Courses
STSC About Registering for Courses
Offered: Spring 2010
IF YOU CANNOT REGISTER BECAUSE THE REGISTRAR SAYS THE COURSE IS FULL
If you cannot register because the course is "full," try to register for the course under one of the crosslists. For example, if you cannot get into STSC 253, try to register for it under HSOC 253, GRMN 253, GSOC 252, and/or COML 253. The Registrar software system reserves places for students under each crosslisting, and if all the slots are filled under one crosslisting, the system will tell you the course is "full" when you try to register for it. However, there might still be openings under one or more of the other crosslistings.
Try this strategy first. If after trying this strategy you cannot get into a course, then you may try asking the instructor for a permit (see below).
COURSE PERMITS
If you cannot register for a course because you are told you need a permit, or because a course is full, you may contact the instructor of the course to ask for a permit that will permit you to register despite the enrollment cap. Only instructors may give permission for you to get a permit for their course. Because permits increase the size of the course, instructors may refuse to give permits until after the semester begins and they have a better sense of how many students are actually showing up for class.
If you really want to get into a course that is full, you should attend the course and speak to the instructor and be patient during the first week of the semester. You may be able to register after the second or third class without a permit.
Permits are NEVER issued for LPS courses (any course tagged with .601 after the course number) before the second day of the semester.
LPS COURSES
Students from the College may take courses in LPS, the College of Liberal and Professional Studies. HOWEVER, LPS courses have strict quotas for College students until the second day of the term, at which time College students are free to register until the course if filled. After that, a College student may request a permit. Until then, permits are not issued for LPS courses.
STSC Categories of Courses
Offered: Spring 2010
NEW COURSES
HSOC/STSC 022
HSOC/STSC 123
HSOC/STSC 226
HSOC/STSC 241
HSOC/STSC 323
HSOC/STSC 369
HSOCC/STSC 431
INTRODUCTORY COURSES
especially for premajors considering HSOC or STSC
HSOC/STSC 003
HSOC 010
HSOC/STSC 022 Freshman Seminar
HSOC 102
HSOC/STSC 110
HSOC/STSC 123
HSOC/STSC 179
STSC 182
REQUIRED COURSES FOR MAJORS OFFERED IN SPRING 2010
for HSOC
HSOC 010
HSOC 100
HSOC 238
HSOC 275
for STSC
STSC 003
Capstone Courses
HSOC 406
HSOC 407
HSOC 412
HSOC/STSC 420
HSOC/STSC 431
HSOC 437
LPS COURSES
HSOC 154.601 Medical Anthropology of Alchohol
HSOC 238.601 Medical Anthropology
HSOC 259.601 Intro Comp Alternative Medicine
HSOC 275.601 Medical Sociology
HSOC 356.601 HIV/AIDS in Africa
STSC 001 Emergence of Modern Science
Cross-listed as HSOC 001, STSC 001
Offered: Fall 2009
Adams MW 11-12 + rec
Core requirement for STSC Major
Fulfills Sector IV or Sector VII requirement in the College
During the last 500 years, science has emerged as a central and transformative force that continues to reshape everyday life in countless ways. This introductory course will survey the emergence of the scientific world view from the Renaissance through the end of the 20th century. By focusing on the life, work, and cultural contexts of those who created modern science, we will explore their core ideas and techniques, where they came from, what problems they solved, what made them controversial and exciting, and how they related to contemporary religious beliefs, politics, art, literature, and music. The course is organized chronologically and thematically. In short, this is a “Western Civ” course with a difference, open to students at all levels.
STSC 003 Technology and Society
Cross-listed as HSOC 003, SOCI 033
Offered: Spring 2010
Ensmenger TR 12-1:30
Core Course (required of all STSC majors)
Fulfills Sector I requirement
"We shape our technologies; thereafter they shape us."
This course surveys the ways in which technology has shaped our societies and our relations with the natural world. We will examine the origins and impact of technical developments throughout human history and across the globe--- from stone tools, agriculture, and cave painting to ancient cities, metallurgy, and aqueducts; from
windmills, cathedrals, steam engines and electricity to atom bombs, the internet, and genetic engineering. We will pay attention to the aesthetic, religious, and mythical dimensions of technological change, and consider the circumstances in which innovations emerge and their effects on social order, on the environment, and on the
ways humans understand themselves.
