Call for Papers--CBI for Computing, Information, and Culture's Virtual Symposium 

Automation by Design: 

Politics, Culture and Landscape in an Age of Machine That Learn

Automation by Design is a global, interdisciplinary, virtual CBI symposium on the politics and culture of digital automation. We welcome papers in a broad range of fields across the humanities and social sciences. These include history, STS, sociology, anthropology, media studies, policy, legal studies, geography, communication, rhetoric, information studies, and philosophy.

The platformization of society, fueled by automation and machine learning, impacts IT users in deleterious, discriminatory, democracy-threatening, and at times deadly, ways that intersect and compound. This symposium seeks papers that explore how automation—from its algorithmic and architectural design to its structuring, materiality, maintenance, and use—has developed jointly with social politics. We are especially interested in papers that address education, law, capitalism, labor, science, medicine, leisure, privacy/security, surveillance, the body, and the environment.

The event will be a 1.5-day virtual symposium to be held Friday through Saturday, February 17 &18, 2023.  Presenting authors agree to submit a draft paper by a deadline preceding the event (to facilitate the delivery of feedback through videoconferencing workshops prior to the event), and a revised paper for consideration to an edited volume to be published with a major academic publisher.

To apply: Please send a 300 to 450-word abstract that includes discussion of research themes/questions, methods, and sources and a 2pp. CV. Please send (single PDF) to cbi@umn.edu by the Deadline of April 29, 2022. (For accepted applicants, papers will be due Jan. 6, 2023).  

 Program Committee:

Dr. Jeffrey Yost (@JeffreyYost6), CBI Dir. & Res. Prof., HSTM, Univ. of Minnesota

Dr. Gerardo Con Diaz, Assoc. Prof., STS, Univ. of California, Davis & Stanford Univ. Fellow

Dr. Honghong Tinn, Asst. Prof., HSTM & ECE, Univ. of Minnesota  

Dr. Colette Perold, Asst. Prof., Media Studies, Univ. of Colorado