History and Sociology of Science| Title | Instructor | Location | Time | All taxonomy terms | Description | Section Description | Cross Listings | Fulfills | Registration Notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | Course Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HSOC 0100-401 | Emergence of Modern Science | Bekir H Kucuk | MW 9:00 AM-9:59 AM | 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 relate 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. | STSC0100401 | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| HSOC 0480-001 | Health and Societies | Ramah Katherine Mckay | TR 3:30 PM-4:29 PM | "Two fundamental questions structure this course: (1)What kinds of factors shape population health in various parts of the world in the twenty-first century? and (2)What kinds of intellectual tools are necessary in order to study global health? Grasping the deeper "socialness" of health and health care in a variety of cultures and time periods requires a sustained interdisciplinary approach. "Health and Societies: Global Perspectives" blends the methods of history, sociology, anthropology and related disciplines in order to expose the layers of causation and meaning beneath what we often see as straightforward, common-sense responses to bioloogical phenomena. Assignments throughout the semester provide a hands-on introduction to research strageties in these core disciplines. The course culminates with pragmatic, student-led assessments of global health policies designed to identify creative and cost effective solutions to the most persistent health problems in the world today." | Hum & Soc Sci Sector (new curriculum only) | |||||||||
| HSOC 0600-401 | Technology & Society | Charlotte A Abney Salomon | TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | Technology plays an increasing role in our understandings of ourselves, our communities, and our societies, in how we think about politics and war, science and religion, work and play. Humans have made and used technologies, though, for thousands if not millions of years. In this course, we will use this history as a resource to understand how technolgoeis affect social relations, and coversely how the culture of a society shapes the technologies it produces. Do different technolgoeis produce or result from different economic systems like feudalism, capitalism and communism? Can specific technologies promote democratic or authoritarian politics? Do they suggest or enforce different patterns of race, class or gender relations? Among the technologies we'll consider will be large objects like cathedrals, bridges, and airplanes; small ones like guns, clocks and birth control pills; and networks like the electrical grid, the highway system and the internet. | STSC0600401 | Society sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| HSOC 1312-401 | Mental Illness | Jason S Schnittker | MWF 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course is designed to give a general overview of how sociologists study mental illness. We will be concerned with describing the contributions of sociological research and exploring how these contributions differ from those of psychology, psychiatry, and social work. This overview will be done in three parts: we will discuss (i) what "mental illness" is, (ii) precisely how many Americans are mentally ill, (iii) how social factors (e.g. race, gender, class) and social arrangements (e.g. social networks) lead to mental illness, and (iv) how we as a society respond to and treat the mentally ill. Throughout the course, we will be concerned with uncovering the assumptions behind different definitions of mental health and exploring their political, social, and legal implications. | SOCI1111401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HSOC1312401 | ||||||||
| HSOC 1330-401 | Bioethics | Elizabeth Hallowell | TR 8:30 AM-9:29 AM | This course is intended to introduce students to the fundamental principles of bioethics and the many ethical issues that arise in the rapidly changing fields of biomedicine and the life sciences. The first half of the course will provide an overview of the standard philosophical principles of bioethics, using clinical case studies to help illustrate and work through these principles. In the second half of the course we will focus on recent biomedical topics that have engendered much public controversy including diagnostic genetics, reproductive technologies and prenatal screening, abortion, physician assisted suicide, human experiments, and end of life decision making. We will use the principles learned in the first half of the course to systematically think through these bioethical issues, many of which affect our everyday lives. | SOCI2971401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 1401-001 | The Peoples Health | David S. Barnes | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | While the scary threats of the moment in recent years, Ebola, MERS, swine flu, bioterrorism dominate media coverage of public health, most human suffering anddeath are driven by more mundane causes. This course critically addresses twenty-first-century public health science and policy by examining the long history (beginning with the plague epidemics of Renaissance Italy) that brought us to where we are today. Topics include responses to epidemics; socioeconomic, racial, and other disparities in health; occupational health; the rise of public health as a field of scientific inquiry; sanitary reform; the Bacteriological Revolution; the shift from disease causes to risk factors; and the social determinants of health. | ||||||||||
