STORED IN MEMORY
The 10th Annual SIGCIS Conference
St. Louis, Missouri, USA | October 14, 2018
The Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS] welcomes submissions to their annual conference
meetings.sigcis.org
Proposal Due Date: June 30, 2018
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Eden Medina
Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington
THEME
Much of a computer’s work is made possible not by users’ direct actions, but by off-screen manipulations of its memory: storage, allocation, saving, deletion, registration, collection, partitioning, defragmentation, and so on. These processes have been crucial to the computer’s mass popularization during the 20th century and into the 21st—from the first stored program computer, to the rise of the consumer software industry, to the unpredictable and often troubling emergence of the Internet of Things, predictive analytics, and data harvesting. Yet encoding in computer memory is never obvious, given, or inert; choices about how to store and structure data inevitably inform the meaning that can be made with computing machines. In other words, all exercises in memory are also exercises in obfuscation, exclusion, and forgetting.
Similarly, historians, theorists, and archivists of information technologies depend on the often imperceptible operations of memory: from the delicacy of human past experiences taken down in oral history, to presences and gaps “captured” in the archive. This problem of what is remembered, and what is forgotten, is the disciplinary condition that renders history as much art as it is science.
In honor of the 10th annual SIGCIS conference, STORED IN MEMORY 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 “memory,” broadly and imaginatively construed. Areas of engagement may include:
SIGCIS is especially welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry, supporting both disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of technology, and with respect to 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; digital humanities; critical studies of big data and machine learning; studies of women, gender, and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality; disability studies and the medical humanities; 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 takes place on the final day of the 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/2E6qgko
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 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 are welcome; 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, 2018. 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@ucdavis.edu].
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Submissions are due June 30, 2018. Applicants should download, fill out and follow the instructions on the application cover sheet athttp://meetings.sigcis.org/call-for-papers.html. All submissions will require:
Please Note: Individuals who have submitted to 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.allen@gatech.edu].
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 space to note whether 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, therefore 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, New York University (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings)
Andrew Russell, SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SIGCIS Chair)
Stephanie Dick, University of Pennsylvania
Gerardo Con Diaz, University of California, Davis (SIGCIS Treasurer)
Kera Allen, Georgia Institute of Technology (Conference Assistant)
Nabeel Siddiqui, College of William and Mary (Conference Assistant)