- The Albuquerque Meeting, 8–11 October 2015
The fifty-eighth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology took place at the Hotel Albuquerque in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 8–11 October 2015. SHOT’s officers would like to thank Kevin Borg, Lars Heide, and William Storey for assembling such a wonderful program. For all they did to bring this meeting together, we also want to thank the staff of the Hotel Albuquerque, especially Jenaya Howard and Cainan Harris, as well as Lavato Julian and Mindy Jensen of the Hyatt Regency, Harris Balkin of the Holiday Inn Express, the staff at the Best Western on Rio Grande, and Cecilia Padilla-Quillen of the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau. We thank Jane Carlson for her tireless work on details large and small; Bill Kelsh for his onsite IT work; and Dave Burke, Peter Westin, and Carol Westin for everything they do on the ground to make things run smoothly. Finally, we would like to extend a special thanks to Cari Casteel, the society secretary’s assistant the last two years, who will be stepping down after this meeting to finish her dissertation.
Annual Meeting Sessions
Opening Plenary
Speaker: Dong-Won Kim, Harvard University
Discussion: By the Audience
Constructing Technology’s Promise
Chair and comment: Sonja D. Schmid, Virginia Tech
Papers: “Death Rays, Teletanks, and Chemical Weapons: The Soviet Military’s Cult of Technology in the Interwar Period,” Ian Johnson, Ohio State University; “Endless Energy for the Young: Fusion in Soviet Popular Communication 1950–1969,” Anna Åberg, EHESS, France; “A Technology of Democracy? ITER and the Danger of Compromise,” Alex Rider, University of Pennsylvania; “Trusting the Technological Fix: Tracing a Technological Faith,” Sean F. Johnston, University of Glasgow, UK [End Page 196]
Ordinary Agents
Chair and comment: Arwen Mohun, University of Delaware
Papers: “Hacking, Making, and DARPA: Historical Narratives of Co-option, Appropriation, and Collaboration,” Ellen Foster, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; “The House That Slaves Built: African Labor and the Technopolitics of Tabby Construction Practices,” Seneca Vaught, Kennesaw State University; “Ordinary People in the History of Space Exploration,” Loretta Hall, Independent Scholar; “Tackling ‘The Problem of Atomic Energy’: The Contested Emergence of Techno-scientific Atomic Expertise, 1945–1946,” Waqar Zaidi, Lahore University of Management Science, Pakistan
Infrastructures of Racialization: Complex Categories and Research Challenges (sponsored by EDITH)
Organizer: Geoff D. Zylstra, New York City College of Technology
Chair: Suzanne Moon, University of Oklahoma
Comment: Chandra D. Bhimull, Colby College
Papers: “Learning and Working: Apprenticeship and Categories of Childhood in an Early National U.S. City,” Nina E. Lerman, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany; “Technologies of Human Diversity: Genomic Medicine and the Genetic History of Mexicans,” Edna Suárez-Díaz and Vivette García Deister, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; “Can I Use This Image … of a White Man Shooting a Black Man? Interpreting Technology and Race in the Nineteenth Century,” Geoff D. Zylstra, New York City College of Technology; “Civil Rights at Work on the Right-of-Way: A Workplace History of Railway Maintenance under New Management,” Fallon Samuels Aidoo, Harvard University
Alternative Cultures/Alternative Technologies: Conscious Construction of the Path Not Taken
Organizer: Pamela Edwards, Shepherd University
Chair and Comment: Jennifer Croissant, University of Arizona
Papers: “What Would the Goddess Use? Technological Choice and Environmental Consciousness in the Women’s Land Movement,” Pamela Edwards, Shepherd University; “Strange Attractor: Terence McKenna, the ‘Archaic Revival,’ and the Orientalist Foundations of Techno-Utopianism,” Ian Hartman, Northwestern University; “Metal Arrowheads and Thumb Pianos: Society, Technology, and Values,” Kathleen Ochs, Colorado School of Mines; “Potential Energy: Wind Power for Electrical Energy Generation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Great Britain, 1870–1900,” Nathan Kapoor, University of Oklahoma [End Page 197]
Outside Technologies: Instruments and Their Users in the Field Sciences
Organizer: Philipp Lehmann, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany
Chair: Lino Camprubí, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany
Comment: Jeremy Vetter, University of Arizona
Papers: “Disciplining the Body in Nineteenth-Century Astronomical Expeditions in England and Colonial India,” Kena Wani, Duke University; “Field as Instrument, Instrument as Field: Scientific Investigations aboard Aurora 7,” Matthew Hersch, Harvard University; “Standardizing African Rain: Training, Technologies, and Practices in...