S&TS Graduate Courses
Fall 2012
STS 6241 Science, Technology, and International Security
4 credits M: 2:30-4:25 Professor Kathleen Vogel
This course will examine the social shaping of science and technology and the production of technical knowledge as they relate to the development of conventional and unconventional weapons and their associated threats to U.S. and international security. Part of the course will be devoted to examining the various lay and expert communities that are involved in security debates. The course will draw on literature from the science and technology studies field, constructivist perspectives in international relations, and technical security studies.
STS 6301 Social Theory
4 credits R: 7:30-9:25pm Professor Rachel Prentice
Sociologist C. Wright Mills challenged his readers to develop their “sociological imaginations” to understand the social and historical forces at work in seemingly individual events, such as the receipt of a pink slip, a draft card, or a drug prescription. Within science and technology studies, scholars have documented how social issues can become scientific, technological, or medical, often appearing to leave the social realm altogether to become biological, technical, or pathological. The best social constructivist work in Science and Technology Studies reveals how scientific, technological, and medical worlds are thoroughly social; that is, theories of social structure and action underpin the best empirical work in the field. This course introduces graduate students to classic texts and concepts in social theory with a focus on applying such theories to empirical research in science, technology, and medicine. It will consider major thinkers and schools of social thought, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Foucault, and the Frankfurt School. It will also consider how a nuanced interplay of theory and empirical data can bring critically important insights to both theoretical and empirical understandings of the world.
STS 6321 Inside Technology
(also SOC 6320)
4 credits T: 12:20-2:15 Professor Trevor Pinch
Rather than analyze the social impact of technology upon society, in this course we investigate how society gets inside technology. In other words, is it possible that the very design of technologies embody assumptions about the nature of society? And, if so, are alternative technologies, which embody different assumptions about society possible? Do engineers have implicit theories about society? Is technology gendered? How can we understand the interaction of society and technology? Throughout the course the arguments are illustrated by detailed examinations of particular technologies, such as the ballistic missile, the bicycle, the electric car, and the refrigerator.
STS 6460 Anthropology of the Body
(also ANTHR 6465)
4 credits TR: 10:10-11:25 Professor Stacey Langwick
This course surveys the large and growing anthropological literature on the body. Students will examine a range of texts that treat the body as the subject and object of cultural, technological, political and ethical processes. Students investigate the cultivation of physical and social bodies through ethnographic and historical materials concerning healing and medicine, discipline and labor, governance and religion, aesthetics and desire. The production and reproduction of bodies and embodied practices have long been central to the way that power works. In this class, we will read and discuss a range of approach to the body. There is much contention over how work, politics, environment, technologies, and violence shape the body and the senses. We will debate how histories of the body are intertwined with histories of gender, race, class, sexuality, (post)coloniality, modernization, science, transnationalism, and the webs of institution, ideas, and capital that comprise these phenomena. Some readings will investigate the complex mediations that account for the body as icon, text, metaphor, commodity, and raw material. Others will contend that serious attention to the production and reproduction of the body across different times and spaces challenge traditional notions of materiality and physicality. Because many examinations of the body rest – implicitly or explicitly -- in a theoretical and methodological approach to experience, we will also explore the histories of bodily senses, appetites and capabilities.
STS 6661 Public Engagement in Science
(also COMM 6660)
3 credits R: 2:30-4:25 Professor Bruce Lewenstein
Explores the structure, meanings, and implications of “public communication of science and technology” (PCST). Examines the contexts in which PCST occurs, looks at motivations and constraints of those involved in producing information about science for nonprofessional audiences, and analyzes the functions of PCST. Ties existing ideas about PCST to general communication research, and leads to developing new knowledge about PCST. Format is primarily seminar/discussion.
STS 6811 Topics in Philosophy of Science
(also PHIL 6810)
4 credits W: 7:30-9:55pm Professor Richard Boyd
This seminar explores how the human and social sciences have provided the knowledge and categories we use to make sense of human beings and their behavior. Looking across a range of disciplines - including sociology, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and economics - we will look at how human beings have become objects of scientific investigation. We will focus on how culture, politics, and the professional environment impact the human sciences and how the use of rhetoric constitutes academic discourse. We will also focus on the social scientific construction of selves, sex, gender, and race.
