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are in a separate, linked document; get that as well if you want the notes.
"Sites of Knowledge and Social Locations: Manufacturing
Software: ": presentation delivered to the University of Michigan
School of Information, September 2002. An examination of the history of industrial
rationalization that segues into an analysis of CATIA, the CAD/CAM/CAE software
package used (among other things) for making the Boeing 777.
"Sites of Danger, Zones of Comfort: Reconstructing
Space in Interwar France ": paper delivered at the Society for
French Historical Studies meetings, Lexington, KY, March 1997. A look at the
modernist invention of new dangers, from maid's chambers and feminine bodies
to bistros, in the technocratic effort to sell built spaces and inherently safe
designs--part of an effort to use things to make political arguments.
"Historical Dimensions of High Tech
": paper delivered at the American Historical Association meetings, Atlanta,
January 1996. An attempt to develop a rhetorical analysis of technological artifacts,
and to apply them to a "big picture" historical interpretation.
"The Culture of Technological Practice:
Industrial Rationalization as a Blind Alley," paper delivered at the Society
for the History of Technology meetings, Charlottesville, VA, October 1995. An
immodestly bold attempt to show that the western project for industrial rationalization,
from Taylorism to just-in-time inventorying was vastly oversold, and that the
French interwar example--a case of pre-rationalized practices--might be a better
model for an increasingly diverse economy.
"Consumption, Production and the Making
of Social Identities," invited paper presented at University
of California-Santa Cruz conference, "Consumer Culture and Resistance,"
November 3-5, 1994. Another case of intellectual chutzpah here, where I try
to show how a linking of consumption to production can be very useful for analytical
purposes, yet politically and culturally disasterous if that link is a lived
one.
"Fordism and the American Dream in France,
1919-1939," article manuscript under consideration for publication.
A more cautious piece on the disjuncture between modernist discourses about
liberating women and workers with new technology, and the banality of daily
practice in Interwar France.
"The French Washing-Machine: To Invent the
Consumer While Inventing the Object," article manuscript under
consideration for publication. A fun piece (one hopes) on efforts to impose
an American object into the very different material and cultural French environment;
how French women washed and saw their washing as both technological and social
practices.
"Machine Liberation: Inventing Housewives
and Home Appliances in Interwar France," an article that Appeared
in French Historical Studies in 1993. It's about the issue of inventing
a user while inventing an object, and about how the requisite social category
of "housewife" was rather alien to the French in those years.
"Semiotic Narratives and French Home Appliances,"
an older piece, published in 1992 in Paris (but in English). I think it does
a nice job discussing how, materially, culturally, and symbolically, implicit
negotiations proceed between producers and consumers to make technolical artifacts
into what they are and seem to be.
The prospectus for my forthcoming
book, "Mechanical Dreams: Technology, Culture, and Gender in Interwar France."
Alternating Currents: Nationalized Power in France,
1946-1970 This is my first book, a history of the nationalized French
electrical utility. The conceptual framework is now perhaps a bit dated, but
you might find it helpful.
Please check with me first before you cite this stuff. Any and all comments
are appreciated, either by using pen and paper, or by e-mailing me:
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