Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Energy History Working Group, 2023-2024, Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Call for Papers

The Energy History Working Group solicits work from within the field of energy history for our 2023-2024 schedule. The working group meets at 1:30 PM Eastern Time on the second Friday of each month, beginning in September. Meetings will be held via Zoom. A full schedule can be found here: https://www.chstm.org/content/energy-history.

The Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Working Groups brings together scholars from around the world in online fora to share their works-in-progress on specialized topics in the history of science, technology and medicine. https://www.chstm.org/.

Priority Deadline: August 15, 2023

Submit to: Sarah Stanford-McIntyre at Sarah.StanfordMcintyre “at” colorado.edu.

The Energy History Working Group seeks to highlight work that provides new analytical focus for the study of energy and its history. We solicit papers that access the deep linkages between business, labor, and environmental history as well as issues of technological development, cultural production, and scientific experimentation. Access to desirable minerals – from coal to oil to rare earths has been a limiting factor in the design of energy technologies, systems, and consumption habits. Control over energy systems, networks, and infrastructures have ramifications for politicians, individuals, and societies. Globalized capitalism has depended upon intricate communication and trade networks that have relied on abundant and cheap energy. Energy scholarship prioritizes the large role that networks – including supply chains, labor regimes, diplomatic connections, trade systems, and financial institutions – have played in the development of technologies and in crafting everything from health and medical standards to large-scale infrastructure projects. The sometimes unintended consequences of such systems, from the destruction of older patterns of work to their local and global impacts on public health are still being teased out by a generation of historians and social scientists. However, there is still much more work to be done in this evolving field.

The co-conveners welcome papers on the following (and related) topics:

-Extractive Regimes
- Energy Infrastructure and the State
-Energy Systems and Supply Chains
-Waste and Discard Studies
-Plastics, Synthetics, and Consumption
-Mining History
-Water History
-Just Transitions
-Public Health and Environmental Racism

-Energy and culture
-Fossil Fuels and foreign policy
-Electrification
-Nuclear Waste
-Too-Big-To-Fail Technologies and Disaster
-Labor and Energy Production

Scholars interested in sharing a draft article, dissertation chapter, book proposal, or book chapter for discussion should submit, as a single PDF, a proposal of no more than 500 words including:
- A paper abstract (300 wds max)
- Explanation of what you hope to gain from discussion with the group
- Relevant biographical/contextual information (name, email contact, affiliation, and status - ie. recent Phd, writing second book, etc.)

Submissions, as well as any questions, should be submitted to Sarah Stanford-McIntyre at Sarah.StanfordMcintyre “at” colorado.edu. Submissions will be accepted until all dates are filled, however priority will be given to abstracts submitted by August 15, 2023.