| HSOC 2002-401 | Sociological Research Methods | Courtney E Boen | MW 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | One of the defining characteristics of all the social sciences, including sociology, is a commitment to empirical research as the basis for knowledge. This course is designed to provide you with a basic understanding of research in the social sciences and to enable you to think like a social scientist. Through this course students will learn both the logic of sociological inquiry and the nuts and bolts of doing empirical research. We will focus on such issues as the relationship between theory and research, the logic of research design, issues of conceptualization and measurement, basic methods of data collection, and what social scientists do with data once they have collected them. By the end of the course, students will have completed sociological research projects utilizing different empirical methods, be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various research strategies, and read (with understanding) published accounts of social science research. | SOCI2000401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 2254-001 | American Medicine and Technology in War and Peace | David J. Caruso | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | War and its effects on the human body are brutal; the carnage of the battlefield and the conditions of camp life have presented special challenges to medicine throughout history. Additionally, the incorporation of new technologies into the military sphere, whether or not they started as civilian technologies, fundamentally changed the ways in which war was conceptualized, fought, and won. But the significance of medicine and technology in a military context extends well beyond the injuries and illnesses of war. Looking more closely at the ways in which physicians, military officers, soldiers, and civilians have interacted with each other both in war and in peace reveals much about the political, cultural, and disciplinary formation of medicine in the modern era and the roles technology in such formations. Understanding historical uses of medicine and technologies sheds light upon notions of localized and globalized warfare, as well as the political machinations in which nations engaged to create ideologies of dominance, threat, and safety. This seminar surveys the history of medicine and technology, principally in an American context, from the seventeenth through the late twentieth centuries. We will look at the ways in which the practices, theories, and tools of military medicine have played, and continue to play, a prominent role in conceptualizations of warfare, health, disease, politics, disability, morality, society, the body, culture, and ethics. We will take an in-depth look at the ways in which militaries and medical institutions have shaped, and been shaped by, other social and political categories like gender, race, class, and ethics over the last four hundred years and across various (though mostly Western) societies, and the ramifications for both soldiers and civilians alike. Students will be graded on two short essay assignments, an exam, in-class participation, and a final paper (no longer than ten pages in length) based on material covered in the course." | ||||||||||
| HSOC 2293-001 | From Madness to Mental Health: The History of Psychiatry | Amy S Lutz | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Studies show that about a quarter of college students take psychotropic medications, such as anti-depressants and stimulants. This figure has been attacked from both sides – by those who describe American adolescents and young adults today as over-medicated, and by those who point to accessibility gaps to suggest that too many are actually undertreated. Interrogating this question requires a deep dive into the history of one of our most contested disciplines. We’ll briefly consider the ancient roots of mental illness to show that concerns about sanity and aberrant behavior have always been with us, but most of the syllabus will focus on the shifting landscape in the United States, as biological theories ceded to psychoanalysis and back again. Specific topics will include somatic therapies (like lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy), pharmaceutical interventions, and institutionalization/deinstitutionalization. We’ll close by examining the current state of the field as represented by the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. | ||||||||||
| HSOC 2304-401 | Insect Epidemiology Pests, Pollinators and Disease Vectors | Michael Z. Levy | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | 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. | STSC2304401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HSOC2304401 | ||||||||
| HSOC 2312-001 | Healthy Schools |
Jonathan Argaman Amanda T. Dilodovico |
