Call for Papers - Bicycle History

Call for papers
Session on Bicycle History
ICOHTEC, Manchester, U.K., 22–28 July 2013

Invitation to contribute a session of the theme Knowing Users: Social Demands in Shaping Technology and Designing Products at the 40th Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology, ICOHTEC (Manchester, U.K, 22–28 July 2013). Organised by Timo Myllyntaus and Tiina Männistö-Funk.

The Invisible Bicycle: New Insights into Bicycle History For more than two decades now, bicycle history has been an active field inside the history of technology, containing a diversity of studies from detailed accounts on technological development to social histories of cycling and theoretical approaches on bicycle use and innovation. Recently, bicycle is also attracting increased attention as a sustainable means of transport, the historiography of which is of interest in current debates on mobility.

Despite of the ongoing interest and the multitude on historical insights, bicycle history calls for further research, especially as the bicycle has at some point in time been an integral part of everyday life and mobility in probably all corners of the world. Many aspects of bicycle use and technology remain invisible or show only fleeting presence in the bicycle historiography. Partially this is due to locations that appear peripheral, such as developing countries and rural areas. But even the Western, urban cycling asks for more scrutiny, especially during the decades of bicycle’s most intensive use as a means of transport, from the early 20th century till the1960s. Similarly interesting are the dynamics of the decline and a new increase in cycling in the second half of the 20th century.

How can we study the history of everyday practices in bicycle use and non-use? Is the decline of cycling in industrial societies a universal phenomenon? How do the transnational timelines of bicycle history look like? How have technological features and design influenced on the image and popularity of cycling? Are there “national styles” in the design and technical characteristics of bicycles? To this session we invite papers on all aspects of bicycle history, but especially on those so far understudied.

We encourage questioning typical timelines of bicycle history and presenting of alternative histories and controversial case studies.

Please, contact Timo Myllyntaus (timmyl@utu.fi) or Tiina Männistö-Funk
(tiiman@utu.fi)and submit and abstract (200 – 400 words) of your paper and a one-page CV by Friday
9 March 2012.
Further information at: http://www.icohtec.org/annual-meeting-cfp-2013.html