STSC 021 From Darwin to DNA *NEW*
Offered: Fall 2009
Lindee W 2-5
Freshman Seminar
In this freshman seminar, we consider the history of genetics and genomics, from the Darwinian theory of evolution (1859) to the completion of the mapping of the human genome (2004). We will look at how Darwin thought about heredity, how Mendel's work was interpreted, how ideas about heredity changed in the early twentieth century, how experimental organisms like mice and flies became important to genetics research, how technologies for manipulating genes opened up new possibilities and new ethical questions, and how mapping and sequencing human genes facilitated the rise of genomic medicine and consumer genomics today. This course will help students understand the importance of genetics and genomics in our contemporary world by providing them with critical historical perspectives.
STSC 022 Race, Genetics and Social Policy ~NEW~
Cross-listed as HSOC 022
Offered: Spring 2010
Cowan T 1:30-4:30 pm
Freshman Seminar
What box do you check if a form asks you to identify your race? Do you fall between boxes? Do you check two or three? or none? Do you refuse to answer the question even you can check one box?
"What is your race?" is a loaded question in American society, because racial identities have social, political and economic ramifications. This course is designed to examine the meanings of race, in particular the ones that have been thought to have a scientific or biological foundation. We will examine the origins of these questions of race from the end of the 19th century to the present, and the way that the genetic science of race has shaped social policy and has changed over time. Most of our focus will be on the United States, but we will also set these questions in a transnational perspective.
STSC 023 Frankenstein's Library
Offered: Previous Semesters
Tresch
Freshman Seminar
Victor Frankenstein created a monster. But he didn’t make it out of nothing: he found body parts in operation rooms and graves, sewed them together, and invested the new whole with life following scripts laid down by thinkers both ancient and new. Likewise, in creating Frankenstein, one of the greatest novels of all time, Mary Shelley put together elements from gothic fiction, moral and political philosophy, romantic poetry, and contemporary science. What were the books that Victor Frankenstein read? What ideas animated Shelley’s act of creation? In this seminar we will read from the primary texts that made up Frankenstein and Shelley’s libraries, along with closely related works from this period, ranging from Renaissance magic, modern electrochemistry and physiology, through to Rousseau, Smith, Milton, Poe, and Balzac. These readings will bring to life a crucial moment in the history of the West—after the French Revolution and at the start of the industrial age—which will give us perspective on today’s anxieties about technology and science.
STSC 026 Philosophy of Space and Time
Cross-listed as PHIL 026
Offered: Fall 2009
Domotor MWF 11-12
Fulfills Sector VII
This course provides an introduction to the philosophy and intellectual history of space-time and cosmological models from ancient to modern times with special emphasis on paradigm shifts, leading to Einstein's theories of special and general relativity and cosmology. Other topics include Big Bang, black holes stellar structure, the metaphysics of substance, particles, fields, and superstrings, unification and grand unification of modern physical theories. No philosophy of physics background is presupposed.
STSC 028 Science, Magic and Religion
Cross-listed as HSOC 025 Science, Magic and Religion
Offered: Fall 2009
Kuklick W 2-5
Freshman Seminar
Fulfills Sector II
Throughout human history, the relationships of science and religion, as well as of science and magic, have been complex and often surprising. This course will cover topics ranging from the links between magic and science in the seventeenth century to contemporary anti-science movements.
HSOC 049 Aids and Power *NEW*
Offered: Fall 2009
Crane R 3-6
Epidemics demonstrate the connections between people and places in dramatic and often tragic ways, with routes of contagion and intervention often throwing social, economic and political inequalities into sharp relief. In the last three decades AIDS has gone from an unknown and localized illness in central Africa to a mysterious “gay cancer” among young men in California and New York, to a worldwide pandemic that is transforming global health funding, pharmaceutical regulation, national demographics, international science, and social movements.
It is impossible to study HIV/AIDS without also engaging with questions of power. Since its inception, the epidemic has been said to travel along the ‘fault lines of society’, wreaking its greatest impact on individuals and communities already marginalized on the basis of economics, race, sexual orientation, gender, addiction, and/or geography. At the same time, HIV/AIDS has given rise to powerful new institutions and personalities in scientific research, humanitarian aid, and patient advocacy around the world.
In this course we will use readings in anthropology, sociology, history, and cultural studies to explore the science and politics of HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and globally. We will learn how power disparities have shaped disease risk, prevention, and access to treatment, but also examine ways in which people and communities have become empowered via HIV/AIDS, giving rise to new identities and social movements. We will explore how questions of scientific discovery, credit, and ownership have been refracted through AIDS science, and how the globalization of HIV research is engendering new power dynamics between wealthy former colonial powers and postcolonial nations that are “resource-poor” but “patient-rich.” Lastly, we will use HIV/AIDS as a lens through which to think about the dynamic relationship between power, the body, and the production of scientific and cultural knowledge.
