Dear AOIRians, I'm proposing an open session called "Crowd Control" for the 2021 meeting of SHOT, the Society for the History of Technology (New Orleans, November 18-21), and I think it may be of interest to internet studies folks who are interested in the management of crowds online. If that sounds like you, I hope you'll consider submitting an abstract. Queries and abstracts (by 7 April) to scottkushner@uri.edu. See below or visit https://tinyurl.com/CrowdControlSHOT2021. *** CROWD CONTROL Organizer: Scott Kushner, University of Rhode Island Queues, gates, doorways, turnstiles, stanchions, guards, cages, pens, cells, anterooms, hallways, cameras, bottlenecks, streets, signage, velvet ropes, bouncers, bleachers, fences, barriers, ushers: the methods of crowd control are technological interventions. The ways that crowds have been constituted, apprehended, understood are historically, geographically, and culturally contingent. The discourses that differentiate crowds from (and conflate them with) adjacent categories of analysis, such as audiences, mobs, masses, multitudes, are similarly variable across different contexts. The purposes to which crowd control has been put have also changed over time and space, organizing the flows and stases of bodies in order to impose political, social, cultural, and economic logics specific to and co-constitutive of the contexts in which its various technologies are situated. This SHOT session seeks to develop an understanding of technologies used to control crowds of people over time. Participants will present research on historically-situated technological devices, protocols, systems, and infrastructures that modify built and natural environments in order to contain, channel, direct, arrange, expel, disperse, and otherwise direct the movements and stillnesses of human bodies. The significance of this work to the history of technology lies in concentrating discussion about the ways that technological interventions have shaped the spatial dispositions of groups of human bodies in order to sculpt the experiences of those spaces and of the crowds of people those spaces attract. Proposals engaging with any era and geographic context are welcome. The organizer is interested in placing in conversation scholars and audience members working with and curious about a range of materials and methodologies. Potential participants are therefore invited to imagine the notion of crowd control in adventurous manners. Note: A pair of panels had been constituted for SHOT 2020, which was cancelled due to public health concerns. Not all panelists are able to participate in SHOT 2021, so a small number of additional papers will be selected to round out the group. Procedure: Those interested in proposing presentations for potential inclusion in this session should kindly prepare a one-page abstract (500 words maximum) and a one-page short CV (300 words maximum) with current contact information. Please send these materials to Scott Kushner ( scottkushner@uri.edu) no later than April 7, 2021. If you will be a first-time SHOT presenter, do not hold a tenure-stream position, are no more than two years from receipt of a terminal academic degree, and wish to be considered for the Robinson Prize, please indicate as much in your abstract. (Find information about the Robinson Prize at the SHOT website.) -- Scott Kushner Assistant Professor Department of Communication Studies Harrington School of Communication and Media University of Rhode Island 312 Davis Hall 10 Lippitt Rd. Kingston, R.I. 02881 +1 (401) 874-5223 scottkushner@uri.edu