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Calls for Papers and Proposals

Find here non-event related calls for papers, such as special issue journals. All calls associated with meetings will be found on the Events page.

Edited by Chris Kortright

Updated April 30, 2008

“Science of Science: Conceptualizations and Models of Science”

Updated April 30, 2008

Deadline: May 30th, 2008

Guest Editors: Katy Börner, Indiana University & Andrea Scharnhorst, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

This special issue aims to improve our understanding of the structure and evolution of science by reviewing and advancing existing conceptualizations and models of scholarly activity.

Existing conceptualizations and models of science have been created by scholars from very different disciplines and backgrounds. They have the form of

* philosophical concepts (Bernal, Kuhn, Popper),
* (utopian) stories (Wells, Lem),
* visual drawings (Otlet),
* empirical measurements (Price, Garfield), or
* mathematical theories (Goffman, Yablonski)

among others.

It is our belief that a theoretically grounded and practically useful shared conceptualization of science can provide the intellectual framework to interlink and puzzle together the hundreds of science models in existence today. This is analogous to how meteorologists or seismologists integrate rather different local weather models or seismic hazard predictions into a global coherent model that has higher predictive value and broader coverage. With this issue we aim to start an interdisciplinary discourse towards a science of science models.

The design of such a conceptualization requires the identification of the

* Boundaries of the system or object.
* Basic building blocks of science, e.g., units of analysis or key actors.
* Interactions of building blocks, e.g., via coupled networks.
* Basic mechanisms of growth and change.
* Existing laws (static and dynamic).

Ideally, the conceptualizations can be also presented in a visual form so that disciplinary and cultural boundaries can be bridged more easily.

This issue invites contributions such as

* Reviews of existing conceptualizations of the structure and evolution of science. Each paper should compare and contrast works from multiple authors. Here, we invite contributions by philosophers, sociologists and historians of science as well as scientometricians.
* Historiographic and ethnographic work on how people understand and communicate the structure and dynamics of science via imagery and textual descriptions. Papers in this category should analyze a variety of approaches, including critiques on science conceptualizations.
* Novel conceptualizations and empirically validated models of science and scientific communication. Please discuss epistemic assumptions and disciplinary roots, possible application domains, covered and omitted features of scientific evolution, and model interpretation. Work on ‘ensemble models’ that integrate different mathematical models to arrive at higher quality and broader coverage simulations of science are welcome.

Authors are also welcome to discuss alternative paper proposals with the guest editors.

Deadlines:

Submission of 2-page abstracts: May 30th, 2008

Submission of full papers: Aug 31st, 2008

Reviews back and accepted papers shared: Oct 31st, 2008

Final version due: Nov 30th, 2008

Please send the abstracts to Katy Boerner katy@indiana.edu

Robert W. Gore Materials Innovation Case Studies Project CHF Center for Contemporary History and Policy

Updated April 26, 2008

Deadline: May 31 2008.

The Center for Contemporary History and Policy (CCHP), a unit of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, is seeking scholars to write case studies on contemporary materials innovation. The case studies, typically 25-35 pages in length, will consist of empirical investigations on research and development, production, marketing, and use of new materials since c. 1980. Studies should describe the underlying scientific and technical advances, but the primary analytical orientation should be on the broader social, economic, and political context of materials innovation, including but not limited to: the role of regulation; the influence of standards and standard-setting institutions; the role of organizational factors; the impacts of changing markets and supply chains on corporate innovation; the effects of the changing innovation environment, including globalization.

The CCHP will provide selected scholars with research funds and stipend to research and write the case studies, as well as other administrative support to publish and disseminate the final results. Successful scholars will be required to visit CHF twice for a mid-term review and a final presentation.

Scholars will retain copyright of the case studies, and CHF encourages them to publish the results as scholarly articles and book chapters.

About the Gore Materials Innovation Case Studies Project
New materials pervade our contemporary world. From novel metal alloys and plastics, to semiconductor and biomedical materials, materials are, almost by definition, the fundamental building blocks of the human-built civilization. Nevertheless, our understanding of how materials innovations come to be has so far been extremely limited. While substantial work has been done in the field of innovation studies, materials innovation, by virtue of its invisibility, has been largely neglected barring a few exceptions of bakelite, nylon, and duralumin.