HSOC 052 The Autism Epidemic: From cells to society *NEW*
Offered: Fall 2009
Mandell TR 3-4:30
Freshman Seminar
The CDC estimates that 1 in 150 children have autism. Three decades ago, this number was 1 in 5,000. The communities in which these children are identified in ever increasing numbers are ill prepared to meet their needs. Scientists have struggled to understand the causes of this disorder, its treatment, and why it appears to be rapidly increasing. Families, policy makers, schools and the healthcare system have argued bitterly in the press and in the courts about the best way to care for these children and the best ways to pay for this care.
In this class, we will use autism as a case study to understand how psychiatric and developmental disorders of childhood come to be defined over time, their biological and environmental causes identified, and treatments developed. We will also discuss the identification and care of these children in the broader context of the American education and healthcare systems. By the end of this course, it is expected that
students will:
--Be familiar with the presentation, epidemiology, causes and treatment of autism;
--Understand the strategies involved in advancing science in these areas;
--Understand the organization, financing and delivery of care to children with autism in the United States;
--Be able to critically evaluate related research;
--Make specific, practical suggestions about the next stages of autism research and ways to improve care.
STSC 060 Nerds in America: Technological Enthusiasm in American History
Offered: Previous Semesters
Ensmenger
Freshman Seminar
Technological enthusiasm has served as a cornerstone of American economic, social, and political life since the founding of the Republic. From Thomas Edison to Bill Gates, the inventor hero has achieved an almost mythical stature in contemporary culture. In this course we will explore the history of the "nerd" -- and the central role of technology in American life past and present -- from a variety of historical and popular culture perspectives.
STSC 061 Text Message: From telegraph to mobile phone
Offered: Fall 2009
Mills W 2-5
Freshman Seminar
Camera, computer, music player, game console, global positioning system: Is a cell phone still a telephone? This course examines the convergence of different
technologies and cultures in telephony since the late nineteenth century. We will survey the technical development of the telephone, from its roots in telegraphy to the first radio and portable phones to the present era of mobile computing. Through these different formats, we will trace the history and persistence of “telephonic principles” such as interaction, immediacy, and universality. We will also examine the telephone’s exchanges with literature, art and film. Along the way, we will consider telephony in a variety of social contexts: national and transnational telephone cultures; genres of text messaging; the relationship of communication technology to public, private, and virtual space.
STSC 100 History of American Science *NEW*
Offered: Fall 2009
Burnett TR 3-4:30
Scientific knowledge has been crucial to the United States' development as a nation and as a global power. This course examines the changing ways Americans have known about the natural and social world from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. We will follow three strands to understand the history of American science. First, we will trace encounters with new landscapes as white settlers migrated from the eastern shores to the prairies to the Rockies. We will examine their efforts to map and categorize nature and to control working landscapes. Second, we will examine changing theories of race, from scientific justifications of slavery and theories of Indian decline to the construction of ‘whiteness’ and the spread of eugenics. Finally, we will examine the interaction between scientific knowledge and forms of military and industrial production, from the development of industrial gunpowder, to the making of the Atomic bomb, to the building of the "gun belt" across the Southern states. Throughout the course we will also take advantage of our location at the heart of early American Science, using Philadelphia’s rich museums and collections of scientific instruments, specimens, and rare texts to illuminate major themes.
STSC 110 Science and Literature
Cross-listed as HSOC 110, ENGL 075, HIST 117
Offered: Spring 2010
Adams MW 11-12 + rec
Fulfills Sector III requirement
This course will explore the emergence of modern science fiction as a genre, the ways it has reflected our evolving conceptions of ourselves and the universe, and its role as the mythology of modern technological civilization. We will discuss such characteristic themes as utopias, the exploration of space and time, biological engineering, superman, robots, aliens, and other worlds -- and the differences between European and American treatment of these themes. The course is structured chronologically and thematically around a series of classic SF novels. Monday and Wednesday lectures will set the novels in historical, scientific, and thematic context; Friday sections will provide the opportunity for in-depth comparative discussion of the week’s readings.
STSC 123 Darwin's Legacy ~NEW~
Cross-listed as HSOC 123
Offered: Spring 2010
Adams MW 9-10 + recitation
Fulfills Sector V (Living World) requirement
Darwin’s conceptions of evolution have become a central organizing principle of modern biology. This lecture course will explore the origins and emergence of his ideas, the scientific work they provoked, and their subsequent re-emergence into modern evolutionary theory. In order to understand the “big ideas,” approaches, and techniques that scientists have used to understand the living world, students will have the opportunity to read and engage with various classic primary sources by Darwin, Mendel, and others. The course will conclude with guest lectures on evolutionary biology today, emphasizing current issues, new methods, and recent discoveries. In short, this is a lecture course on the emergence of modern of evolutionary biology - its central ideas, their historical development, and their implications for the human future.
