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<div style="display:inline"><font face="georgia,serif"><font size="4"><font size="2">apologies for cross-posting***</font></font></font></div>
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<div align="center"><font face="georgia,serif"><b>TRACK 13</b> <br>
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<div><font face="georgia,serif"><a href="https://www.stsitaliaconf2020.com/call-for-abstracts" target="_blank"><br>
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<div><a href="https://a7f67c59-118d-44bf-9b5c-7aae7deef875.filesusr.com/ugd/8486e6_6e8bbea8c97347eb8f6982d65b9d7507.pdf" target="_blank"><b><font size="4" face="georgia,serif"><span style="font-family:sans-serif">Disappearance, maintenance and reinvention in the biographies </span><span style="font-family:sans-serif">of technical objects.</span></font></b></a></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"><a href="https://a7f67c59-118d-44bf-9b5c-7aae7deef875.filesusr.com/ugd/8486e6_6e8bbea8c97347eb8f6982d65b9d7507.pdf" target="_blank"><i><b><font size="2"><span style="font-family:sans-serif"><span style="font-family:sans-serif">Perspectives on the transformative vulnerabilities of technology at the intersection </span><span style="font-family:sans-serif">between STS and Media Studies</span></span></font></b></i></a>
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<div style="text-align:left"><font face="georgia,serif"><u style="font-size:10pt;line-height:17px">Deadline for abstract
submission: <b>February</b></u><strong style="text-align:center;line-height:1.5"><span style="font-size:10pt"><u> 9,
2020</u></span></strong></font></div>
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<div style="text-align:left"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="text-align:center;line-height:1.5"><span style="font-size:10pt"><u>Please find attached
the call.</u></span></span></font></div>
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<div style="text-align:left"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:10pt">Convenors:</span></font><br></div><div style="text-align:left"><font size="2">Sergio Minniti, University of Padova, <a href="mailto:sergio.minniti@unipd.it" target="_blank">sergio.minniti@unipd.it</a></font></div><div style="text-align:left"><font size="2">Diego Cavallotti, University of Cagliari, <a href="mailto:diego.cavallotti@unica.it" target="_blank">diego.cavallotti@unica.it</a><br></font></div><div style="text-align:left"><font size="2">Simone Dotto, University of Udine, <a href="mailto:simone.dotto@uniud.it" target="_blank">simone.dotto@uniud.it</a></font></div><div style="text-align:left"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:10pt"><br>
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<div><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:12pt"></span><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:1.5">Over
the last years, we have seen an increasing interest in the overlapping
areas of STS and Media Studies towards examining the multifaceted
vulnerabilities of technical objects. Within STS, research on
maintenance and repair practices has been attracting growing attention
since the works of Susan Leigh Star (1999) and Marianne de Laet and
Annemarie Mol (2000), which set the ground for the study of the
vulnerability of sociotechnical networks. A number of contributions have
then addressed issues relating to obsolescence and fragility,
durability and tinkering, adaptation and re-use, to the extent that a
distinctive interdisciplinary field of inquiry – Maintenance and repair
studies (MRS) – has emerged. Among the valuable insights offered by this
field of inquiry is the transformative power of moments of
vulnerability, which becomes evident when we consider how innovation
emerges from obsolescence, maintenance and repair, and how new
sociomaterial, ethical and political orders, as well as new geographies
of responsibility are established through the practices that deal with
technical vulnerability.<br>Similarly, in Media Studies, growing
attention has been paid to the to the ever-shifting relations between
“old” and “new” media, to the suppressed, the outmoded and the
technological dead ends in media history – see, for instance, Huhtamo
and Parikka’s Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and
Implications (2011) - to how “old” media may survive in residual
conditions and be reactivated or reinvented in multiple ways (see
Acland’s Residual Media [2007]), and to how allegedly “dead media” can
be materially revived by a politically infomed art method which Jussi
Parikka and Garnet Hertz notoriously described as “hardware hacking”
(2012).<br>Way beyond the strictly historiographic level, the discussion
on these topics raised new social concerns, problematising the effects
of the planned obsolescence pursued by commercial industry as well as
the material aspects of mass-produced technology – which enhanced a
focus on the conditions of hardware circulation, accumulation, disposal,
decomposition, recycling and renewal also from an ecological angle.<br>This
growing awareness that the study of media change should include their
life cycles as material objects, reflects a more general interest in
taking into account the moments of transformation in the social
biographies of media technologies which often correspond to their
critical moments of vulnerability.<br>We aim to enable a fruitful
discussion between exponents from the fields of STS and Media Studies
concerning the manifold processes of transformation fostered by or
related to the vulnerabilities of technical objects over the course of
their biographies. Thus, we call for papers which address, among others,
questions about differences in understandings and vocabularies as well
as explorations of empirical, methodological, and theoretical
overlappings.</span></font></div>
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<div><font face="georgia,serif"><b>Abstracts
submission</b></font></div>
<font face="georgia,serif">Submission
(to the <span>conference</span> email address <a href="mailto:stsitaliaconf@gmail.com" target="_blank"><stsitaliaconf@gmail.com></a>
and to the emails of convernors'
selected track) should include:</font></div>
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<div><font face="georgia,serif">1. Author's
name and surname, affiliation and
email address</font></div>
<div><font face="georgia,serif">2. Presentation
title</font></div>
<div><font face="georgia,serif">3. Abstract
(less than 300 words)</font></div>
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<div><font face="georgia,serif"><i style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:13px;line-height:17px">Please feel free to
circulate this announcement
widely.</i></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="2">Sergio Minniti, PhD<br></font><div><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="1">Research Fellow</font></div><div><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="1">Department of </font><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="1"><span>Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA)</span></font></div><div><span><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="1">University of Padova, Italy</font></span><br></div><div><font style="color:rgb(136,136,136)" size="1"></font><span></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(136,136,136)"></span><div style="color:rgb(136,136,136)"><font size="1"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>