In an age where nanotechnology claims to build new materials from the bottom up, the need to gain a better understanding of materials innovation has come increasingly to the fore. The main goals of the Gore Materials Innovation Case Studies Project are: (1) to illuminate the innovation process of new materials; and (2) to identify current changes in the innovation environment. We hope that the case studies will help governments better prepare for economic and social changes; allow industry leaders to organize better for successful innovation; give universities tools to provide better links to industry; and offer insights to the public and nongovernmental organizations.

Begun in 2006, the Gore Materials Innovation Case Studies Project has completed four case studies during the past year or so. Previous studies include: biodegradable plastics at BASF; chemically amplified photoresists at IBM; marine anti-fouling paint at Rohm & Haas; and non-oil based cleaning products at Sun & Earth. These case studies will soon be posted on the CHF website at http://www.chemheritage.org.

How to Apply

Submissions should include:

Cover letter including the following information: name; mailing address to be used for future correspondence; telephone and fax numbers; e-mail address; present rank and institution name; date Ph.D. received or expected; need for work authorization in the US (for non-US citizens); and title of your research project.
Case study proposal of no more than 1,000 words in length.
Curriculum vitae.
(For graduate students only) One letter of recommendation sent directly to the Program Coordinator for Innovation.

Please send the complete package to:
Chi Chan, Program Coordinator for Innovation
cchan@chemheritage.org
Chemical Heritage Foundation
315 Chestnut St
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Proposals will be reviewed by CCHP and outside reviewers, and candidates will be notified of results by the end of June 2008. We expect the draft of the selected case studies to be completed by early 2009.

For more information about the activities of CCHP, please visit our website at http://www.chemheritage.org/about/about-cchp.html

To make further inquiries about the project and/or application procedure, please contact Hyungsub Choi, Senior Manager for Electronics and Innovation Studies at 215.873.8231 or hchoi@chemheritage.org or Chi Chan, Program Coordinator for Innovation at 215.873.8249 or cchan@chemheritage.org.

Call for Papers: Environmental Justice

Updated April 15, 2008

Deadline: May 1, 2008

Environmental Justice, a new quarterly peer-reviewed journal, will be the central forum for the research, debate, and discussion of the equitable treatment and involvement of all people, especially minority and low-income populations, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The Journal will explore the adverse and disparate environmental burden impacting marginalized populations and communities all over the world. The Journal will draw upon the expertise and perspectives of all parties involved in environmental justice struggles: communities, industry, academia, government, and nonprofit organizations

The Journal is seeking papers on: human health and the environment, occupational health, science and technology, land use, public policy, urban planning, legal history as it pertains to environmental justice, sociology and anthropology of environmental health disparities.

Instructions for authors are at www.liebertpub.com/env

and manuscripts should be submitted at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/environmentaljustice

Call for Papers: EMOTION, SPACE AND SOCIETY

Updated April 15, 2008

New Journal for 2008

The editors of Emotion, Space and Society invite submissions from across the full spectrum of the social sciences and humanities.

Research articles and opinion pieces should investigate the multiplicity of spaces and places that produce and are produced by emotional and affective life. We encourage a broad range of theoretical and methodological engagements with emotion as a social, cultural and spatial phenomenon, and welcome innovative presentational formats.

To submit your article online, go to: http://ees.elsevier.com/emospa/

For more information on Emotion, Space and Society, please email one
of the Editors named below, or visit us online at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/locate/emospa

For queries about book reviews and review articles, please contact:

Bettina van Hoven, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
b.van.hoven@frw.rug.nl

Deborah Thien, California State University, USA
dthien@csulb.edu

Call for Papers: East Asian Science, Technology and Society (EASTS)

Updated March 16, 2008

About EASTS
East Asian Science, Technology and Society (EASTS) is an interdisciplinary, quarterly journal based in Taiwan and co-edited by editorial boards in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the OEA (Outside East Asia). EASTS aims to promote both ‘Science, Technology and Society studies’ (STS) as well as ‘Science and Technology studies’ (S&TS) in the growing East Asia STS community. The journal contains research and commentary on how society and culture, and the dynamics of science, technology and medicine, are mutually shaped and co-produced. EASTS will offer fresh STS perspectives, not only because the East Asian STS community shares similar cultural and colonial history, similar geological and biological composition, but also because our similar socioeconomic and political positions are in contrast to the West.

EASTS wishes to promote STS studies not only in East Asia but also around the world. Although there are several well-established STS journals in the English-speaking world, most are published in North America and Europe and mainly aim at academic readers in western society. EASTS on the other hand, aspires to coordinate and facilitate networks form Northeast Asian STS communities, and to promote Southeast Asian STS and even expand Asian STS studies into an internationally open and inclusive STS community.