W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This Fox Leadership and academically based community service seminar will use course readings and students' own observations and interviews in their service learning projects in West Philadelphia schools to analyze the causes and impact of school health and educational inequalities and efforts to address them. Course readings will include works by Jonathan Kozol, studies of health inequalities and their causes, and studies of No Child Left Behind, the CDC's School Health Index, recess, school meal, and nutrition education programs. Course speakers will help us examine the history, theories, politics and leadership behind different strategies for addressing school-based inequalities and their outcomes. Service options will focus especially on the West Philadelphia Recess Initiative. Other service options will include work with Community School Student Partnerships and the Urban Nutrition Initiative. | PSCI2203401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 2362-401 | Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires: Medicine and Healing in the Eastern Mediterranean (15th-21st c.) | Secil Yilmaz | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires is a course about the history of medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean from the early modern period to the present. It addresses the major issues and questions concerning bodies, diseases, and medical institutions within the context of major historical developments in the world and region’s history. The course looks at how medicine, knowledge, and practices about diseases and bodies changed political and social conditions, as well as how socio-political changes defined and transformed people's perceptions of health, life, and the environment. Scholars have frequently examined the history of medicine in Eastern Mediterranean societies, either in relation to Islamic culture in the early modern period or, more recently, in relation to Westernization and modernization. By situating the history of medical knowledge and practices in the Eastern Mediterranean within global history, this course seeks to challenge these fixed paradigms and shed light on questions and research agendas that will unearth the encounters, connections, and mobility of bacteria, bodies, and medical methods among various communities. | HIST2365401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 2382-601 | Global Health: Anthropological Perspectives | Michael B Joiner | W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | In some parts of the world spending on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. In others, people struggle for survival amid new and reemerging epidemics and have little or no access to basic or life-saving therapies. Treatments for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poor remain under-researched and global health disparities are increasing. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the biomedical sciences to explore 1) the development and global flows of medical technologies; 2) how the health of individuals and groups is affected by medical technologies, public policy, and the forces of globalization as each of these impacts local worlds. The seminar is structured to allow us to examine specific case material from around the world (Haiti, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, India, for example), and to address the ways in which social, political-economic, and technological factors -- which are increasingly global in nature -- influence basic biological mechanisms and disease outcomes and distribution. As we analyze each case and gain familiarity with ethnographic methods, we will ask how more effective interventions can be formulated. The course draws from historical and ethnographic accounts, medical journals, ethical analyses, and films, and familiarizes students with critical debates on globalization and with local responses to globalizing processes. | ANTH2730601 | |||||||||
| HSOC 2511-301 | Foundations of Public Health | MW 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | Many factors have shaped, and continue to shape, population health and public health policy. This course covers the foundational knowledge of the science of public health and factors related to human health and wellness. Students will explore contemporary issues in the profession including the ongoing social and cultural reckoning with race and racism. | |||||||||||
| HSOC 2537-401 | Gender and Health | Beth Linker | W 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | Women's health is a constant refrain of modern life, prompting impassioned debates that speak to the fundamental nature of our society. Women's bodies are the tableaux across which politicians, physicians, healthcare professional, activists, and women themselves dispute issues as wide-ranging as individual versus collective rights, the legitimacy of scientific and medical knowledge, the role of the government in healthcare, inequalities of care, and the value of experiential knowledge, among many others. Understanding the history of these questions is crucial for informed engagement with contemporary issues. | GSWS2537401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HSOC2537401 | ||||||||
