Course Archive

2024/25

STS 501/HIST581D: Proseminar in Science and Technology Studies/ Topics in Science, Technology, and Society (Alexei Kojevnikov)

Technology and scientific knowledge have arguably been the major source of historical change and social development in human civilizations, either ancient, modern, or postmodern. The main crises of today – climate, pandemics, militarism, virtualization of reality, racism and decolonization – all involve scientific and technological aspects and expertise as critically important factors. The seminar serves as the introduction to the multi-disciplinary field of STS (science and technology studies) and will examine classic works in history, philosophy, rhetoric, anthropology and sociology of science and technology, introducing basic methodological approaches (the strong program, feminist, post-colonial, actor-network theory, etc.) and authors, such as Thomas Kuhn, Lorraine Daston, Ian Hacking, Gyan Prakash, Bruno Latour, Simon Schaffer, Londa Schiebinger, and others. The seminar is required for graduate students in the STS Program and welcomes students from other departments and fields who are interested in STS-related topics. No prerequisite background in STS is assumed. Written assignments consist of short weekly think-pieces and the final course paper.

STS 502/PHIL561 Alan Richardson

STS597 MA Colloquium

STS598 PhD Colloquium

STS599 MA Thesis

STS Related Courses Taught by STS Affiliated Faculty

Graduate Courses

GMST521/GMST424: Selected Issues in German-speaking Culture. Special Topic: Drugs, Dams and Cosmic Conspiracies (Geoffrey Winthrop-Young)

Term 2 Tue/Th 9:30 – 11:00 Buchanan Tower 997

The course will concentrate on a strange mix of conspiracy theories and outlandish mega-projects that emerged in the early 20th century. Some were ridiculous, some explicitly genocidal; some have disappeared, others are still with us or have recently returned. We will discuss their cultural and historical origins and how they are related to totalitarian visions of control and a radical reconstruction of the world and even life itself. THe focus will be on three case studies:
* Dams and Ethnic Terraforming, or, Draining the Mediterranean: The Atlantropa Project and the Generalplan Ost
* Drugs: Speed and LSD during and after the Third Reich (includes reading of Leo Perutz, Saint Peter’s Snow)
* Alien Dreams: Nazi UFOs, Antarctica and the Interplanetary Resurrection of the Dead

Note: This course is taught in English. As GMST 424 is the permanent replacement for GERM 408, students can receive credit for only one of the two.

ENGL535: Nineteenth-Century Minds and Machines (Suzy Anger)

EDCP557: Issues in the Teaching and Learning of the Science (Samia Kahn) – 2024S

PHIL560: Feminist Philosophy of Science (Alison Wylie)

The very idea of feminist philosophy of science is, for some, radically untenable; as an explicitly political stance, feminism can have nothing to do with science or how we understand it philosophically. The “value-free” ideals that underpin such objections have faced sustained critique on many fronts in recent decades. In this seminar we take the history of debate and the legacies of standpoint theory as a frame for exploring these ongoing debates.

ENGL565: Studies in Environmental Humanities (Alexander Dick) 2024S

Undergraduate Courses

GMST274: The Frankfurt School (Ilinca Lurascu)

PHIL310: The Philosophy of Aristotle (Sylvia Berryman)

Study of Aristotle’s philosophy, with an emphasis on his new approach to the study
of the natural world and his contributions to ethics. Studying Plato first (Phil 310 or
a similar course) is helpful and recommended, but not required.

PHIL337: Ethics for the Sciences (Alison Wylie)

Scientific research has an impact on all of us, and on every aspect of our lives. This course will provide an introduction to ethics issues that are raised by the (non-medical) social and natural sciences. It is organized around three central questions: what counts as “responsible conduct of research” (RCR)?; who is accountable for the social and environmental impacts of research?; what role do social values play in science and what role should scientific research play in policy-making?

PHIL362: History and Philosophy of Economics from Aristotle to Adam Smith (Margaret Schabas)

The development of economic thought from Aristotle to Adam Smith, focusing
primarily on the conceptual foundations of economics, particularly the problems of
value, distribution, and economic growth.

