• Tom Misa (Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago)
• Dick van Lente (Erasmus University, Rotterdam), vanlente@fhk.eur.nl

This conference offers the opportunity to explore themes where technological, social, and cultural developments interact in especially significant ways. We therefore invite historians in every field to propose individual papers or panel sessions -- on any topic and any historical period - involving the intersection of technological, social, and cultural change.

Among the themes we have in mind are:

• technology and colonial practices
• transnational technologies and European integration
• city of Berlin as "technopolis"
• freezing and thawing Cold War divides through technological systems
• technical experts and political power
• modernism in art, popular culture, and technology
• systems, catastrophes, and risk
• designing the ideal community (utopianism, urban design, etc.)
• dynamics of network societies
• gender, modernity, and technology
• technologies and environmental change
• consumption, design, and consumers
• creating landscapes and societies (e.g. polders, highways, cities)
• strategies for writing technological history in/as "general history"
• technologies of life, death, and reproduction

Individual paper proposals of 250-500 words and/or proposals for complete sessions (abstracts for 3 papers, plus names of chair and commentator) should be submitted with the ESSHC preregistration before 1 April 2003. We would also welcome proposals for non-traditional sessions (to fit within the standard 2-hour slot) including poster presentations, author-meets-critics sessions, or discussion-oriented roundtables. The technology cluster is one of the ESSHC's 28 wide-ranging themes. Before proposing a paper or session, please see the detailed instructions at http://www.iit.edu/~misa/esshc/. Further information on the ESSHC can be found at http://www.iisg.nl/esshc.