| HSOC 3097-401 | Indigeneity in Health, Science, and Technology | Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | In recent decades, Indigenous Studies has emerged as a trans-national and interdisciplinary academic discipline that seeks to understand the historical experience, social reality, and political aspirations of Indigenous peoples. This course examines how theories and methods from Indigenous Studies offer new perspectives on core issues in the social study of science and technology and of health and society. Through films, podcasts, literature, and academic articles we will examine the historical role that science, technology, and medicine have played in the colonization of Indigenous people in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. We will also examine how Indigenous groups have resisted scientific and technological projects and participated in their development in ways that foster self-governance and territorial sovereignty. | STSC3097401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 3210-301 | Health in Philly, Past and Present | Andria B. Johnson | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | How have different neighborhood organizations, activist groups, and private and public institutions in Philadelphia tried to understand and address shared health problems? How have Philadelphia organizations, groups, and institutions promoted wellbeing? In this course, students will read about neighborhood- and community-based interventions into health in Philadelphia since the turn of the 20th century. We will start the term reading some of the foundational research of W.E.B. DuBois, who investigated health in South Philly and was the first American sociologist to identify structural racism as a cause of illness. We will then investigate the histories of various health-focused organizations in Philadelphia, which may include: Lutheran Settlement House (1900s-present), the International Institute of Philadelphia/Nationalities Service Center (1920s-present), public FQHCs (1960s-present), Yellow Seeds & the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Cooperation (1960s/1970s-present), the Black Women’s Health Alliance (1980s-present), Philadelphia Community Health Alternatives/the Mazzoni Center (1980s-present), JUNTOS/Puentes de Salud (2000s-present), Philly Thrive (2010s-present), and the Black Doctors COVID Consortium (2020s). When studying the origins of Philadelphia-based health organizations and interventions, students will ask and answer: How was “health” defined at the time and by whom? What were some important health concerns – and for whom -- that this group addressed, and how? What are some of the activities of this organization today? Students will practice historical and ethnographic research methods. Assignments will require students to 1) locate, analyze, and share primary sources that shed light on the history of these different organizations and 2) participate in a collaborative research project designed to answer a question relevant to health in Philadelphia today. Training in ethnographic interviewing methods will be provided. | ||||||||||
| HSOC 3326-401 | Medicine and Healing in China | Hsiao-Wen Cheng | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course explores Chinese medicine and healing culture, its diversity, and its change over time. We will discuss topics including the establishment of canonical medicine, Daoist approaches to healing and longevity, diverse views of the body and disease, the emergence of treatments for women, medical construction of sex difference and imagination of female sexuality, the thriving and decline of female healers, the identity of scholar physicians, the transmission of medical knowledge, domestic and cross-regional drug market, healer-patient relations, and new visions of traditional Chinese medicine in modern China. | EALC3522401, EALC7522401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=HSOC3326401 | ||||||||
| HSOC 3524-401 | Medical Mestizaje: Health and Development in Contemporary Latin America | Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Latin American nations as we know them today emerged in the nineteenth century after violent independence struggles against the Spanish Empire. Since independence, mestizaje has been an influential ideology that seeks to portray the identity of Latin American nations as comprised of a unique cultural and racial fusion between Amerindian, European, and African peoples. Through historical, anthropological, and STS approaches this course examines how concerns with racial fusion and purity have shaped the design and implementation of public health programmes in Latin America after independence and into the 20th century. Topics include: tropical medicine and race; public health and urbanization; toxicity and exposure in industrialized settings; biomedicine and social control; indigenous health; genomics and health; food and nutrition. | LALS3524401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 3549-401 | Fertile Bodies: A Cultural History of Reproduction from Antiquity to the Enlightenment | Melissa Reynolds | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The ancient Greeks imagined a woman’s body ruled by her uterus, while medieval Christians believed in a womb touched by God. Renaissance anatomists hoped to uncover the ‘secrets’ of human generation through dissection, while nascent European states wrote new laws to encourage procreation and manage ‘illegitimate’ offspring. From ancient Greece to enlightenment France, a woman’s womb served as a site for the production of medical knowledge, the focus of religious practice, and the articulation of state power. This course will trace the evolution of medical and cultural theories about women’s reproductive bodies from ca. 450 BCE to 1700, linking these theories to