PHIL363: History and Philosophy of Economics from Ricardo to Keynes (Margaret Schabas)

The development of economic thought from David Ricardo up to the present,
including such figures as Mill, Jevons, and Keynes, focusing primarily on the
conceptual foundations of economics, particularly the problems of value,
distribution and growth.

PHIL364/HIST394: Darwin, Evolution, and Modern History (John Beatty)

In this course, we will investigate the development of evolutionary thought, paying special attention to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. To broaden our perspective, we will consider not only the scientific but also the social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical sources of Darwin’s thought. We will also consider his influence in all these areas. The Darwinian revolution was an historical development of wide-ranging significance.

ENGL393: Environmental Humanities (Alexander Dick)

PHIL461: Philosophy of Social Science (Margaret Schabas)

Topics in the philosophy of science of special concern to the social sciences: the
problem of objectivity, the use of models and evidence, causation and causal
reasoning, formal methods, the status of social kinds and norms, scientific
explanation, laws.

PHIL469: Topics in Philosophy of Science (Alan Richardson)

2023/24

STS Core Courses

STS 501 001 (cross-listed with PPGA591S) – Term 1 (Hugh Gusterson)

STS 502 002 (cross-listed with ENGL561A) – Term 1 (Kavita Philip)

STS 597/598 Term 1 to 2 Colloquium in Science and Technology Studies (Sylvia Berryman)

Media and Misinformation: The History of Truth from Pseudoscience to Propaganda

Professors Kavita Philip and Richard Cavell

Course Description: Information and propaganda, science and truth, planetary crises and democratic responses are inter-dependent. The lives of people and the planet will depend on our ability to communicate accurately and effectively. Media Studies, traditionally the locus for the study of communication technologies, has, by necessity, expanded its field to engage with disciplines such as Science and Technology Studies, Information Studies, Infrastructure and Network analysis, as well as with established disciplines such as History, Geography, and English. This new iteration of Media Studies has now become the most consequential place—inside and outside the academy—for a new critical, interdisciplinary vocabulary to take effect.

This course offers a design for a new kind of literacy. The future world citizen must be equally proficient in analyzing technical, historical, and narrative forms. Yet our disciplines parse, prioritize, and rank these forms of representation, creating students highly skilled in one or two but not across the diverse forms in which “truth” and “information” come packaged today. The future of education is interdisciplinary, because our crises are inter-connected, and because transdisciplinary citizens are needed to address planetary and political challenges. This course seeks to create a set of tools that will enable critique at the intersection of the history of truth and the future of citizenship.

STS 597/598 Colloquium in Science and Technology Studies – Term 1-2

STS Related Courses Taught by STS Affiliated Faculty

Graduate Courses

ENGL 505A 001 Term 2 Victorian Speculative Fiction (Suzy Anger)

PHIL514A 001 Term 1 Early Modern Philosophy (Margaret Schabas)

RES 500D 101 Term 1 Expertise under fire. Navigating the divide between scientific practice and science studies – (Gunilla Öberg)

Undergraduate Courses

GMST274 002 The Frankfurt School (Ilinca Iurascu)

PHIL311 001 Term 2 Philosophy of Aristotle (Sylvia Berryman)

Aristotle stands beside Plato as one of the dominant figures of ancient Greek philosophy and its legacy. His philosophical system offers new answers to problems of continuity through change; causation and the fundamental principles of the natural world; the nature of living beings; the soul, perceiving and thinking; and the goal of human life. Aristotle is considered one of the key figures in the early history of Western scientific thought. In this course, we will approach Aristotle as a systematic thinker studying nature and human nature.

PHIL332 001 Environmental Philosophy (John Beatty)

We will pursue two central issues having to do with nature: what *value* does nature have, and what is it about *nature* that makes it valuable? These are philosophical questions that are also informed by ecology and environmental history.

