[Commlist] CfP: Murmurations in Avian Technoscience

CALL FOR PAPERS
Murmurations in Avian Technoscience
A Special Section of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience


GUEST EDITORS:
Maya Livio (American University)
Pamela Perrimon (University of Southern California)
Hamsini Sridharan (University of Southern California)

DEADLINE: March 31, 2025

ABBREVIATED CALL:
In this special section, we invite birders, that is, those who notice 
avian relations, to explore how birds enter, become, confound, or mutate 
technology (expansively defined). We seek to engage in how the stuff of 
birds—their beaks, bones, and feathers—is datafied, mechanized, and 
digitized. We are also interested in constellations in flight that 
reflect on avian boundaries and breakdowns as they intersect gendered, 
queer, crip, raced, classed, and anticolonial questions, highlighting 
what may otherwise go unremarked when birds become a passive thing to 
‘think with.’

Submissions might include engagement with avian technoscience as it 
relates to:

—Birds becoming technology (e.g. data, models, maps, sensors,sentinels, 
as well as Indigenous and non-Western approaches to technology) and how, 
for example, these may reinforce or challenge dominant modes of 
knowledge production

—Technology becoming avian (e.g. biomimicry, or the use of bird bodies 
and behaviors as technological reference points) as, for instance, 
instrumentalized for military tech development

—Technologies of ornithological study (e.g. bird banding/ringing, radar, 
passive acoustic monitoring, 3D scanning, machine learning) and, for 
example, their relationship to the colonial logics of capture

—Technologies of managing avian life and death (e.g. technologies for 
conservation, de-extinction, bird breeding, reproduction, and response 
to avian zoonoses) and how, for instance, they instantiate control of 
sex, gender, and sexuality

—Contact zones between birds and technological infrastructures (e.g. 
interactions between birds and cell towers, energy infrastructures, 
etc.) as related to environmental and multispecies justice concerns, for 
example

—The link between birds and technologies of surveillance (e.g. drones, 
birdfeeder cams, and nest cams) and, for instance, what they surface 
about racialized hypervisibility and invisibility

—Bird taxonomy and classification technologies, and, for example, how 
they reinforce hegemonic categorization

—Community science platforms and other collective modes of bird 
tracking, including, for instance, their exclusions of marginalized 
peoples and the consequences of those exclusions for birds
—And creative approaches to imaging, sounding, or sensemaking of birds 
through media and computation technologies relating to any of the above

LINK TO FULL CALL: 
https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/announcement/view/976 
<https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/announcement/view/976>

We welcome diverse submission formats including: Writing (scholarly, 
creative, interviews, reviews, and more); creative 
research/research-creation; visual, moving image, and sonic artworks; 
media rich essays; and other innovative approaches. Interdisciplinary 
research is particularly encouraged.

To be considered for inclusion in this themed section, please send an 
abstract or proposal (300-500 words) and a short bio (max 250 words) to 
Maya Livio ((livio /at/ american.edu) <mailto:(livio /at/ american.edu)>), Pamela 
Perrimon ((perrimon /at/ usc.edu) <mailto:(perrimon /at/ usc.edu)>), and Hamsini 
Sridharan ((hamsinis /at/ usc.edu) <mailto:(hamsinis /at/ usc.edu)>) with 
“Murmurations” in the subject line by March 31, 2025.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL: Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience serves 
the expanding interdisciplinary field of feminist science and technology 
studies (STS) by supporting theoretically inventive and methodologically 
creative scholarship incorporating approaches from critical public 
health, disability studies, sci-art, technology and digital media 
studies, history and philosophy of science and medicine, and more. 
Catalyst publishes peer-reviewed, critically and theoretically engaged 
feminist STS scholarship.

Selected papers and projects will be invited to submit fully developed 
submissions. No payment from authors will be required.


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