the development of structures of power, notions of difference, and concepts of purity that proved foundational to ‘western’ culture. Each week we will read a primary source (in translation, if necessary) alongside excerpts from scholarly books and articles. We will begin in classical Greece with Hippocratic writings on women’s diseases, move through the origins of Christian celibacy and female asceticism in late antique and medieval Europe, follow early anatomists as they dissected women’s bodies in Renaissance Italy, explore the origins of state regulation of women’s fertility in early modern England, Germany, and France, and finally, learn how Enlightenment ideals were undergirded by new “scientific” models of anatomical sexual and racial difference. | HIST3849401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 4028-301 | Stories, Science, and Medicine | Sara E Ray | R 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | Since COVID-19 shut down the world in 2020, we have been surrounded by stories about health, medicine, and disease that cut across every aspect of our lives. This seminar explores the relationship between scientific knowledge and narrative: how do we tell stories about science and medicine? How is medical knowledge made culturally meaningful? How can thinking about storytelling as a craft make us better at communicating complex ideas about public health, medical knowledge, and their myriad social dimensions? People enjoy stories about science and medicine whether consumed as a podcast, magazine article, novel, Netflix special, or public talk – however, the popularity and the real-world urgency of this content endows the storyteller with great responsibility. This seminar takes the “story” in history seriously and uses methods from the history of medicine to help students produce compelling, contextually nuanced stories about medicine and culture, health and society. We will learn from sources including science fiction, pandemic journalism, historical scholarship, and popular science media when comparing and contrasting how medical subjects are translated into a story for particular audiences and mediums. | ||||||||||
| HSOC 4114-401 | Sports Science Medicine Technology | Andria B. Johnson | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Why did Lance Armstrong get caught? Why do Kenyans win marathons? Does Gatorade really work? In this course, we won't answer these questions ourselves but will rely upon the methods of history, sociology, and anthropology to explore the world of the sport scientists who do. Sport scientists produce knowledge about how human bodies work and the intricacies of human performance. They bring elite (world-class) athletes to their laboratories-or their labs to the athletes. Through readings, discussions, and original research, we will find out how these scientists determine the boundary between "natural" and "performance-enhanced," work to conquer the problem of fatigue, and establish the limits and potential of human beings. Course themes include: technology in science and sport, the lab vs. the field, genetics and race, the politics of the body, and doping. Course goals include: 1) reading scientific and medical texts critically, and assessing their social, cultural, and political origins and ramifications; 2) pursuing an in-depth The course fulfills the Capstone requirement for the HSOC/STSC majors. Semester-long research projects will focus on "un-black-boxing" the metrics sport scientists and physicians use to categorize athletes' bodies as "normal" or "abnormal." For example, you may investigate the test(s) used to define whether an athlete is male or female, establish whether an athlete's blood is "too" oxygenated, or assess whether an athlete is "too" fast (false start). Requirements therefore include: weekly readings and participation in online and in-class discussions; sequenced research assignments; peer review; and a final 20+page original research paper and presentation. | STSC4114401 | |||||||||
| HSOC 4356-301 | From Me-search to We-search: The Benefits and Limitations of Lived Experience | Amy S Lutz | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This Capstone will begin by considering recent bioethical literature on the importance of lived experience in both scholarship and public policy debates, as well as the biases that attach to this type of knowledge. The course readings will center on case studies we will pick as a class that are grounded in equally valid, but conflicting, first-person accounts — possible examples include autism, cochlear implants, and physician assisted suicide. Ultimately, students will be asked to interrogate a deeply held position by taking the opposing side in a research paper that incorporates both academic literature and the lived experience of others. TW: discomfort at some point in the semester is very likely, and students may end the semester more confused than they started — but hopefully with a greater sense of epistemic humility, a key goal of this Capstone. | ||||||||||
