A panel discussion at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, sponsored by the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Johns Hopkins University Press, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
In 1983, SHOT’s Silver Anniversary meeting commenced with a plenary session at the National Museum of American History, in the Leonard Carmichael Auditorium, named in honor of the Smithsonian Secretary who was instrumental in establishing the museum and who also was active in SHOT affairs during in its early years. The featured speaker was John Staudenmaier, then representative of SHOT’s new generation, whose talk was titled “What SHOT Hath Wrought and What SHOT Hath Not: Reflections on Twenty-Five Years of the History of Technology.” The commentators were Melvin Kranzberg and John Rae, two of the society’s founders. The remarks by all three were published in the October 1984 Technology and Culture, the journal’s one-hundredth issue.
The 2007 SHOT plenary was intended to reprise of the 1983 event based on the fiftieth-anniversary theme Looking Back/Looking Beyond. As before, the aim was to attain a generational perspective, with Staudenmaier again involved but this time in the role of moderator of three other presentations—the first by the one member of SHOT’s founding cadre who has remained engaged with the society from the start, the other two by scholars who became active in the society after it was well established and have divergent perspectives as they consider what it has presently wrought and look to the future.
Publication of the remarks, along with Staudenmaier’s comments, is slated for a special issue of Technology and Culture, its two-hundredth, in 2009.
The Program
Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Steven W. Usselman, Georgia Institute of Technology
President, Society for the History of Technology
John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., University of Detroit Mercy
Editor-in-Chief, Technology and Culture
The Speakers
Thomas P. Hughes, University of Pennsylvania, “SHOT’s Founding and Founders: Themes and Problems”
Wiebe Bijker, University of Maastricht, “Globalization and Vulnerability: Challenges and Opportunities for SHOT”
Rebecca Herzig, Bates College, “A Thing for Stories”
Comment and Summary
John M. Staudenmaier, S.J., University of Detroit Mercy
Discussion
The Sponsors
The Rockefeller Archive Center, a division of Rockefeller University, was established in 1974 to collect, process, and make available for scholarly research the papers of the Rockefeller family and the records of various philanthropic and educational institutions funded by the family. The Center’s documents, photographs, and films provide unique insights into the arts, African-American history, education, international relations and economic development, labor, medicine, philanthropy, politics, religion, the social sciences, social welfare, and women’s history. Research inquiries may be directed to archive@rockefeller.edu.
The Johns Hopkins University Press is America’s oldest university press. Currently it publishes more than 200 new books each year and 58 scholarly periodicals, including Technology and Culture. Through Project MUSE, the Press also provides online access to 250 journals. It continues to uphold the ideal set forth by President Daniel Coit Gilman when the Press was founded in 1878: “It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge, and to diffuse it not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures—but far and wide.” The contact for Project MUSE is muse@muse.jhu.edu.
The Chemical Heritage Foundation, through the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, hosts an international scholarship program and supports independent research aimed at preserving and publishing the history of the chemical and molecular sciences and industries, so that diverse audiences may grasp their importance in the creation of the modern world. Visiting fellows have access to the Othmer Library of Chemical History and other CHF resources, including art and archival collections and oral histories. The fellowship coordinator may be contacted at fellowships@chemheritage.org.