[ecrea] Call for Abstracts Special Issue of History and Technology

*A /New/ History of the Telephone: Inter-medial*/*Inter-technological 
and Transnational Perspectives*

/                                              Guest editors: Gabriele 
Balbi and Christiane Berth/

The history of the telephone has often been written from a single-medium 
and national perspective. Histories of the telephone are mainly based on 
national case studies and do not connect this device with other 
technologies. Consequently, it is time to advance the historiography of 
the telephone in two directions. This special issue aims to reconsider 
the history of the landline and mobile telephone by placing it in an 
inter-medial/inter-technological and transnational perspective. This 
means that contributions should (re)read the history of this medium 
considering first its relationship to other fields of technology, for 
example, the area of communication or transportation. Second, we invite 
contributions that examine how the telephone has included, excluded, or 
even fought contemporary technologies in different times and across 
different geographical spaces. Thus, we are seeking pieces that explore 
the telephone’s interactions with different technologies and different 
cultures from the late 19th through the early 21st century, welcoming 
also a /longue durée/perspective.

This special issue addresses different theoretical aims: first, it aims 
to merge media and telecommunications studies, two branches that have 
frequently been kept separated. Media history has often been interpreted 
as /mass/ media history, focusing on the press and broadcasting, while 
adopting mainly institutional and cultural studies perspectives. 
Telecommunications history, on the other side, is a field mainly 
explored by historians of technology and business so it has often 
focused on the technical or economical dimensions of networks. This 
special issue would like to offer a convergence of the history of mass 
media with the history of the telephone. In general, media convergence 
is considered a late 20^th -century phenomenon and an effect of 
digitization. On the contrary, we aim to demonstrate that forms of 
convergences among different technologies were already happening in the 
late 19^th and early 20^th century thanks to the telephone.

Second, media convergence is linked with inter-mediality or 
inter-technology. Media scholars agree on the fact that different media 
are all interrelated and analyze this phenomenon as inter-medial or 
media system logic. This inter-medial and inter-technological element is 
the dominant theme of this special issue. For example, the history of 
mobile telecommunications needs to consider interactions with the 
history of landline telephones, wireless telegraphs, computers, and the 
web as well as photography and phonography in terms of sound storing. 
Thus, communication media cannot be studied in isolation. By contrast, 
their economic, technical, sociocultural, and even anthropological 
dimensions can only be understood in the context of the media systems in 
which they play an integral role. At the same time, the history of the 
telephone needs to be studied in the context of the non-communication 
technologies that shape it. Indeed, technologies, apparently unrelated 
and far from telephony, can shape governmental policies, business 
strategies, technological networks, and users’ experiences. Keeping the 
example of the history of mobile phone, we need to consider it in 
connection with trains, cars, planes, and electrical networks.

Finally, this special issue will introduce telephone history as a 
transnational, “entangled” history. This means analyzing historical 
interactions in the context of capitalism, colonialism, and 
decolonialism, multinational enterprise, development cooperation, 
(neo)liberalism, and privatization of everyday life. Especially in the 
second half of the twentieth century, political interventions were aimed 
at reducing inequalities in access to telecommunication. Again, 
inter-technological interactions were important, as the satellite 
provided new opportunities for rural telephony. However, the mobile 
phone closed the gap in many world regions in the late twentieth century.

Contributors can come from a wide range of disciplines, such as media 
and communication studies, telecommunications, political economy, 
political sciences, cultural studies, history, or geography. We are 
especially interested in papers that combine a broad theoretical 
analysis with historical case studies. We also invite authors to reflect 
from an interdisciplinary perspective on transnational perspectives and 
inter-technological methodology.

Deadlines:

-Abstracts of 250 words can be submitted to guest editors until 
*December 31, 2017* and the selected ones will be notified *by January 
15, 2018*.

-Accepted authors will have to submit a full paper of no more than 7,500 
words by *May 2018. *All papers will undergo a double-blind peer-review 
process.

-The issue is scheduled for publication in *Spring 2019*.

Please submit your abstracts by email to (gabriele.balbi /at/ usi.ch) 
<mailto:(gabriele.balbi /at/ usi.ch)>and (christiane.berth /at/ hist.unibe.ch) 
<mailto:(christiane.berth /at/ hist.unibe.ch)>

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