[SIGCIS-Members] SIGCIS 2019 CFP: EXCEPTION ERROR: Fatal, Illegal, Unknown | Due June 15

Thu Apr 11 11:37:07 PDT 2019

Dear SIGCIS Community,

The SIGCIS Conference Organizing Committee is pleased to *announce the CFP
for our 2019 SIGCIS Conference, **EXCEPTION ERROR: Fatal, Illegal, Unknown*.
Our keynote for the event is Safiya U. Noble, Associate Professor in the
Departments of Information Studies and African American Studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles.

The SIGCIS Conference will take place *October 27th, 2019 in Milan, Italy, *on
the Sunday of the SHOT conference. *Abstracts are due June 15.*

Below you can find the full CFP for this year's conference. These details
can also be found at our conference website: meetings.sigcis.org

Please circulate widely, and we hope to see you in Milan!

-Laine Nooney, Andrew Russell, Gerardo Con Diaz, Stephanie Dick, and Kera
Allen

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EXCEPTION ERROR: Fatal, Illegal, Unknown

Milan, Italy | October 27, 2019

The Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS]
welcomes submissions to their annual conference

Proposal Due Date: June 15, 2019

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Safiya U. Noble

Associate Professor, Departments of Information Studies and African
American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

THEME

Our experience of contemporary computing systems can feel unobtrusive and
seamless—until it’s not. In the simplest sense, an exception error occurs
when a computational operation fails to resolve, revealing something that
was not anticipated or cannot be computed, a breakdown in the norms of
standardization that govern modern computing systems. These errors force us
to recognize the profound frictions inherent in computing, frictions made
legible in web page request denials, fatal system error dialogue boxes,
unhappy Macs and blue screens, safe modes and red rings of death.
Negotiating these errors is a material, programmatic, aesthetic, and above
all, human activity.

Beyond the technical, material, and social dimensions of the “exception
error,” we might also see this concept as a provocation for history
itself.  Who and what are typically regarded as “exceptions" in the history
of computing and information technologies? What uses and misuses have been
anticipated? How can we productively make our conception of history slow
down, jam, or stop working altogether? What are the limits of our
historiographic situation? And as we investigate these questions, might we
discover that the people, objects, knowledges, and disciplines so often
treated as “exceptions” in the status quo of computing history are actually
that history’s most revealing actors, its most central artifacts?

The 2019 SIGCIS Conference invites scholars, museum and archive
professionals, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers
across the disciplinary spectrum to submit abstracts related to the
historical conditions of computing. We are especially interested in (but
not limited to) work that relates to the theme of exception and error,
broadly and imaginatively construed. Areas of engagement may include:

   -

   errors, viruses, crashes, hacks, breakdowns, failures, risks
   -

   bodies, subjectivities, and personhoods unaccounted for in computing
   systems
   -

   theories of uncomputability
   -

   unanticipated uses and misuses
   -

   the creation of “users”
   -

   standards and workflows
   -

   breakdowns in policies, regulations, norms, expectations
   -

   decline, obsolescence, maintenance, repair, recycling, afterlives
   -

   the limits of historical representation
   -

   centering the peripheries of computing history
   -

   archival gaps and silences

SIGCIS is especially welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We
maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry, supporting
disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of
technology and promoting diversity in STEM. We welcome submissions from:
the histories of technology, computing, information, and science; science
and technology studies; oral history and archival studies; critical studies
of big data and machine learning; studies of women, gender, and sexuality;
studies of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality; film, media, and game
studies; software and code studies; network and internet histories; music,
sound studies, and art history; and all other applicable domains.

The annual SIGCIS Conference begins immediately after the regular annual
meeting of our parent organization, the Society for the History of
Technology [SHOT]. Information about the annual SHOT conference can be
found at: https://bit.ly/2rG75Ks

SUBMISSION FORMATS

SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-20 minute papers, 3-4 paper
panel proposals, works-in-progress (see below), and non-traditional
proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, hands-on workshops,
etc.

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

The Works-in-Progress (WiP) session will be a workshop wherein participants
will discuss their work in small group sessions. We invite works in
progress—articles, chapters, dissertation prospectuses—of 10,000 words or
less (longer works must be selectively edited to meet this length). We
especially encourage submissions from graduate students, early career
scholars, and scholars who are new to SIGCIS. Authors who submit a WiP will
also commit to reading (in advance) two other WiPs, discussing them in a
small group setting, and providing written feedback on one of those WiPs.
Scholars who would like to participate in this session without submitting
their own WiP may also apply; we ask that they commit to reading (in
advance) at least two of the WiPs.

Submissions for WiP only require a 350-400 word abstract, but applicants
should plan to circulate their max-10,000-word WiPs no later than September
30, 2019. Scholars who would like to be a reader of WiPs, please email a
brief bio or 1-page CV, along with your areas of interest and expertise, to
Gerardo Con Diaz [condiaz at ucdavis.edu].

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Submissions are due June 15, 2019. Applicants should download, fill out and
follow the instructions on the application cover sheet at
http://meetings.sigcis.org/call-for-papers.html. All submissions will
require:

●      350-400 word abstract (full panel proposals should additionally
include a 200-250 word panel abstract in addition to 3-4 paper abstracts)

●      1-page CV or resume

Please Note: Individuals already scheduled to participate on the main SHOT
program are welcome to submit an additional proposal to our workshop, but
should make sure that there is no overlap between the two presentations.
However, SIGCIS may choose to give higher priority to submissions from
those not already presenting at SHOT. Questions regarding submission
procedure should be sent to Kera Allen [kera.jones at gmail.com].

TRAVEL AWARD

The top financial priority of SIGCIS is the support of travel expenses for
graduate students, visiting faculty without institutional travel support,
and others who would be unable to attend the meeting without travel
assistance. The submission cover sheet includes a box to check if you fall
into one of these categories and would like to be considered for an award.
These is no separate application form, though depending on the volume of
requests and available resources we may need to contact you for further
information before making a decision.

Any award offered is contingent on registering for and attending the SIGCIS
Conference. Please note that SHOT does not classify the SIGCIS Conference
as participation in the SHOT annual meeting, so acceptance by SIGCIS does
not imply eligibility for the SHOT travel grant program.

Details of available awards are at http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward.

SIGCIS CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>, New York University (SIGCIS
Vice-Chair of Meetings)
Andrew Russell <http://www.arussell.org/>, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
(SIGCIS Chair)
Stephanie Dick <https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/stephanie-dick>,
University of Pennsylvania
Gerardo Con Diaz <https://www.condiaz.com/>, University of California,
Davis (SIGCIS Treasurer)
Kera Allen
<https://hts.gatech.edu/people/person/e2f55e07-937a-571a-a4f8-c32c87fef19d>,
Georgia Institute of Technology (Conference Assistant)
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