STSC 135 The Emergence of Modern Biology (Modern Biology and Its Social Implications)
Offered: Previous Semesters
Adams MWF 1-2
Fulfills Sector VII requirement (Class of 2010 and after)
This course will explore the emergence of modern evolutionary biology, the ways it has reflected our concepts of life and nature, and the human and social implications of biological theories and ideas. We will focus on some of the central historical figures that have shaped our understanding - Linnaeus, Lamarck, Darwin, Mendel, Galton - and the implications of their ideas for who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.
STSC 160 The Information Age
Cross-listed as SOCI 161
Offered: Fall 2009
Ensmenger TR 12-1:30
Fulfills Sector IV requirement in the College
Certain new technologies are greeted with claims that, for good or ill, they must transform our society. The two most recent: the computer and the Internet. But the series of social, economic, and technological developments that underlie what is often called the “Information Revolution” include much more than just the computer. In this course, we explore the history of information technology and its role in contemporary society. We will explore both the technologies themselves -- from telephones to computers to video games -- as well as their larger social, economic, and political context. To understand the roots of these ideas we look at the pre-history of the computer, at the idea of the "post industrial" or "information' society," at parallels with earlier technologies and at broad currents in the development of American society.
STSC 179 An introduction to environmental history
Cross-listed as ENVS 179, HIST 320, HSOC 179
Offered: Spring 2010
Greene TR 12-1:30
How are mosquitos, rivers and hurricanes historical actors? In most histories, they are part of the backdrop to human actions. In environmental history, a way of thinking about the interactions between humans and the natural world, the forces, places, beings and objects of the non-human world are essential to understanding how history happens.
This is a course about the history of nature in the human world, and a history of humans in the natural world. How has nature acted in human history and why? How have humans acted in natural history and why? Where do our ideas about "nature" come from and how do they shape how human act on the environment? I
This course examines both global and American history, looking at how and why environments and ideas about "nature" change over time. It is intended as a broad introduction to a significant, interdisciplinary field of history. We examine how this historical knowledge develops through readings and research. Topics include energy, health and disease, consumption, economic development and the history of environmentalism and environmental law, using sources from history, literature, art, polemic and memoir. There will be short papers, discussion of readings, and a research project.
STSC 182 Social Science and American Culture
Cross-listed as GSOC 182
Offered: Spring 2010
Kuklick TR 3-4:30
This course examines the role of social science in popular culture in the twentieth century United States. There have been popular social scientific theories at least since the early nineteenth century, when the craze spread for interpreting individuals’ character from the bumps on their heads. But popular social science is really a twentieth-century phenomenon, growing especially after World War I, involving dissemination of versions of thought in psychology, anthropology and (most important in the recent past) economics to popular audiences. This course explores what happened to social science and to the public’s understanding as these theories moved from academia to popular culture.
STSC 212 Science, Technology and Warfare
Cross-listed as HSOC 212, STSC 212
Offered: Fall 2009
Hersh W 5:30-8:30
This is an LPS course. Students from the College may register beginning the 2nd day of the fall term.
In this survey we explore the relationships between technical knowledge and war in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We attend particularly to the centrality of bodily injury in the history of war. Topics include changing interpretations of the machine gun as inhumane or acceptable; the cult of the battleship; banned weaponry; submarines and masculinity; industrialized war and total war; trench warfare and mental breakdown; the atomic bomb and Cold War; chemical warfare in Viet Nam; and "television war" in the 1990s.
HSOC 226 Science, Medicine and Technology in Modern South Asia ~NEW~
Cross-listed as SAST 289, STSC 226
Offered: Spring 2010
Petrie TR 3-4:30
This course examines the history of science, technology and medicine in the Indian subcontinent from ca. 1750 to the present. The first half of the semester will focus on the period of British dominance, considering such topics as: the role of science, medicine and technology in colonial rule and anti-colonial nationalism; Western understandings of and impacts upon Indian environments; the relationship between Western and indigenous forms of knowledge. The second half of the course will examine the post-colonial period, with a particular focus on development and environmental issues and the policies of the governments of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
STSC 241 Stem Cells, Science, and Society ~NEW~
Cross-listed as HSOC 241
Offered: Spring 2010
Gearhart/Zaret TR 10:30-12
Stem cells have dominated the news in biomedical news over the past decade impacting on many aspects of society: medicine, ethics, religion, law, politics, economics and education. Stem cells serve as the premier example for a number of critical and controversial issues at the interface of scientific research and society.