| HSOC 4880-301 | Making the Case for a Cultural Trauma | Christine Muller | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | The twenty-first century dawned for the United States with the airplane hijackings of September 11, 2001. That event has been characterized as traumatic for individuals at crash sites who witnessed or narrowly survived the destruction taking the lives of many around them, for those who grieved the loss of loved ones, and also for people who had no direct connection whatsoever either to the danger or to personal loss. What can it mean to have a single word apply to such divergent experiences? In considering this question, we will first interrogate our premise term, “trauma,” to understand its definitions and its uses under a variety of circumstances and across different disciplines. Specifically, we will draw on secondary readings from psychology, sociology, history, and literary and cultural studies to explore whether and how cultural trauma (as well as similar concepts, including social and collective trauma) might be distinct from psychological trauma. We will also draw on primary sources, including within American popular culture, whose commonly accessible texts such as film and television occasion a site for meaning construction, negotiation, and contestation about historical events across a diversely and differentially situated population. This approach structures our assessment of the implications of viewing an historical occurrence as “traumatic” for a group of people. | ||||||||||
| HSSC 5500-301 | Reading Seminar in the History of Medicine | David S. Barnes | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | This is a reading seminar with a few different goals and a wide catchment area. The course will introduce students to older and current interpretive and methodological issues and sample important scholarly works in the history of medicine. The course will also touch on some other areas, such as how to critically read and make historical use of the clinical literature, write about history for medical and lay audiences, and craft book/essay reviews. | ||||||||||
| HSSC 5757-301 | Industrial and Post Industrial Ages | Adelheid Clara Voskuhl | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | In this course we are concerned with phenomena surrounding industrialization and de-industrialization, and with post-industrial types of technologies and labor. We start with recent reconceptualizations of the archetypal British "Industrial Revolution" and its close relations to Indian industry and economy, move to the US American South as an example of a global agricultural economy in the industrial age, take North American and Western Europe as lenses for transitions from industrial to post-industrial eras, and discuss the nuclear and computer age of the Cold War from a number of perspectives: the Global South and cybernetics, medicine and isotopes, the recent climate debate and underlying computing, an anthropology of post-industrial labor, and gene-patenting and biological manufacturing in the twenty-first century. | ||||||||||
| HSSC 6089-301 | The Politics of Knowledge | Etienne S Benson | R 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | The present moment is one in which many long-accepted assumptions about the relationship between knowledge and collective life, including the idea of a mutually supportive relationship between modern science and liberal democracy, are coming under fire both within and beyond academia. The aims of this course are to (1) introduce students to scholarship on the relationship between science and politics, broadly construed, with a focus on work in the fields of science and technology studies and the history of science, (2) support students in developing their own research projects on the subject. | ||||||||||
| HSSC 6097-301 | Queer and Feminist STS | Beans Velocci | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This graduate course takes as its focus major themes, methods, and debates in queer and feminist science and technology studies (STS). It will introduce participants to foundational texts on the roles of gender and sexuality in scientific knowledge production. We will also consider more recent work that has critiqued and built upon these foundations, attending particularly to ongoing conversations about race, coloniality, disability, and queerness/transness. Throughout, we will ask—and probably fail to answer, in interesting ways—the question of what constitutes queer and feminist STS, and bring course insights to bear on our own knowledge-producing enterprise. Those enrolled will develop and write a substantive paper on a related theoretical and/or historiographical topic of their choosing. | ||||||||||
| STSC 0100-401 | Emergence of Modern Science | Bekir H Kucuk | MW 9:00 AM-9:59 AM | 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 relate 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. | HSOC0100401 | Nat Sci & Math Sector (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| STSC 0600-401 | Technology & Society | Charlotte A Abney Salomon | TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | Technology plays an increasing role in our understandings of ourselves, our communities, and our societies, in how we think about politics and war, science and religion, work and play. Humans have made and used technologies, though, for thousands if not millions of years. In this course, we will use this history as a resource to understand how technolgoeis affect social relations, and coversely how the culture of a society shapes the technologies it produces. Do different technolgoeis produce or result from different economic systems like feudalism, capitalism and communism? Can specific technologies promote democratic or