STS 7111 Introduction to Science & Technology Studies
(also HIST 7110)
4 credits W: 12:20-2:15 Professor Peter Dear
This introductory course provides students with a foundation in the field of science and technology studies. Using classic works as well as contemporary exemplars, seminar participants chart the terrain of this new field. Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to: historiography of science and technology and their relation to social studies of science and technology; laboratory studies; intellectual property; science and the state; the role of instruments; field work; politics and technical knowledge; philosophy of science; sociological studies of science and technology; and popularization.
Spring 2013 Coming Soon...
Fall 2011
STS 4856 Video Games and Sonic Recreation
(also SHUM/VISST 4856/MUSIC 4456)
4 credits R: 10:10-12:05 Professor Roger Moseley
This seminar will proceed from the idea that video games should be considered alongside other multimedia phenomena such as opera and film when approaching the question of how sound-particularly the fundamental concepts of rhythm, meter, and entrainment-can be heard and felt to engage with literature, visuality, the body, and the mind. We will grapple with the expanding scholarly discourse that locates the video game as a central node in the nexus of media theory, virtuality, and digital culture. Members of the seminar will explore how the insights that emerge from this interdisciplinary approach can inform the study of a diverse range of sonic theories, spaces, and practices, from musical duels at the fortepiano in Josephinian Vienna to virtuosic feats in the arcades of twenty-first-century Tokyo. As case studies, we will focus on video games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Rhythm Tengoku, Nodame Cantabile, and Rez.
STS 6261 Seminar in the History of Technology
(also HIST 6190)
4 credits R: 2:30-4:25 Professor Sara Pritchard
A seminar on the historiography of technology in Europe and the U.S. from the 18th century to the present. Typical topics include the "industrial revolution" in Britain; military support of technological change; the "incorporation" of science and engineering; cultural myths of engineers and inventors; technology and colonialism; gender, labor, and users of technology ; urbanization, "modernization," and technology in rural life; post-war consumerism; science and technology in the cold war; and technology in the environment.
STS 6811 Seminar in Philosophy of Science
(also PHIL 6810)
4 credits T: 7:30-9:25pm Professor Richard Boyd
This seminar explores how the human and social sciences have provided the knowledge and categories we use to make sense of human beings and their behavior. Looking across a range of disciplines - including sociology, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and economics - we will look at how human beings have become objects of scientific investigation. We will focus on how culture, politics, and the professional environment impact the human sciences and how the use of rhetoric constitutes academic discourse. We will also focus on the social scientific construction of selves, sex, gender, and race.
STS 7111 Introduction Seminar in Science & Technology Studies
4 credits M: 2:30-4:25 Professor Michael Lynch
This introductory course provides students with a foundation in the field of science and technology studies. Using classic works as well as contemporary exemplars, seminar participants chart the terrain of this new field. Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to: historiography of science and technology and their relation to social studies of science and technology; laboratory studies; intellectual property; science and the state; the role of instruments; field work; politics and technical knowledge; philosophy of science; sociological studies of science and technology; and popularization.
Spring 2012
STS 4966 Science, Technology and Medicine: The Sonic Dimension
(also SHUM 4966/BSOC 4966, MUSIC 4466, SOC 4970)
4 credits W: 2:30-4:25 Professor Trevor Pinch
We will discuss the different ways in which sound is embedded in the activities and practices of science, technology and medicine considered both contemporaneously and historically. We will examine different approaches which try to draw attention to sound by historicizing listening practices and key technologies such as the phonograph and stethoscope which have revolutionized technical fields. The overall goal of the course is to critically reflect on how sound offers a new way of understanding how humans, culture and society are entwined with and coproduced by science, technology and medicine.
STS 6311 Qualitative Research Methods for Studying Science
(also SOC 6310)
4 credits W: 10:10-12:05 Dr. Christine Leuenberger
Much has been learned about the nature of science by sociologists and anthropologists donning lab coats and studying scientists in action. This course looks at the methods used in this new wave of science studies. Examines what can be learned by interviewing scientists, from videos, and from detailed examinations of scientific texts. Students gain hands-on experience by conducting a mini-project in which they investigate some aspect of scientific culture.
STS 7003 Special Topics: Issues in the Cultural History of Technology
(also HIST 7000)
4 credit M: 2:30-4:25 Professor Ronald Kline
This seminar focuses on different issues in the social and cultural history of technology each semester. Typical issues include Gender and Technology, Rethinking Technological Determinism, Was there an Information Revolution, Consumerism, and the Military and Technology in the United States. Students read and discuss exemplary books and articles on a topic for the first half of the course, then give presentations on their research papers.
Course Archive
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2009- Currently Unavailable
- Fall 2009
- Spring 2010
- Fall 2010
- Spring 2011