STSC4427 - Technology and Medicine

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Technology and Medicine
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC4427401
Course number integer
4427
Meeting times
TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Andria B. Johnson
Description
Medicine as it exists in the United States today is profoundly technological. Many folks residing in the U.S. regard it as perfectly normal for clinicians to examine patients with instruments, for specialists to expose people’s bodies to many different machines, and for those machines to produce data that is mechanically/electronically processed, interpreted and stored. People are billed technologically, prompted to attend appointments technologically, and buy everyday consumer technologies to protect, diagnose, or improve our health. (Consider, for example, air-purifiers, heart rate monitors, pregnancy testing kits, blood-sugar monitoring tests, and thermometers.) Yet even at the beginning of the twentieth century, devices such as these were scarce and infrequently used by American physicians and medical consumers alike. Over the course of this semester, we examine how “technology” came to medicine’s center-stage in the U.S., and what impact this change has had on medical practice, institutions, and consumers alike.
Technology & Medicine in Modern America fulfills the Capstone research requirement for the HSOC major. By the end of the course, students will have honed their skills in primary and secondary source research and in constructing an academic argument and paper.
Course number only
4427
Cross listings
HSOC4427401
Use local description
No

STSC3283 - Sciences of Kinship

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
301
Title (text only)
Sciences of Kinship
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
301
Section ID
STSC3283301
Course number integer
3283
Meeting times
T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Zehra Hashmi
Description
What does it mean to say that someone is family? How have humans made sense of our relations to others, both human and animal, past and present? Why have these ties so often been articulated in the idiom of blood? This course will explore the varied contested meanings of “kinship,” specifically through the lens of anthropological theory, the history of science and emergent technologies that all seek to understand the connections between “us” and “others.” We will explore topics such as assisted reproductive technologies, the history of genetics, and the role of kinship theory in shaping understandings of racial and cultural difference. 
Course number only
3283
Use local description
No

STSC3279 - Nutritional Modernities: Food, Science, and Health in Global Context

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Nutritional Modernities: Food, Science, and Health in Global Context
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC3279401
Course number integer
3279
Meeting times
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano
Description
How has food shaped the global transition to modernity? Columbus’ 1492 voyage to the Americas sparked a global process that transformed the eating habits and environments of humans throughout the world. Using approaches from food studies, STS, environmental history and global history, this class examines how the production, consumption, and study of food has been central to the emergence of the modern capitalist system and its discontents. Topics include the role of diet and food in European colonial conquest, the links between racial anxieties and the creation of modern nutritional standards, the rise of dietary ‘technologies of the self’ such as calorie-counting and the BMI index, and the emergence of microbial regimes of health.
Course number only
3279
Cross listings
HSOC3279401
Use local description
No

STSC2692 - Digital Infrastructures & Platforms

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Digital Infrastructures & Platforms
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC2692401
Course number integer
2692
Meeting times
MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Rahul Mukherjee
Description
Platforms ranging from ride-hailing and food delivery apps (Uber and Swiggy) to subscription based audiovisual content providers (Netflix and SonyLIV) mediate multisided transactions (markets) and operate based on algorithmic collection, circulation, and monetization of user data. In this course, we will engage with a variety of readings about multi-situated study of apps, paying attention to both app interfaces as well as their connection to backend systems and infrastructures like content delivery networks and software development kits. In what ways do processes of data storage/distribution, content encryption/decryption and encoding/decoding make “seamless” streaming on Hulu/Prime Video and instantaneous digital payments on Venmo and PayTM possible? We will begin with how infrastructures have been studied in the past, and then in particular focus on media infrastructures such as satellite systems, optical fiber cables, cell antennas, and data centers. The course readings will consider the varied definitions of platforms and examine the socio-political effects of the proliferation of platforms in different regions of the world. In studying superapps and platforms like WeChat (China), LINE (Japan), and Jio (India), we will try to comprehend in what ways have discourses of platformization been shaped by governmental regulation, cultural practices, and socio-politics of regions. We will explore questions like: in what ways are infrastructures and apps related? How do content creators and SVoD audiences navigate algorithmic opacity? Why do BigTech companies float competing discourses about platforms? What are the connections between infrastructural investments and platform capitalism? What does it mean to have digital lives in a platform society? In what ways do digital infrastructures and platforms create the foundations for smart cities and Internet of Things?
Course number only
2692
Cross listings
CIMS2953401, ENGL2953401
Use local description
No

