Proposed by Sarah Pfatteicher and Bruce Seely

The three papers in this session are responsive to the program committee’s call for papers that focus on the question of “The Historian and Other Disciplines.”   We propose to focus attention on the enduring connection between SHOT and its members and engineers.  The linkages exist at several levels, including institutional ties (SHOT and the American Society for Engineering Education), a common intellectual interest in the history of technology, and shared personal concerns about the education of engineering students.  We propose to explore how these ties and connections have changed over time.

The opening paper in the session (Seely) will explore the deep roots that founding members of SHOT had with engineering education and the ASEE during the 1950s.  Primary attention will be devoted to Mel Kranzberg, who held a key position in ASEE during the years he worked to create the Society for the History of Technology.  The patterns visible at that time have continued to play a role in the work of historians of technology both as scholars and as participants in the education of engineering students.  Two other papers will examine both the continuities and the changes in this relationship during the intervening decades, focusing on activities within the specific orbit of ASEE.  The first (Pfatteicher & Lohmann) will provide a Staudenmaier-like analysis of the primary publication of ASEE, the Journal of Engineering Education.  The intention is to examine how engineers have seen their roles changing — and the implications of those changes for historians of technology.   The final paper (Neeley) will consider the changes and continuities between engineering and the history of technology from the perspective of the ASEE’s Liberal Education Division (LED).  This is the group that Mel Kranzberg chaired in the 1950s and which provided a springboard for his efforts to form SHOT.  Moreover, historians of technology have remained active in LED ever since.  This paper will consider how the organization’s goals, as well as the roles of historians of technology within LED, have changed.  The paper will focus on the period since 1980.

Gary Downey, an anthropologist with a career-long interest in engineers and engineering education, will chair and comment on the session.  He has been active in the effort to establish the Prometheans as a special interest group within SHOT.