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Working with Paper builds on a growing interest in the materials of science by exploring the gendered uses and meanings of paper tools and technologies, considering how notions of gender impacted paper practices and in turn how paper may have structured knowledge about gender. Through a series of dynamic investigations covering Europe and North America and spanning the early modern period to the twentieth century, this volume breaks new ground by examining material histories of paper and the gendered worlds that made them. Contributors explore diverse uses of paper—from healing to phrenological analysis to model making to data processing—which often occurred in highly gendered, yet seemingly divergent spaces, such as laboratories and kitchens, court rooms and boutiques, ladies'chambers and artisanal workshops, foundling houses and colonial hospitals, and college gymnasiums and state office buildings. Together, they reveal how notions of masculinity and femininity became embedded in and expressed through the materials of daily life. Working with Paper uncovers the intricate negotiations of power and difference underlying epistemic practices, forging a material history of knowledge in which quotidian and scholarly practices are intimately linked.

Technofeminist Storiographies: Women, Information Technology, and Cultural Representation analyzes both historical and contemporary accounts of women's lived experiences of technology, from Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr to women working across the tech industry today, and juxtaposes them with larger cultural representations of women and technology. The book explores both the relationship between gender and technology and the cultural contexts that enable and constrain that relationship, questions that call for opportunities for women to share their lived experiences and to have such experiences represented across media genres. Despite the rich, complex stories and histories women have with technology—as programmers, inventors, and workers—media throughout history, including film, television, games, toys, children's books, and biographies, often inadequately and inaccurately represent them. Throughout the book, Kristine Blair chronicles the portrayal of the relationship between women and information technology across these media genres. Inevitably, the societal conditions that surround technology use—including portrayal through popular media—impact the extent to which women and girls gain and maintain access within those cultural contexts. This book calls for a more visible history of women's technological achievements in which their stories are heard for generations to come, rather than be forgotten and unknown.