This course is intended for undergraduates (upperclassmen) who are not majoring in the sciences. It will focus on the biological sciences as they relate to human biology and the quest for medical therapies. Discussion topics include: what is science and the scientific process; who are scientists; some basic science to understand the complexity of cells and of organisms; where do we get our basic science from; how we develop, maintain and repair ourselves but eventually die; the importance of stem cells in life’s events; status reports on major disease processes and current treatments; our hopes for the future in developing a variety of therapies; the ethics and moral concerns about the conductance of science research and its application to patients; who makes science policy; who funds biomedical research and who benefits; and who decides on what can be done with patients and patient information. The goal of the course is an informed citizenry.
STSC 242 Science of Sex and Sexuality
Cross-listed as GSOC 242, STSC 242, HSOC 242
Offered: Spring 2010
Lundeen TR 3:00-4:30
[course originates in Gender, Culture, and Society]
STSC 253 Freud: The Invention of Psychoanalysis
Cross-listed as GRMN 253, HSOC 253, STSC 253, GSOC 252, COML 253
Offered: Spring 2010
L.Weissberg TR 10:30-12 + recitation
Fulfills Sector IV
[course originates in the German department]
Probably no other person of the twentieth century has influenced scientific thought, humanistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This lecture course will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lecturers from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humanities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.
STSC 260 Cyberculture
Cross-listed as SOCI 260
Offered: Fall 2009
Ensmenger R 1:30-4:30
Free speech, free software, MOOS, MUDs, anime and cyberpunk. All of these are elements of a broad set of social, technical and political phenomena generally associated with the emergence of a nascent "cyberculture.'' In this seminar we explore the ways in which
recent developments in information technology -- the computer and the Internet in particular -- relate to changing contemporary notions of community, identity, property, and gender. By looking at an eclectic collection of popular and scholarly resources, including film, fiction and the World Wide Web, we will situate the development of
"cyberculture'' into the larger history of the complex relationship between technology and Western society.
HSOC 260 Social Determinants of Health
Cross-listed as SOCI 261
Offered: Previous Semesters
Aronowitz
Over the last century, we have witnessed dramatic historical change in population health, e.g. rising numbers of obese Americans and dramatic declines in death from stomach cancer. There has also been highly visible social patterning of health and disease, such as socio-economic disparities in AIDS, substance abuse, and asthma in the U.S. today or the association of breast cancer with affluence around the world. This course will explore the way researchers and others in past and present have tried to make sense of these patterns and do something about them.
The course is historical and sociological. We will examine evidence and theories about how poverty, affluence, and other social factors influence health AND we will examine how social and historical forces shape the ways in which health and disease are understood. In examining our current obesity "epidemic," for example, we wil not only consider evidence about the causal nature of market forces and the built environment, but ask how obesity was defined historically and why (besides the fact that we are heavier) obesity has become such a visible and important medical and public health issue in the U.S. today. We will study the important findings, methods and approaches in the developing field of population health.
The first half of the course is organized historically and the second half topically by health issues (e.g. cancer cluster, Russian mortality crisis). Readings are eclectic, for example excerpts from Emile Durkheim's 1897 book on suicide and medical articles on the decline in cardiovascular mortality in the U.S. There will be guest lecturers who are experts in particular health problems or involved in clinical and policy responses to those problems. There will be both lecture and discussion, several short (1-2 pp) papers based on readings, and a final research paper and class presentation.
NOTE: DO NOT CONFUSE THIS COURSE WITH STSC 260 - CYBERCULTURE
STSC 271 Law, Technology and Environment in 20th C. America
Cross-listed as ENVS 271
Offered: Previous Semesters
Technology, according to one standard definition, is the means by which humans interact with their environment. Various groups of people value their environment differently, and they use and value different technologies for interacting with their environment. If more than one group occupies the same environmental space, conflict often ensues. Whether through legislation, regulation, or litigation, the law is a principal means of mediating such conflict in modern societies. This course will survey episodes in the history of the United States, especially in the twentieth century, that illustrate technology’s central role in shaping environments, that illustrate groups’ competing visions of what those environments were meant to be, and that illustrate the uses of the law in mediating social conflict concerning technologies and the environment. An important intent of the course will be to lead students to consider various environments along the spectrum of human manipulation, ranging from wilderness to agricultural landscapes and from designed gardens to urban and industrial environments. We will acknowledge physical violence as another method of conflict resolution, but the focus of the course will be on uses of the law by competing groups to mediate environmental conflicts through negotiation of treaties; lobbying legislative bodies to pass laws; influencing regulators to stiffen or weaken regulations; drawing police authorities into the fray; and seeking favorable rulings from the courts.
