[Bilimsel Haber] Summer School Program: Cold War Technology in Europe, Chios (Greece) and Izmir (Turkey), August 27th-September 1st 2007

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

	*Summer School Program: Cold War Technology in Europe, Chios (Greece)
and Izmir (Turkey), August 27th-September 1st 2007*
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Inventing Europe ESF
In collaboration with
Tensions of Europe

Cold War Technology in Europe

Summer School Program
August 27th-September 1st
Chios, Greece, and Izmir, Turkey

Conveners: Aristotle Tympas (Greece) and Yaprak Gulcan (Turkey)

The European Science Foundation Inventing Europe EUROCORES research
program (www.esf.org), in collaboration with the International Research
Network Tensions of Europe (www.histech.nl/tensions), is organizing a
Summer School on Cold War Technology in Europe. Inventing Europe
doctoral students and junior scholars will attend. The Summer School is
also open to doctoral students and junior scholars from the Tensions of
Europe network, and, to all other doctoral students or junior scholars
interested in the topic. The Summer School will be hosted by the History
of Science and Technology Division, Philosophy and History of Science
Department, University of Athens, Greece (www.phs.uoa.gr/ht/). It will
take place on the island of Chios, Greece, and at the city of Izmir,
Turkey, between Monday, August 27, and Saturday, September 1, 2007.

Course content
Historians of Cold War Europe are no longer content to offer tales of
diplomatic intrigues and calculations of missile throw-weights that
feature Europe as the playing field for struggles between the
superpowers. The increasingly sophisticated legal, political, economic,
and institutional perspectives being brought to bear upon analyses of
postwar Europe increasingly emphasizes the complex internal divisions
and multilateral interactions on the nominally polarized Continent. The
aim of this Summer School is to incorporate the latest research
developments on European science and technology into a new
historiography of Cold War Europe. The Summer School will introduce a
broader set of innovative research strategies for identifying and
explaining the processes that shaped, sustained, and sometimes
undermined various transnational European identities in ways that have
seldom been visible in traditional bilateral political narratives. The
motivating themes are drawn primarily from the history of technology and
high-tech science—not the history of artefacts as material “prime
movers” in malleable social spaces, but the history of complex systems
of knowledge that have both integrated and fragmented European politics,
society, and culture in the twentieth century. The Summer School thus
serves as an introduction to an emerging set of scholarly agendas for
changing the way we write histories of Europe.

The Cold War created favorable conditions for large-scale technological
projects that often had unexpected transnational effects, certainly
within “Western Europe” and “Eastern Europe” respectively, but on
occasion across that geopolitical divide as well. This held true for
civilian entities like CERN, EURATOM, or JINR, and especially for
ambitious new military enterprises of unprecedented scale and
complexity. In the process of constituting multi-site technologies,
these enterprises could change the dynamics of the arduous political
negotiations among their national participants. They served as an
important nexus for regional networks without ever severing their
reliance on national economies, and demand more than the techniques of
comparative history for proper explanation. Our curriculum will address
certain Europe-building practices in which specific concepts and visions
of Europe became embedded in particular designs for artefacts and
systems. The working assumption is that to unpack these technoscientific
systems is to uncover important ways in which Europe has been made and
unmade over time.

The subject matter ranges from large-scale collaborations for
fundamental research within highly technological frameworks (particle
physics, molecular biology), to vast military production enterprises,
and on to the realm of consumer culture. While recognizing that we
should always be mindful of the ways in which nation-states have laid
claim to diverging narratives of Europe, we think it profitable to take
a closer look at transnational processes from these diverse vantage
points and ask, What roles have scientific and technological systems and
practices played in how Europe has been experienced, projected,
performed, exported, imported, and reproduced?

It might go without saying that this approach discounts the essentialist
question “What is Europe?” in favor of Europe as an evolving categoryof
practice. But by the same token, it acknowledges the realities of “East”
and “West” while inviting participants to examine hitherto
unacknowledged continuities and mutual appropriations throughout the
Cold War era.

Structure
The Summer School will take place on Chios, Greece (Monday, Tuesday,
Friday, Saturday) and at Izmir, Turkey (Wednesday and Thursday). The
program consists of lectures, discussion of pre-assigned material,
sessions of student project presentations, roundtable discussions, and
special sessions on how to publish, write a proposal, and search for a
job. It also includes visits to sites of interest to the history of
technology (both in Greece and in Turkey), planned so as to introduce to
continuities and discontinuities in the history of technology in the
region.

Teachers
Yaprak Gulcan, Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey
Ruth Oldenziel, Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Philip Scranton, Rutgers University, USA
George Stathakis, University of Crete, Greece
Helmuth Trischler, University of Munich, Germany
Aristotle Tympas, University of Athens, Greece, course director

Application/Costs
Applicants should send a CV, a 12-page summary (or a sample of their
research project), and, if possible, a recommendation letter, to the
course director by June the 29th of 2007. They will be informed about
acceptance no later than July 6, 2007. The summaries of those accepted
will be pre-circulated to all Summer School participants. Admittance
will be based on thematic fit and overall quality of application.
Residential costs will be covered for all participants. A limited budget
is available for a contribution to travel costs. The need for such
contribution, including the amount needed, has to be indicated in the
application.

Sponsors
European Science Foundation (www.esf.org)
Foundation for the History of Technology (www.histech.nl)

Contact
For further information, contact Aristotle Tympas
(tympas at phs.uoa.gr).

	Aristotle Tympas
University of Athens
Phone: (+30)210-7275544
FAX: (+30)210-7275530
Email: tympas at phs.uoa.gr <mailto:tympas at phs.uoa.gr>
Visit the website at http://www.histech.nl/Tensions/Default.htm