Editor-in-Chief:
Daiwie Fu (National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan)

Associate Editors:
Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia /University of
Wisconsin-Madison, US)
Sungook Hong (Seoul National University, South Korea)
Togo Tsukahara (Kobe University, Japan)
Chia-Ling Wu (Taiwan University, Taiwan)

Future Special Issues
The Hwang Scandal and Stem Cell Research in Korea, (Issue 3, 2008)
Guest Editor: Sungook Hong

Technology, Family and Gender in East Asia, (Issue 4, 2008)
Guest Editor: Francesca Bray

Gender and Reproductive Technologies, (Issue 5, 2008)
Guest Editors: Adele Clarke, Azumi Tsuge and Chia-Ling Wu

Nanoscape of East Asia, (Issue 6, 2008)
Guest editors: Sang-Wook Yi

Information for contributors and Manuscript format and other details,
please see: http://sts.nthu.edu.tw/easts/forcontributors.htm

If you want to know more about EASTS journal, welcome to visit the
website: http://sts.nthu.edu.tw/easts

Call For Papers: Special Issue: Women and Agriculture

Updated March 16, 2008

Deadline for submissions is May 1, 2008.

As agriculture becomes increasingly globalized, feminist concerns about women and agriculture revolve around issues of food security, social justice, and sustainability. Women across the globe have always played major roles in agricultural production, contributing substantially to food production and food security. Women produce almost half the world's food, but they often work in difficult conditions with low pay and inadequate access to land and capital. In developing countries women produce 60 to 80 percent of food, but their work has often been discounted. Recently war, HIV/AIDS, and migration of men have contributed to a feminization of agricultural labor in many regions of the world. Despite women's considerable role in agricultural production, they are markedly absent at the policy level in multinational corporations, international institutions, and national and state governments that determine directions for agriculture. Women are also underrepresented in agricultural science, which plays a crucial role in shaping the future of agriculture.

The intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality are, and have been historically, central to the politics of agriculture, structuring who produces food, who benefits from this global food system, and who eats. Women agriculturalists in the Global South are particularly vulnerable to free trade agreements that advantage agribusiness in Western nations.

Women's resistance to the increasing globalization and corporatization of food include forming women's agricultural networks, working for fair trade, supporting organic agriculture, improving animal health and welfare, and contesting genetically modified organisms. Scholarship on women farmers raises fascinating theoretical debates on women's bodies, multiple identities, and technologies. Feminist science studies address issues of genetically engineered food and women's agricultural knowledge and seed saving.

For this special issue we invite international, transnational, and comparative studies of women and agriculture; submissions that engage feminist theoretical and historical analyses of women and agriculture; and analyses of racial, ethnic, and gendered dimensions of agriculture. We seek manuscripts on women and sustainable agriculture, on women in leadership and decision-making positions, and in feminist science studies pertaining to women's knowledge and changing agricultural practices.

Carolyn Sachs, Professor of Rural Sociology and Women's Studies, Penn State University, United States, and Margaret Alston, Professor of Social Work and Human Services and Director of the Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University, Australia, will serve as guest editors of the special issue on women and agriculture.

Click here for Submission Guidelines.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/page/Signs/instruct.html

Call For Papers: Darwin and the Evolution of Victorian Studies

Updated March 16, 2008

Deadline for submissions is July 15, 2008

2009 is both the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species. Victorian Studies will mark the occasion with a special issue on “Darwin and the Evolution of Victorian Studies.”

The study of Darwin and the relationship of his life and work to Victorian culture has become an industry. In the past twenty-five years alone we have witnessed the publication of the first fifteen volumes of the Darwin correspondence, Darwin’s 1836-1844 notebooks, major Darwin biographies by Janet Browne and Adrian Desmond and James Moore, and important books by such scholars as Gillian Beer, Bert Bender, Peter Bowler, Sandra Herbert, George Levine, Ronald Numbers, Robert Richards, Rebecca Stott, and Robert Young. In recent years, the study of Darwin has begun to take new directions through examinations of Darwin’s writings beyond the Origin and the Journal of Researches, investigations of Darwin’s impact on previously overlooked areas (e.g., art and visual culture, psychology and the emotions), and new approaches to Darwinism’s impact on Victorian attitudes to gender and courtship, race and empire, literature and publishing. The fact that Darwin’s complete writings and 5,000 pieces of his correspondence have been made available in searchable online databases promises to open up Darwin scholarship even further.