STSC 272 Energy in American History
Cross-listed as ENVS 272
Offered: Previous Semesters
Quivik TR 3-4:30
Energy is at the center of many discussions of today’s world. How central is an apparently unlimited supply of energy to a healthy economy? What is the importance of sources of energy supply to national security? How can we expend the energy we need to foster human life as we know it without allowing climate change to disrupt the existing global environments that sustain the lives of humans and other living species in accustomed ways? How crucial is the current level of energy use to patterns of American consumption, and how willing are Americans to alter their consumption habits in order to reduce energy use? What is the connection between various sources of energy and the relationships of social, economic, and political power that exist in the U.S. today?
This course will examine changes in energy sources, energy use, and energy technologies across American history in order to help students understand how the U.S. and the world arrived at its present situation with regard to energy and to understand the complex technological, environmental, social, economic, and political challenges implicit in any effort to modify the current trajectories of energy use. It will begin with the energy basis for the lives of Indians and Europeans at the time of colonial settlement, and move along to expanded exploitation of animal, water and wind power, conversion to fossil fuels, and adoption of nuclear power. With each form of energy, we will look at implications of energy use for work, material culture, domestic life, transportation and communications, social relations, economic growth, and political power. The course will help students see the energy implications in all we do.
STSC 288 Knowledge and Social Structure
Cross-listed as SOCI 282
Offered: Fall 2009
Kuklick TR 3-4:30
Fulfills Sector IV requirement in the College
This course focuses on science in various institutional contexts and discusses situations ranging widely over time and place. We consider examples drawn from the seventeenth century to the present, the social settings in which science is found (e.g., the prince’s court, the society of amateurs, the university, the academic laboratory, industry, and in the field, outdoors), and the effects of changes in publishing and patronage. For comparative purposes, we also consider such phenomena as the symphony orchestra, the art market, motion pictures, and literature. Assigned authors range from time-honored authorities, such as Robert Merton, to science writers for The New Yorker.
STSC 301 Science and Religion
Offered: Previous Semesters
Adams
The relationship between science and religion is controversial, and is often treated simplistically, as if both “science” and “religion” were monolithic and discrete. In fact, both are richly diverse, they were deeply interconnected through much of their history, and each has been repeatedly transformed over the centuries. Although the complex relationship is often treated nowadays as though science and religion are opposed, modern science arose in religious cultures and was created and shaped by thinkers with strong religious views which interacted with, and helped to shape, their scientific work.
This undergraduate research seminar will explore the relationship between science and religion as manifested in the lives, ideas, and careers of some of the founders of modern science. Each week, we will examine one important figure. Although I can provide suggestions on where to begin, students are expected to research the figures, using whatever resources they can, to address a series of central questions: (1) What was their most important scientific work; (2) What role did religion play in their life; and (3) What was the relation between science and religion in their thinking and their scientific careers.
STSC 311 Science, Medicine and the Media
Cross-listed as HSOC 311
Offered: Fall 2009
Wolfe, Audra W 3:30-6:30
This course is an introduction to the history and the contemporary state of science journalism. Public understanding of science, medicine and technology is critical to a society that must make informed decisions about health, the environment, and economic growth, but the relationship between science and the public is complex. The course explores not only how books, newspapers, television, films, podcasts, and blogs have shaped our understanding of science and scientists, but also the contexts in which these media are created.
STSC 319 Science in Context
Offered: Previous Semesters
Lindee W 3-6
In this undergraduate seminar we will explore points at which the social and intellectual structure of technical knowledge systems—in science, engineering and medicine—can be accessed as a result of controversy, disaster, ethical quandary or political crisis. Every week we will explore a key event that permits us to see how disciplines work, how the black box of technical knowledge can be opened, how power is imbricated in knowledge, and how science, medicine and technology reflect culture. Our case studies will include global warming, the bombing of Hiroshima, the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the Human Genome Project, race and intelligence controversies, Gulf War Syndrome, Lysenkoism, and the global trade in human organs. Our questions will focus on how expert authority works in public culture, how disputes call forth the norms and conventions of technical fields, and on the varied strategies deployed by actors for the resolution of controversies. Students will read primary materials, lead discussions, and write focused papers that examine the historical and sociological processes in technical disputes and crises.
HSOC 323 Writing Science ~NEW~
Cross-listed as STSC 323, ENGL 275
Offered: Spring 2010
Mills W 2-5
This course surveys the interdisciplinary field of Science and Literature Studies, with an emphasis on the modern life and physical sciences (19th century to the present). During the first part of the semester, we will examine literary responses to science: the “two cultures” debate; the impact of scientific and technical changes on literary practices; representations of science in fiction. In the second half of the course, we will consider science as literature: scientific rhetoric and standards of authorship; inscription or writing technologies in laboratories; scientists as authors of popular literature; the impact of futurism and speculative fiction on science. Course readings will be drawn from fiction, the life and physical sciences, literary theory, and the history of science.
