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An interdisciplinary investigation of the co-creation of gender and technology

Each of the ten chapters in Women, Gender, and Technology explores a different aspect of how gender and technology work--and are at work--in particular domains, including film narratives, reproductive technologies, information technology, and the profession of engineering. The volume's contributors include representatives of over half a dozen different disciplines, and each provides a novel perspective on the foundational idea that gender and technology co-create one another. Together, their articles provide a window on to the rich and complex issues that arise in the attempt to understand the relationship between these profoundly intertwined notions.

Take to the sea on this maritime archaeological exploration of nineteenth-century American whaling ships

American whaleships of the early nineteenth century were more than ocean-going vessels—they were complex workplaces, designed for long-term voyages, round-the-clock labor, and the large-scale extraction of marine resources. In Wrecked on the Reef, maritime archaeologist Jason T. Raupp presents a pioneering study of these ships as mobile production platforms, rooted in the logic of industrial capitalism operating far from land.

Drawing on shipwreck sites from the central Pacific region, Raupp offers a rare archaeological look at everyday life aboard nineteenth-century whaling vessels during the so-called “Golden Age” of whaling. He examines the tools used to hunt and process whales, the strict labor hierarchies onboard, and the physical evidence of diverse, often vulnerable crews who lived and worked under demanding conditions. By combining maritime and industrial archaeology, Raupp reveals how these ships functioned not just as transportation, but as full-scale factories at sea.

Chapters trace the rise of Pacific whaling, the importance of Hawaii as a supply and repair hub, the design and mechanics of whaleships, and the dangerous work crews performed in extreme isolation. Raupp shows how these ships were not only technological marvels of their time, but also part of a much larger system of labor, risk, and ocean-based resource extraction that fueled American expansion into the Pacific.

By exploring whaleships as floating work sites, Raupp offers readers a deeper understanding of maritime labor, capitalism, and imperialism in the nineteenth century. Wrecked on the Reef charts a new course in the study of labor and landscape at sea, providing significant contributions to maritime archaeology, industrial history, and environmental humanities.

Reveals the intertwined nature of imperial mapping and map history through the making of the colony of French Soudan in nineteenth-century West Africa.

Thomas J. Bassett’s Writing the Land argues that mapping played a key role in France’s territorial conquest of Africa, and that the process of imperial expansion and colonization shaped map history by influencing how maps were constructed, circulated, and used. Analyzing military and surveying campaigns over half a century in an area that became the colony of French Soudan, Bassett focuses on the social and spatial problems that surveyors and mapmakers tried to solve in the process of territorial conquest, as well as the conflicts that arose as they pursued their goals.

In their efforts to obtain this territory, French military leaders, cartographers, and expedition members came into continual contact with local Africans, with whom they negotiated and clashed. Often, imperial officers relied on intermediaries to navigate West African geography, drawing on the knowledge of political authorities, interpreters, guides, and long-distance traders; the maps they produced are inextricable from these interactions. Ultimately, Bassett claims, examining the processes of mapping in the context of these encounters leads us to understand these maps anew as Euro-African constructions, ones that emerge from a complex process of exchange and domination.