authoritarian politics? Do they suggest or enforce different patterns of race, class or gender relations? Among the technologies we'll consider will be large objects like cathedrals, bridges, and airplanes; small ones like guns, clocks and birth control pills; and networks like the electrical grid, the highway system and the internet. | HSOC0600401 | Society sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| STSC 0668-301 | River History | John Kanbayashi | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | Rivers provide and divide, they constrict and connect. Although a fundamental source of prosperity and transit for human societies, they resist even the most sophisticated attempts at human control. This class examines rivers as movers of history—as sites of contestation and transformation around the globe—with a focus on how diverse societies have understood and used them. Topics include: irrigation and political power, flooding and course changes, scientific measurement of river systems, the twentieth-century rise of the concrete dam, subsequent movements towards undamming, and recent efforts to grapple with climate change. For first-year students only. | History & Tradition Sector (all classes) | |||||||||
| STSC 1101-401 | Science and Literature | Kathryn N Dorsch | W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | Science fiction has become the mythology of modern technological civilization, providing vivid means for imagining (and proclaiming) the shape of things to come. This interdisciplinary seminar will consider SF in multiple manifestations -- literature, film and TV shows, visual art and architecture. We will debate how the genre has shaped ideas about scientific knowledge, the position of humans in the universe, and our possible futures by examining themes including time travel, robots and androids, alien encounters, extraterrestrial journeys, and the nature of intelligent life. This seminar will consider SF from the perspective of the history of science and technology: critically and comparatively, with a primary focus on social and cultural contexts in addition to literary aspects. | ENGL1509401 | Arts & Letters Sector (all classes) | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=STSC1101401 | |||||||
| STSC 1151-401 | Modern Biology and Social Implications | John Ceccatti | TR 7:00 PM-8:29 PM | This course covers the history of biology in the 19th and 20th centuries, giving equal consideration to three dominant themes: evolutionary biology, classical genetics, and molecular biology. The course is intended for students with some background in the history of science as well as in biology, although no specific knowledge of either subject in required. We will have three main goals: first, to delineate the content of the leading biological theories and experimental practices of the past two centuries; second, to situate these theories and practices in their historical context, noting the complex interplay between them and the dominant social, political, and economic trends; and, third, to critically evaluate various methodological approaches to the history of science. | HIST0877401 | Nat Sci & Math Sector (new curriculum only) | ||||||||
| STSC 1761-301 | Nature and the City: Place, Memory, and Environment | Anna Lehr Mueser | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | When news articles say that we’ve known about the climate crisis for decades, who is included in that “we”? What does place have to do with which events are memorialized and which are forgotten? In this course we’ll explore the relationships among cities, environments, and ideas about the past in the United States. From problems of drinking water to climate change, we’ll investigate how place and collective memory impact decisions and possibilities in facing environmental issues. Drawing on science and technology studies, anthropology, sociology, and history, this course offers students new ways to think about how people in the United States have understood their relationships to the places they live in and depend on. Using a combination of scholarly readings, primary sources, and field trips, this CWiC critical speaking seminar will focus on assignments designed to help students develop observation, critical reading, and public speaking skills to understand how stories about the past impact their lives. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=STSC1761301 | |||||||||
| STSC 2146-401 | Science and Technology in Modern East Asia | John Kanbayashi | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Technology from East Asia is ubiquitous in everyday life in the 21st century. You may be reading these very words on a device designed or assembled in Japan, China, South Korea, or Taiwan. The region, now a global center of research and innovation, contains some of the modern world’s most impressive technological and scientific achievements. It also exhibits some of the most distressing—from mass facial recognition surveillance in China to nuclear disaster in Japan. This course explores how this state of affairs has taken shape from the 19th century through the present. Topics include industrialization, military technology, science and the rise of nationalism, the proliferation of consumer electronics, and environmental engineering in a warming world. | EALC2502401 | |||||||||