Authors will include some of these: C.P. Snow, Mary Shelley, Laura Otis, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, N. Katherine Hayles, Norbert Wiener, Octavia Butler, Gillian Beer, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Lisa Gitelman, Lily Kay, James Watson, Richard Powers, Bruno Latour, Colin Milburn, K. Eric Drexler, Emily Martin, Leo Szilard and Evelyn Fox Keller.
STSC 361 American Politics and Society, 1865-1930
Cross-listed as HIST 361
Offered: Previous Semesters
Greene TTh 12-1:30
American society as we know it today emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This course examines the profound transformations that occurred between the Civil War and the Great Depression as America became “modern” with the appearance of new political, economic, social, and cultural institutions. We will examine the social changes such as urbanization, institutional development, and consumer culture, the evolution of race ideology, the expansion of national power, changes in technology, science and the environment, the rise of industrial capitalism, political developments including Populism and Progressivism, and the growing importance of foreign policy. This will be a combination lecture and discussion class.
STSC 369 Nanotechnology and Society ~NEW~
Offered: Spring 2010
Roberts R 4:30-7:30
One nanometer is about ten hydrogen atoms long. So "nanotechnology" is the art of building useful tools out of very small numbers of atoms. This class will investigate what is being done in nanotechnology, and what is being forecast for its potential. We will take a long look at the prehistory of nanotechnology, then map out what institutions and groups have a stake in the field. Throughout the course, we will discuss the ways that nanotechnology is a product of society, and the ways its products in turn change society. Topics include: microelectronics and Moore's Law; futurism and science fiction; controversies and public perception; government sponsorship of nano; universities and commerce.
HSOC 381 Nonstranger Violence *NEW*
Cross-listed as STSC 381, GSOC 381
Offered: Fall 2009
Sorenson T 1:30-4:30
The purpose of this course is for students to learn about the definitions, conceptual frameworks, myths, processes, consequences, and societal interventions regarding violence in relationships. Using a life course perspective, addressing abuse from childhood through late life, the course will examine how gender and generational differences in resource distribution, role expectations, etc. shape the occurrence, experience, and response to violence in relationships.
Fall 2009 Syllabus
STSC 418 Instruments of Music and Science
Cross-listed as MUSC 750
Offered: Previous Semesters
Tresch & Dolan
Capstone Course
The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the invention of many new instruments in both music and science. They were sometimes made by the same people, and they were often understood to have the same purpose: to attune individuals to the rhythms, proportions, and harmonies of nature. This seminar draws connections between music, science, politics, ethics and aesthetics between 1750 and 1850, a crucial point in European history. We’ll examine the role of instruments in conceptions of nature, society, and the individual, traversing the clockwork regularity of the Enlightenment, the turbulent longings of Romanticism, and the spooky delirium of the fantastic. The course begins with light refracting through prisms; it ends with the blaring trombones of Berlioz’s opium-induced Symphonie Fantastique; along the way we will visit ideas of mechanical
observation, mimesis, theories of the passions, global science, demonic virtuosity, phantasmagoria, the uncanny, and the paradoxes of bourgeois selfhood. Through working with actual instruments and reading primary texts, students will be invited to question basic assumptions of intellectual history. The class is open to creative undergraduates and graduates from any field who want to explore a range of ideas of what it means to be human in the modern world.
STSC 420 Research Seminar in STSC
Cross-listed as HSOC 420
Offered: Spring 2009
Cowan W 2-5
Capstone Course
[Required for students who plan to write a senior thesis for honors]
This research methods seminar helps students develop skills crucial to independent research and to senior thesis development. The course combines focused reading, critical analysis of key texts, small-group projects, and writing and research exercises. Students can use this course to develop a plan for a senior research project, and to produce a polished thesis prospectus and literature review that can guide their thesis work in fall of their senior year. They can also carry out a literature review and research plan for a topic of interest to them, even if they do not plan to write a senior thesis. This course fulfills the Capstone research requirement for students writing a senior thesis.
STSC 425 Philosophy of Science
Cross-listed as PHIL 425
Offered: Fall 2009
Domotor MW 3:30-5:00
Fulfills the HSOC and STSC Capstone requirement
This is an historically-oriented survey and contemporary analysis of the basic concepts and arguments in philosophy of science. An in-depth examination of the nature of scientific theories, their confirmation and theory-world relations, laws of nature and their role in unification and explanation, causation, and teleology, reductionism and supervenience, values and objectivity. Additional topics covered include arguments concerning scientific realism, the ontological status of theoretical entities, the Quine-Duhem thesis, Kuhn's paradigm shifts, Bayesianism, and the success of science.
