[Air-L] Call for Papers: STS Across Borders Graduate Student Conference

[jeremy hunsinger]

Call for Papers:  STS Across Borders Graduate Student Conference

March 20-22, 2009 | Blacksburg, Virginia

Keynote Speakers: Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts
Amherst and Fa-ti Fan, SUNY Binghamton

Abstract submissions: Please send an abstract (minimum 250 words,
maximum of 400 words) dealing with the issues mentioned below and/or
related issues to Bob Darrow (dar... at vt.edu) or Cora Olson
(cow... at vt.edu) in DOC or RTF format. If you do not plan to present in
person, please indicate this in your abstract. The deadline for
submissions is December 5, 2008. Notifications of acceptance will be
sent by January 9.

Since the emergence of EuroAmerican STS, the field has gone to great
lengths to mitigate the pitfalls endemic to knowledge production, in
part through the principle of reflexivity. If the field's focus on the
relationships between wider sociopolitical and historical contexts and
the production / appropriation / translation of technoscientific
knowledge has been a point of reinvention, then it might be time for a
reinvention of STS by making the production of STS knowledge itself an
object of study.  In this sense, we hope to explore questions of a
critical STS of STS that stays true to the principle of reflexivity,
and further decenters, rehistoricizes, and pluralizes what has been
taken to be "STS" by asking, "What does STS look like across and
within Borders?" This conference builds on the concept of "border
crossings" by conceptualizing borders not just as geopolitical
boundaries, and thus seeks to understand what STS practice,
intervention, methodology, and thinking look like across and within a
multiplicity of borders.

We intend this conference to help foster a transborder space for STS
practitioners / theorists/ interventionists. We believe STS scholars
and practitioners worldwide would benefit from a plurality of STS
approaches. We ask participants to explore such 'border crossings' as:

·         STS across geopolitical borders — such as Daiwie Fu's
position paper "How Far Can East Asian STS Go?" in EASTS. Fu asks
"whether a distinctive historical experience and thus probably a
shared East Asian STS theoretical perspective" is "indeed different
from simply applying Western STS perspectives to East Asian 'area
studies.' [Then] we indeed would expect distinctive East Asian STS
theories, not to mention distinctive STS stories, case studies, and
histories."

·         STS across academic and activist/interventionist borders,
exploring STS work with/in NGOs, social entrepreneurship
organizations, theatre and community groups, and other 'non-academic'
spaces.

·         STS across new intra-academic disciplinary borders such as
STS and Postcolonial Studies, STS and Feminists Studies, STS and
Environmental Studies, STS and Art, STS and Peace Studies, and other
fields

In the spirit of reflexivity, we ask participants to keep in mind such
questions as:

·         What epistemological and institutional changes need to be
made in our current practices to facilitate exchanges across borders?

·         What is at stake in the move to further diversify STS across
borders?

·         What does it mean to "enroll" previously absent "actors"
into STS?

·         How do we recognize the importance of constructing and
maintaining borders in relation to power?  And how does an STS with a
tendency to deterritorialize grapple with these historical 'border
politics'?

·         How do we avoid the pitfalls of essentializing identities?

·         How do we theorize the tensions between STS as universal and
STS as multiplicities?

Acknowledging that the usual conference settings contribute to the
power differentials of STS across borders, we invite participants to
partake in the integration of innovative modes of exchange including:
sessions in the virtual world of Second Life, submission of pre-
recorded video presentations, and other alternate modes mixed with
traditional conference modes of presentation.  While we recognize that
these approaches do not solve the multiple asymmetries that exist, we
hope that they serve as a beginning for extending the possibilities of
STS across borders.