F O R U M - The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts

Issue 8 - T e c h n o l o g i e s

The concept of technology is manifold and encompasses many definitions. Technology may be
defined broadly, as by Melvin Kranzberg in 1959, as "how things are commonly done or made"
and "what things are done and made." Ron Westrum in Technologies and Society: The Shaping of
People and Things (1991) provides a more precise and also threefold definition, stating that
technology consists of "those material objects, techniques, and knowledge that allow human
beings to transform and control the inanimate world."

We encounter and interact with technology and technologies everyday, from the clothes we wear
and the specific tools we use, through practices of language, to our ways of forming a sense of
self, individual and communal identities and sexualities. We need to ask why things are done and
made as they are, and how these technologies affect us and are affected by us in return. How do
technologies challenge ideas about culture, arts, life and humanity? How do certain artists
employ technologies in their work? Can we appropriate technology for our own aims or are we
appropriated by technologies? What are the limitations or possibilities of technology, and what is
the place of technology in relation to culture and human life in general?

We are seeking articles which engage with technology or technologies in relation to literature,
art, film, theatre, popular culture and the media. Submissions could consider, but are not limited
to, any of the following:

- Agency, Subjectivity and Technology
- Technologies of the Body
- Things and Objects
- Sexual Technologies
- Biotechnologies
- Narrative and Textual Technologies
- Artistic Technologies
- Technologies of Time and Space
- Redefinitions of Technology
- Technologies of the Past and of the Future

The deadline for article submissions is 9th January 2009. Papers should be between 3,000 and
5,000 words and formatted in accordance with the MLA guidelines and should be submitted to:
artsjournal.forum_at_ed.ac.uk.

For more information on FORUM, please visit our website at: http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/

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Received on Fri Oct 24 2008 - 03:25:58 EDT