| STSC 2304-401 | Insect Epidemiology Pests, Pollinators and Disease Vectors | Michael Z. Levy | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | 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. | HSOC2304401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=STSC2304401 | ||||||||
| STSC 2692-401 | Digital Infrastructures & Platforms | Rahul Mukherjee | R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | 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? | CIMS2953401, ENGL2953401 | |||||||||
| STSC 3088-401 | Science, Labor and Capital | Bekir H Kucuk | W 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | This course looks at the intertwined history of science, labor and capital since the fifteenth century. Starting with the surge of patents for labor-saving devices in fifteenth century Italy and coming all the way down to the contemporary neoliberal university, the culture of science and the cultures of labor and capital have always remained in intense conversation. The first half of the course will focus on the early relations between science, labor and capital. We will discuss patterns of employment for scientists, the relationship between manual work and intellectual work, the scientific aspects of commercial capitalism as well as the debates on the transition to capitalism. The second half of the course will focus on the period from the nineteenth century to the present. We will talk about colonialism and science, the social ascendance of the scientist in relation to the technician, as well as the political economy of contemporary science and of the contemporary university. This is a seminar course and will require regular participation. Some knowledge of the existing literature on capitalism, especially the writings of Ellen Wood and E.P Thompson, are recommended but not required. | HIST0878401 | |||||||||
| STSC 3097-401 | Indigeneity in Health, Science, and Technology | Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | In recent decades, Indigenous Studies has emerged as a trans-national and interdisciplinary academic discipline that seeks to understand the historical experience, social reality, and political aspirations of Indigenous peoples. This course examines how theories and methods from Indigenous Studies offer new perspectives on core issues in the social study of science and technology and of health and society. Through films, podcasts, literature, and academic articles we will examine the historical role that science, technology, and medicine have played in the colonization of Indigenous people in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. We will also examine how Indigenous groups have resisted scientific and technological projects and participated in their development in ways that foster self-governance and territorial sovereignty. | HSOC3097401 | |||||||||
| STSC 4000-301 | Capstone Research Seminar in Science, Technology and Society | Beans Velocci | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This is the capstone research seminar for STSC majors. It is designed to provide the scholarly tools necessary to undertake original research in the field of Science and Technology Studies. All students in the course will produce a research paper by the end of the term; those intending to write an honors thesis (who must take the course in the spring of their junior year) will also complete a proposal for further research. Each student will work on a specific topic of their own choosing, while also learning about general methods of historical and social scientific research and reading key texts in Science and Technology Studies. | ||||||||||
| STSC 4114-401 | Sports Science Medicine Technology | Andria B. Johnson | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Why did Lance Armstrong get caught? Why do Kenyans win marathons? Does Gatorade really work? In this course, we won't answer these questions ourselves but will rely upon the methods of history, sociology, and anthropology to explore the world of the sport scientists who do. Sport scientists produce knowledge about how human bodies work and the intricacies of human performance. They bring elite (world-class) athletes to their laboratories-or their labs to the athletes. Through readings, discussions, and original research, we will find out how these scientists determine the boundary between "natural" and "performance-enhanced," work to conquer the problem of fatigue, and establish the limits and potential of human beings. Course themes include: technology in science and sport, the lab vs. the field, genetics and race, the politics of the body, and doping. Course goals include: 1) reading scientific and medical texts critically, and assessing their social, cultural, and political origins and ramifications; 2) pursuing an in-depth The course fulfills the Capstone requirement for the HSOC/STSC majors. Semester-long research projects will focus on "un-black-boxing" the metrics sport scientists and physicians use to categorize athletes' bodies as "normal" or "abnormal." For example, you may investigate the test(s) used to define whether an athlete is male or female, establish whether an athlete's blood is "too" oxygenated, or assess whether an athlete is "too" fast (false start). Requirements therefore include: weekly readings and participation in online and in-class discussions; sequenced research assignments; peer review; and a final 20+page original research paper and presentation. | HSOC4114401 |