Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)

Boston, Massachusetts

August 30 – September 2, 2017

Sheraton Boston Hotel, 39 Dalton Street

Conference theme:    STS (In)Sensibilities

If sensibility is the ability to grasp and to respond, how might we articulate the (in)sensibilities of contemporary technoscience?  How, similarly, can we reflect on the extent and limits of our own sensibilities as STS scholars, teachers, and activists?  The conference theme invites an open reading and exploration of how the world is made differently sense-able through multiple discourses and practices of knowledge-making, as well as that which evades the sensoria of technoscience and STS.  Our aim is that the sense of ‘sense’ be read broadly, from mediating technologies of perception and apprehension to the discursive and material practices that render worlds familiar and strange, real and imagined, actual and possible, politically (in)sensitive and ethically sensible.

We welcome open panel and closed session proposals, individual paper submissions, and proposals for events that are innovative in their delivery, organization, range of topics, and type of public.  Due to the growing number of submissions and our desire to be as inclusive as possible, each participant will be strictly limited to only one paper or media presentation and one other activity (such as session chair or discussant), for a maximum of two appearances. Participation in the Making and Doing event (see below) is not counted toward this limit.

Program Committee

Heather Paxson (MIT, Chair)
Daniel Breslau (Virginia Tech)
Claudia Castañeda (Emerson College)
Tarleton Gillespie (Cornell, Microsoft Research New England)
Mary Gray (Microsoft Research New England)
Nick Seaver (Tufts)
TL Taylor (MIT)

Important Dates

Nov 15. Call for open panels proposals
Jan 1. Submission closes for open panels
Jan 15.  Call for closed/invited sessions and individual paper submissions
March 1. Deadline for submission of closed sessions and individual papers
April 15. Acceptance notification
May 15.  Preliminary program