STSC2607 - Cyberculture

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Cyberculture
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC2607401
Course number integer
2607
Meeting times
T 10:15 AM-1:14 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Zehra Hashmi
Description
Computers and the internet have beome critical parts of our lives and culture. In this course, we will explore how people use these new technologies to develop new conceptions of identify, build virtual communities and affect political change. Each week we'll see what we can learn by thinking about the internet in a different way, focusing successively on hackers, virtuality, community, sovreignty, interfaces, algorithms and infrastructure. We'll read books, articles, and blogs about historical and contemporary cultures of computing, from Spacewar players and phone phreaks in the 1970s to Google, Facebook, World of Warcraft, WikiLeaks, and Anonymous today. In addition, we'll explore some of these online communities and projects ourselves and develop our own analyses of them.
Course number only
2607
Use local description
No

STSC2304 - Insect Epidemiology Pests, Pollinators and Disease Vectors

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Insect Epidemiology Pests, Pollinators and Disease Vectors
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC2304401
Course number integer
2304
Meeting times
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Michael Z. Levy
Description
Malaria, Dengue, Chagas disease, the Plague- some of the most deadly and widespread infectious diseases are carried by insects. The insects are also pernicious pests; bed bugs have returned from obscurity to wreak havoc on communities, invasive species decimate agricultural production, and wood borers are threatening forests across the United States. At the same time declines among the insects on which we depend- the honeybees and other pollinators--threaten our food security and ultimately the political stability of the US and other nations. We will study the areas where the insects and humans cross paths, and explore how our interactions with insects can be cause, consequence or symptom of much broader issues. This is not an entomology course but will cover a lot about bugs. It's not a traditional epidemiology course but will cover some fascinating epidemiological theory originally developed for the control of disease vectors. It will cover past epidemics and infestations that have changed the course of the history of cities and reversed advancing armies. HSOC 241. Stem Cells, Science and Society. Gearhart/Zaret.
Course number only
2304
Cross listings
HSOC2304401
Use local description
No

STSC2227 - Trauma and Healing in Historical Perspective

Status
A
Activity
SEM
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Trauma and Healing in Historical Perspective
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC2227401
Course number integer
2227
Meeting times
T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
Angelica Barbara Clayton
Description
This course considers the diverse range of theories and topics related to trauma in the 20th and 21st centuries, looking to understand how trauma has been mobilized at different moments in history for political, social, and personal ends. The point of the course is not to simply support or deny trauma as an interpretive framework for human pain and suffering, but instead to look critically at how it emerged as an object of study for medical and scientific circles and the benefits and ramifications of those biomedical frameworks that were felt at the time and stay with us into the present. We also consider how trauma has been taken up by actors outside of medicine and science, including popular media, fiction and activist communities. Using frameworks from feminist science studies, disability studies, black studies and queer studies, alongside more traditional histories of psychiatry, medicine and technology, students think about such diverse topics as sexual violence, racial violence, domestic and familial abuse, theories of psychological development, memory and trust, citizenship, the criminal justice system, the effects of our environments, intergenerational effects of violence, embodiment, biomedical models of risk and disease and narratives of the self. At the heart of this course is an interest in how we should understand humans’ capacity to harm and be harmed by one another, and how we can attend to the enduring effects of inequality and structural violence while remaining firmly grounded in the day-to-day lived, felt realities of violence and interpersonal harm.
Course number only
2227
Cross listings
HSOC2227401
Use local description
No

STSC1120 - Science Technology and War

Status
A
Activity
REC
Section number integer
403
Title (text only)
Science Technology and War
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
403
Section ID
STSC1120403
Course number integer
1120
Meeting times
F 1:45 PM-2:44 PM
Level
undergraduate
Description
In this survey we explore the relationships between technical knowledge and warin 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.
Course number only
1120
Cross listings
HSOC1120403
Fulfills
Humanties & Social Science Sector
Use local description
No

STSC1120 - Science Technology and War

Status
A
Activity
REC
Section number integer
402
Title (text only)
Science Technology and War
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
402
Section ID
STSC1120402
Course number integer
1120
Meeting times
F 10:15 AM-11:14 AM
Level
undergraduate
Description
In this survey we explore the relationships between technical knowledge and warin 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.
Course number only
1120
Cross listings
HSOC1120402
Fulfills
Humanties & Social Science Sector
Use local description
No

STSC1120 - Science Technology and War

Status
A
Activity
LEC
Section number integer
401
Title (text only)
Science Technology and War
Term
2025C
Subject area
STSC
Section number only
401
Section ID
STSC1120401
Course number integer
1120
Meeting times
TR 12:00 PM-12:59 PM
Level
undergraduate
Instructors
David J. Caruso
Description
In this survey we explore the relationships between technical knowledge and warin 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.
Course number only
1120
Cross listings
HSOC1120401
Fulfills
Humanties & Social Science Sector
Use local description
No