Where is the study of Darwin and Darwinism in Victorian culture heading?
This special issue will attempt to showcase work that pursues these new approaches or offers even newer ones. I invite essays on all aspects of Darwin and Darwin studies in the Victorian period from scholars working in a range of areas, including history and history of science, literary and cultural criticism, art history, and history of the book.

Essays of not more than 8,000 words (including endnotes) should be prepared in MLA Style. Submissions and inquiries should be sent directly to the issue’s guest
editor:

Jonathan Smith
Humanities Department
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Road
Dearborn, MI 48128
jonsmith@umich.edu

Call for Papers: 'Nonhuman Feminisms' Special Issue

Updated February 15, 2008

Forthcoming special issue of Feminist Theory
Editors: Myra J. Hird (Queen’s University, Canada) and Celia Roberts (Lancaster University)

The Deadline: December 1 2009

Feminist Theory is inviting papers for a special issue on feminism and the nonhuman, to be edited by Myra J. Hird and Celia Roberts. Feminist scholars and activists recognise that ‘the human’ materially encompasses a very small proportion of the enormous diversity of living and nonliving matter on Earth. Environmental feminists, for instance, have long attempted to engage with the biosphere from the perspective of humanity as a recently arrived, temporary and rather unruly tenant. At the same time, feminists are cognizant that fetishistic engagements with science and technology (for instance in calls to address environmental crises through technological fixes and in assumptions that solutions to world problems such as poverty will come from scientific ‘discoveries’ such as genetically modified foods) necessitate remembering the majority of humanity, whose poor material conditions demonstrate that techno-scientifically-driven ‘progress’ is unevenly distributed and can work to entrench existing inequities. These tensions necessarily engage long-standing philosophy of science debates concerning larger ontological and epistemological assumptions, to which feminist scholars have provided significant, timely and diverse inputs. We particularly welcome theoretical and/or empirical interdisciplinary contributions from emerging and established scholars interested in engaging different conceptualisations of what constitutes the nonhuman (can the nonhuman be ontologically differentiated from the human, for instance?) and different epistemological approaches, including standpoint approaches to the body, posthumanism and so on. We also encourage contributions concerned with visual cultures (film, video, art and other media) and the visual forms the non-human might take.

Some questions you might consider: · What does feminist theory have to offer to debates about the nonhuman? · Is there a nonhuman feminist perspective? · What are the feminist implications of the nonhuman? · How might feminist theory move beyond the conflation of nonhuman with animal? · How might a feminist ethics approach the nonhuman? · How might we theorise sexual difference from a nonhuman perspective? Does sexual difference make a difference from a nonhuman perspective? · How might the nonhuman contribute to longstanding debates about race, class, disability and so on? · How might feminists visualise the non-human?

The deadline for submission of articles is 1 December 2009. Refer to the journal for submission guidelines regarding length and format. Please send your article electronically and with six hard copies to Myra J. Hird, email hirdm@queensu.ca and Celia Roberts, email celia.roberts@lancaster.ac.uk. Mailing address: Myra J. Hird, Sociology Department, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6.

Call for Proposals: Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the Twenty-First Century

Updated December 12, 2007

General Editors: Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, NYU Press

The Biopolitics series examines the intersection of various practices of medicine and technoscience with human bodies and lives through an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing in particular on the ways in which the practices of medical, technological, and scientific institutions function in the modern world. The series also seeks to understand how society and culture foster the new developments in these fields that “work on” human bodies.

The editors welcome submissions from scholars in medical sociology, medical anthropology, science and technology studies, bioethics, gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, and other interdisciplinary fields, and especially seek projects that offer new theoretical insights about biopolitics, analyze health-related topics in fresh ways, or take up an intellectual problem in relation to biopolitics.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Submissions should take the form of a 3-5 page proposal outlining the intent and scope of the project, its merits in comparison to existing texts, and the audience it is designed to reach. You should also include a detailed Table of Contents, 2-3 sample chapters, and a current copy of your curriculum vitae.

More information can be found at http://www.nyupress.org/biopolitics_series.php

Call for Manuscripts/Proposals: Louisiana State University Press

Updated September 19, 2007

Louisiana State University Press is accepting book-length manuscripts and proposals on a wide range of topics in science and technology studies. If you have a completed manuscript or proposal, please contact acquisitions editor Joseph B. Powell at LSU Press (jpowell@lsu.edu)(http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/) or contact Dr. Wesley Shrum (shrum@lsu.edu) for further information and inquiries.