Hi folks - Please find below the call for papers for the 2014 SIGCIS workshop, to be held on Sunday, November 9 in Dearborn Michigan. The theme for this year is “Computing the Big Picture,” and we are very fortunate to have Prof. Jennifer Light as our keynote speaker. The full CFP is posted at http://www.sigcis.org/workshop14; and the submission deadline is a little bit later than usual this year - August 10. Please let me know if you have questions, etc. We’ll be posting the CFP in various places (H-NET, SHOT, HSS, etc) in the next few days. If you don’t see it pop up in places you would expect, please let me know, or re-post it yourself. Cheers, Andy —————— COMPUTING THE BIG PICTURE: SITUATING INFORMATIONT TECHNOLOGY IN BROADER HISTORICAL NARRATIVES SIGCIS Workshop 2014. November 9, 2014, Dearborn, Michigan Keynote Speaker: Jennifer S. Light, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Submission Deadline: August 10, 2014 The Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS – http://www.sigcis.org) welcomes submissions for our annual one-day scholarly workshop to be held on Sunday, November 9 2014 in Dearborn, Michigan. This is immediately after the end of the regular annual meeting of our parent organization, the Society for the History of Technology, details of which are available from http://www.historyoftechnology.org/features/annual_meeting/. Questions about the workshop should be addressed to Andrew Russell (Stevens Institute of Technology), who is serving as chair of the workshop organizing committee. Email arussell@stevens.edu. WORKSHOP THEME: When the history of computing began to emerge as a scholarly field forty years ago its first practitioners and consumers were computing pioneers, who favored technical accounts focused on the first electronic computers. Since then the field has developed in many directions, attracting scholars trained in a variety of historical traditions and working on a broad range of topics, time periods, and geographical settings. Work on the history of computing is increasingly influenced by methods and questions from broader fields and, in turn, is influencing scholars in other communities. This undermines the traditional, hardware centered, master narrative of computing and challenges us to integrate computing into a variety of broader historical stories. As a result, scholars working in or near the history of computing face some big questions: * What is the place of “the history of computing in the history of technology,” 26 years on from Michael Mahoney’s classic article on that question? * How can traditional historical narratives in areas such as gender studies, economic history, or environmental history be challenged by taking seriously the role of information technology? Conversely, what might these narratives bring to deepen our understanding of information technology itself? * Can historical questions and methods help to provide a coherent framework for new interdisciplinary areas such as software studies, Internet studies, and information studies? * What does today’s history of computing literature have to offer to computer scientists and other audiences without specialist historical training? * How can we take seriously the complexities and unique features of computing technology while still producing work that transcends technical detail to tell stories and advance arguments of scholarly interest? We expect most submissions to focus on particular stories rather than on directly answering these weighty questions, but would appreciate it if presenters made an effort to connect their stories to broader narratives and in doing to provide a particular practical answer to one of the questions. SIGCIS has a tradition of welcoming all types of contributions related to the history of computing and information, whether or not there is an explicit connection with the annual theme. Our membership is international and interdisciplinary, and our members examine the history of information technologies and their place within society from a variety of scholarly perspectives including the history of technology, business history, labor history, social history, the history of science, science studies, communications, gender and sexuality studies, computing, and museum studies. SUBMISSION AND FURTHER DETAILS: Proposals for entire sessions and individual presenters are both welcome. We hope to run special sessions featuring dissertations in progress and other works in progress. The workshop is a great opportunity to get helpful feedback on your projects in a relaxed and supportive environment. All proposals will be subject to a peer review process based on abstracts. For information on submission formats and links to our online submission system please view the full call at http://www.sigcis.org/workshop14. As planning progresses we will post updates, the full program, and precirculated materials there. We will provide acceptance decisions by August 24. TRAVEL SUPPORT: 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. Awards are usually in the $200-$500 range and cannot cover the full cost of attending the meeting.