Courses
HSSC 504 Reading Seminar in the History of Science
Offered: Fall 2008
Adams W 1-4
This seminar will survey the emergence of science “from Plato to NATO,” and is aimed at preparing members to design and teach an introductory undergraduate lecture course surveying the history of science for general undergraduate, freshman, and/or lay audiences. Seminarians will be expected to audit attentively the lectures for the undergraduate survey course (STSC 001, held Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00–12:00, in Claudia Cohen 402). These will provide central ideas and general background, and each will also exemplify one variant of a lecture covering an obligatory area or topic. The seminar sessions themselves are designed to form its members into a collective “working group” that will work its way through the material.
HSSC 505 Seminar in the History and Sociology of Science
Offered: Fall 2008
Aronowitz T 1:30-4:30 or tba
This is a required course for all graduate students. Undergraduates may take this course with permission from the department.
HSSC 519 Topics in the Social History of Knowledge
Offered: Spring 2008
Tresch T 2-5
This reading seminar will cover writings on the social history of knowledge that are often mentioned by historians of science but less often read; it will give students a chance to read and discuss authors who are neglected, trendy, difficult, and/or foundational in this field. We will begin with Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being and critiques brought against it, moving to classic histories of scientific ideas with a focus on “mechanical philosophy” followed by recent rethinkings of “the Scientific Revolution.” We will then visit major schools of historical interpretation: Foucault’s genealogies of knowledge and power, Marxist criticism and the Frankfurt School, Max Weber’s analysis of rationalization and the values of science, along with philosophical approaches to technoscience, biopower, the state of exception, and artificial life. Throughout, our guiding questions will be the relationship between scientific knowledge and institutions, practices, technologies and values, as well as the connection between local case studies and the “big picture” of science and technology in the modern world. The seminar is open to graduate students from any discipline who want to engage critically with these works.
Syllabus
HSSC 529 Readings in Genetics and Genomics
Offered: Fall 2008
Lindee R 1:30-4:30 or TBA
HSSC 532 Medicalization: Theory and History
Cross-listed as HIST 534, SOCI 513
Offered: Spring 2008
Linker W 2-5
Almost every book on the history and sociology of twentieth-century medicine invokes the term “medicalization.” We are told that everything from childbirth and allergies to hyperactivity and hospitals have become dominated by the medical profession and its explanation of health and illness. This course traces the history of the medicalization thesis, from its beginnings with Michel Foucault and Ivan Illich to its latest articulation put forth by sociologist Peter Conrad. Once we are accustomed to the multiple meanings of medicalization, we will put them each under scrutiny, borrowing from literature in the history of religion (a subfield that has grappled with the predominance of the secularization thesis, a theory very much akin to medicalization), as well as from the history of the body. In short, the goal of this course is to read current works in the history of medicine in order problematize the theory of medicalization.
Syllabus
HSSC 550 The Information Sciences
Offered: Fall 2008
This seminar explores the emergence and widespread adoption in the early Cold War-period of a set of interrelated tools, techniques, and discourses organized around the concept of "information.'' These emerging information science included not only new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, operations research, and ecology, but also some traditional physical sciences -- such as biology and chemistry -- as well as a broad range of social sciences, including economics, political science, sociology, and urban planning. The focus of the course will be on tracing the important structural changes in post-war science that encouraged the adoption of the rhetoric of information (if not its substance), as well as on extending the relevance of these developments to a wide range of topics in the history of science, medicine, and technology.
HSSC 607 Research Seminar on Medicine in Africa
Offered: Spring 2008
Feierman W 5:30-7:30
HSSC 690 Publish or Perish
Offered: Spring 2008
Kuklick, H TBA
In this seminar graduate students will work on turning a conference or research paper into a journal article for publication.
