Raconter les histoires mondiales de la science, de la technologie et de l'environnement

“The Micro as Macro”: Narrating World Histories of Science, Technology, and Environment

Call for Papers 

 

 Graduate Student Conference

October 20, 2023: UC Santa Cruz Center of World History Grad Student Conference



While world history topics have expanded recently to include diverse areas, the Euro-American experience continues to dominate scholarship and is often treated as the assumed global model. The UCSC Center for World History invites paper proposals for its fourth (almost) annual graduate student conference, which explores non-European places and actors by centering on techno-scientific, environmental, sensorial, and spatial-based themes that reveal how the relationship between “small” subjects like microorganisms have shaped world history in ways that challenge or reimagine conceptions of progress and development. With this in mind, this conference will focus on histories spanning from 1700 to the present that tell global stories through small subjects such as viruses, cotton seeds, and metal alloys. By inviting a wide range of chronological and geographic loci, we hope to expand our definition of world history to one that does not default toward Euro-American experiences.


We hope to solicit individual papers that address the following topics: 

• non-Western case studies that address techno-scientific, environmental, sensorial, and spatial-based themes
• Small subjects contributing to global histories
• Small subjects challenging Western epistemologies
• Small subjects informing/shaping indigenous communities
• Intellectual ways to challenge Western hegemony

We hope to focus on histories of science, technology, and the environment that highlight marginalized and micro histories. With conference presenters, we hope to apply new and needed insights to the ways in which we understand the past. Dr. David Fedman, Associate Professor of History at UC Irvine and author of Seeds of Control: Japan's Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea, will deliver the keynote address.

We strongly encourage in-person participation, but the conference will have remote options for those who request it. For participants who do not have conference funding from their own institution, we have limited funds for travel support.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, August 11, 2023.

Proposals should include a paper title and 300-word abstract. Please email your proposal to cwh@ucsc.edu by August 11.