“The Micro as Macro”: Narrating World Histories of Science, Technology, and Environment, May 5th, 2023 at UC Santa Cruz
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.
This is an in-person conference and rhe deadline for proposals is Saturday, April 1, 2023.
Proposals should include a paper title and 300-word abstract. Please email your proposal to cwh@ucsc.edu by April 1.
We look forward to reading your proposals!
Clara Bergamini, Piper Milton, Alexyss McClellan-Ufugusuku, Jinghong Zhang (Confernce Organizing Committee)
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