge personae? Which social and epistemic strategies can be identified in such conflicts (i.e. change of epistemic virtues vs. the idea of enforcing the virtues vs. the idea of splitting the persona into official and dissident one).
• How were new and old knowledge personae framed in official and non-official media? Which legitimization and delegitimization strategies were applied?

Proposals (an abstract of max 200 words + a short bio) should be sent to panel organizers (friedrich.cain@uni-erfurt.de and jsurman@hse.ru) by Thursday 28th May 2020.

Call for papers: Re-imagining imaginaries. Rethinking our Stories, ICHST, July 2021, Prague

CALL FOR PAPERS RE-IMAGINING IMAGINARIES. RETHINKING OUR STORIES. 26th International Congress of History of Science and Technology, July 25-31, Prague, https://www.ichst2021.org/

Procedure: Those interested in participating in this panel should prepare a one-page abstract (300 words maximum) and a one-page short CV (300 words maximum) with current contact information. Please send these materials to Gemma Cirac-Claveras (gemma.cirac@gmail.com) no later than May 23, 2020. Organizer: Gemma Cirac-Claveras, postdoctoral Marie-Curie fellow, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Panel abstract: Sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) are performative: they participate in building the sciences and technologies that they imagine. Think about, for instance, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, electricity, the great explorations, electrical cars, or medical imagery. Collectively shared reperesentations about these areas not only incorporate national goals, institutional identities, professional ambitions, or moral imperatives, but they also shape research topics, funding, disciplines and professions, institutional reorganizations, career paths, values and attitudes, and uses and users. Imaginaries are produced by specific social groups, with specific resources and motivations, in specific places and times. They take place at various scales: state or groups of states, organizations, professional groups, individuals. They reflect and reinforce determinate ideologies, ontologies, teleologies and epistemologies. An imaginary can be promoted by some, contested by others; it can allow the coexistence of alternative imaginaries, some of which may pretend to become dominant. They are not monolithic or stable, but dynamic and multifacetic. The goal of this panel is to re-imagine sociotechnical imaginaries. It is an invitation to rethink these great cultural frames in which, deliberately or not, historians place the history of science and technology and, in so doing, orient it. This is a call for empirical contributions that re-imagine the imaginaries that permeate diverse science and technology areas (in different disciplines, periods, places). To orient the discussion, three entries are suggested –although other questions will be also considered: - Dominant sociotechnical imaginaries. How do certain imaginaries become socioculturally dominant, even hegemonic? Who does imagine? In which context, with what resources, and with what goals? Do they generate resistence? Do they coincide with the practitioners’ visions? How do they influence scientific practices and expectations? How are they maintained and perpetuated? - Alternative imaginaries. To what extend dominant imaginaries make sense beyond the contexts, tempos, motivations, and resources that have generated them? What purposes do alternative imaginaries serve? Who does imagine, and how? How are they disseminated or eclipsed? How do they complement or oppose to dominant imaginaries? Can we separate alternative imaginaries from dominant ones? - Imaginaries and history. Sociotechnical imaginaries can influence historiography by promoting a particular vision, sometimes hegemonic, of the history of science and technology in question. How do imaginaries constrain historical reflection? To what extend can we, as historians, get rid of the imaginary? Should we? Or, put it alternatively, what stories do we prefer to frame our science and technology?

CFP Museum Revolutions? Science and Technology Display in Central and Eastern Europe, ICHST 2021 Prague

Proposals are invited for panels at the upcoming ICHST2021 in Prague (July 25-31, 2021) https://www.ichst2021.org/for the following symposium:

Museum Revolutions? Transformations of Science and Technology Display in Central and Eastern Europe since the 20th Century

Science museums and, more recently, science centres have become a global phenomenon. They have been studied historically for national, cultural and economic developments, however, mostly for Europe and North America, where close transatlantic connections between the institutions existed from the outset. In a first major attempt to delineate the respective museum revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, we consider the full span of the development in the 20th and early 21st century. For example, starting from Moscow's pre-revolutionary and Prague's pre-WW I museums of technology, over postwar science museums (that were established as in Warsaw or just envisioned and planned as in East-Berlin and Budapest) up to the latest openings of science centres in Warsaw and Pilsen, a complex picture will be drawn and scrutinized. As in the case of western museum development [1], major exhibitions may also have affected these museum revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. In this way, existing scholarship about the communication, dissemination and popularization of science from an internationally comparative perspective (e.g. [2], [3]) mostly based on printed media will be extended to the museum medium.

For this goal, contributions are invited from scholars dealing with the history of science, technology and museums as well as from museum studies and museum practitioners that deal with one or more of the following questions:

• What were the main reasons for redesigning or reconceptualizing existing museum exhibits?
• When science and technology museums are "political machines" (T. Bennett), what were the agendas that determined their respective selection of topics and designs?
• To what extent did particular national ways of science and technology presentation dominate, and what role did international cooperation play?
• Did the changes in museum concepts or science display reflect broader changes in the interest of society?
• When and why did the museum complement or replace collections of artefacts with "edufacts", i.e. hands-on, interactive and participatory exhibits?
• Where did science centres replace science museums or instead were incorporated, and was the model (e.g. from the Exploratorium) considered ideological or Western?
• How has the history of presenting science and technology in museums shaped the Central and Eastern European "scientific" cultures, e.g. their narratives of progress and their images of science?

Proposals (an abstract of max 200 words + a short bio) should be sent to panel organizers (Arne.Schirrmacher@hu-berlin.deand jan.surman@gmail.com) by Thursday 28th May 2020.

Contributions based on archival and printed sources that go beyond mere institutional histories – especially from early and mid-career scholars – are particularly welcome, while reminiscences by former actors and people involved in the developments may also be given room, without, however, dominating the symposium. As the conference takes place more than a year from now, the abstracts can reflect what the contributors would intend to achieve during the time available.

Support for travel and participation may be offered in select cases for those without recourse to funds from their institution.

Arne Schirrmacher, Humboldt University Berlin

Jan Surman, HSE, Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities Moscow

[1] Elena Canadelli et al. (ed.): Behind the Exhibit. Displaying Science and Technology at World's Fairs and Museums in the Twentieth Century, Smithsonian: Washington 2018.

[2] Special Issue "Communicating Science: National Approaches in 20th Century Europe", Science in Context 26 (2013), p. 393-549, ed. by Arne Schirrmacher.

[3] Special Issue "Popular Science between News and Education. A European Perspective", Science and Education 21 (2012), S. 289-401, ed. by Arne Schirrmacher.