Prerequisite: Background in elementary logic and some rudiments of science
STSC 428 Genetics and Social Policy *NEW*
Cross-listed as HSOC 428
Offered: Fall 2009
Cowan W 2-5
Fulfills the HSOC and STSC Capstone requirement
As a capstone course for HSOC and STSC majors, this class will be focused less on reading and more on researching and writing a (roughly) 25-30 page paper.
The focal topic for the semester will be genetics and race. Race will be interpreted broadly to include populations that might be defined by geography, religion, or language, rather than by skin color and facial features.
Various social policies were once designed by people who had definitive views about the genetics of race. We will begin with some background reading about the beliefs of Social Darwinists (late 19th century), eugenicists (first half of the 20th century) and sociobiologists and human geneticists (second half of the 20th century)—and will then proceed to consider how this history affects current social concerns about genetic testing, personalized genomics and pharmacogenetics.
Part of every class meeting will be focused on how to choose a research topic, decide on a research method and locate appropriate sources. By mid-semester each student will need to have settled on all three (a topic, a method and sources), so that the research and writing can be completed by the end of the term.
Also by mid-semester, the syllabus will be shaped as much by the students as by me; each student will be asked to choose readings for discussion by the whole group, so class time can be used to help students conceptualize (and then re-conceptualize, as the research proceeds) their individual projects.
STSC 430 Disease and Society
Cross-listed as STSC 430
Offered: Fall 2009
Aronowitz R 1:30-4:30
Fulfills the HSOC and STSC Capstone requirement
What is disease? How do the beliefs, politics, and economies of particular societies shape how diseases are defined, experienced, and treated? In this seminar, students will ask and answer these questions by analyzing historical documents, scientific reports, and historical scholarship (primarily 19th and 20th century U.S. and European). We will look at disease from as a biological process, clinical entity, population phenomenon, historical actor, and personal experience. We will pay special attention to how diseases have been recognized, diagnosed, named, and classified in different eras, cultures, and professional settings. The course will begin with a review of major approaches to understanding the relationship between disease and society. The remainder of the course will view disease and society relationships through the lens of specific issues, such as epidemic disease, social and environmental determinants of health, globalization, risk, and prevention. Special attention will be given to developing analytic and writing skills through the reading and writing of review essays.
STSC 431 Cold War Science and Medicine ~NEW~
Cross-listed as HSOC 431
Offered: Spring 2010
Wolfe T 4:30-7:30
Fulfills the HSOC and STSC Capstone requirement
During the Cold War, science, technology, and medicine occupied a central place in the developing and maintaining state power. The incorporation of science into the apparatus of the Cold War state changed the ways that scientists studied, worked, and communicated with each other and the public. But beyond such practical concerns, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union had to confront the question of what it meant to pursue natural knowledge in a militarized state. No nation or political system could survive without the weapons, medicines, foodstuffs, and consumer producers made possible by modern scientific research—yet science was supposedly an international system free from the dictates of politics.
This course explores the contradictions of Cold War science and medicine. As a Capstone course, students will have the opportunity to devise and complete a research project on some aspect of this topic. The first half of the course will focus on readings; the second half will focus on student projects and presentations. Writing assignments throughout the semester will lead up to the final project. There are no exams.
HSOC 471 Guns and Health *NEW*
Cross-listed as STSC 471, PUBH 534
Offered: Fall 2009
Sorenson M 2-5
Fulfills the HSOC and STSC Capstone requirement
The purpose of this course is for students to gain an understanding of:
▪ the role of guns in health, and
▪ population and prevention approaches to violence.
The course will include a focus on policies and regulations related to firearms, the primary mechanism by which violence-related fatalities occur in the U.S. We will address the life span of a gun, from design and manufacture through to use. In addition, we will address key aspects of the social context in which firearms exist and within which firearm policy is made.
Particulars: Readings posted on Blackboard. No books, no exams. Two field experiences 1) learning about gun safety & firing a range of weapons at a shooting range; 2) learning about firearm sales via gun store, gun show, or websites. One field report, one short paper, one longer paper. The final paper, if a longer research proposal, can be used to fulfill the HSOC Capstone requirement.
Note: Previous versions of this course have been given at UCLA, and at Penn in Criminology.
STSC 499 Independent Study
Offered: Spring 2009
Staff
In order to receive permission to register for an independent study, a student must submit a request form (see link below).