PHIL362/ECON318 Term 1 History and Philosophy of Economics from Aristotle to Adam Smith (Margaret Schabas)

PHIL363/ECON319 Term 2 History and Philosophy of Economics from Ricardo to Keynes (Margaret Schabas)

PHIL364/HIST394 Darwin, Evolution and Modern Thought (John Beatty)

We will investigate the development of evolutionary thought, paying special attention to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. To broaden our perspective, we will consider not only the scientific but also the social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical sources of Darwin’s thought. We will also consider his influence in all these areas. The Darwinian revolution was an historical development – is an ongoing development – of wide-ranging significance.

RUSS 324A Term 2 Russian and Soviet Science Fiction (Katherine Bowers)

asynchronous online course

This course will explore the rich science fiction tradition in Russia and Eastern Europe. Earlier writers described visions of utopia and fantastic voyages to the moon, but in the twentieth century, which saw significant scientific and technological advances, the intensity of modern war and the pressure of the space race, and the ideological conflicts of the Cold War, science fiction came into its own. The class includes a mixture of text and film. We will explore the greatest science fiction of the twentieth century and delve into some emerging as the most important of the twenty-first century.

2022/23

STS 501 001 (cross-listed with PHIL 560A 001) – Term 1 (Alan Richardson)

STS 502 002 (cross-listed with HIST 581D 201) – Term 2 (Alexei Kojevnikov)

Topic: Public Intellectuals: Science and Political Activism.

The seminar will explore political dilemmas and moral challenges of intellectual life during turbulent times, from Galileo and Voltaire to Einstein and Sakharov, and also include our own time and current controversies in which science is involved. We shall analyze the roles taken up by scientists as public intellectuals and explore peripeteia of historical developments through their eyes and existential experiences, their attempts to envision and rationalize the flow of time, to improve the world, or at least to make some sense of it. Texts by scientists and about them will help us understand through cultural contextualization their illusions, insights, and frustrations of the clash between wishful political thinking and the hard realities of history. Their often referenced but also ofte&~ n misinterpreted views provide uncommon perspectives and alternative picture of the past and its lost vision of the future. The hubris and the sometime unpredictable power of big, weird, dangerous, or incomprehensible ideas can also allow a humble reflection on contemporary intellectual attempts to comprehend the chaotic historical and political process of our own times.

STS 597/598 Colloquium in Science and Technology Studies – Term 1-2

STS Related Courses Taught by STS Affiliated Faculty

Graduate Courses

ARTH 540B 001 Studies in 20th Century Art

Social Media Before Social Media: Art, Fashion, Money, and the Masses in German Social Thought, 1900-1950

Mondays 2:00-5:00pm

How might an examination of German Marxism and Sociology in the first half of the twentieth century help us better understand the contours of our current, social-media condition? Even as mass culture has shifted from the movie theatre to the Internet, the various ways in which writers then described the experience of “Little Shopgirls” within a “Cult of Distraction” still resonate, uncannily, with our lives today.

Focusing on select texts by Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Hannah Arendt, this seminar will consider how these authors addressed certain topics—such as, art, fashion, the commodity, money, mass culture, the individual, anti-Semitism, and totalitarianism—as they responded to developments in technology, nationalism, and visual culture.

Throughout this seminar, we will consider how these authors not only provide insight into their earlier moment of modernity, as fascism and war took over social interactions, we will also look to their writings to ask whether they could better help us grasp the complex entanglements of neoliberalism, technology, cultural-economic trends, and new versions of totalitarianism in our contemporary life.

ANTH 540C 002 – term 2 (Tracey Heatherington)

PHIL550A 001 The metaphysics of life and process philosophy – term 1 (Evan Thompson)

RES 500D 101 Expertise under fire. Navigating the divide between scientific practice and science studies – term 1 (Gunilla Öberg)

Undergraduate Courses

ENGL 491A 001 English Honours Seminar – term 1 (Judy Segal)

GERM 412 001 German Media Studies – term 2 (Ilinca Iurascu)

PHIL363 001 (cross-listed with ECON319 001) – term 2 (Margaret Schabas)

PHIL360A 001 (cross-listed with HIST393 201) – term 2 (Margaret Schabas)

2021/22

STS 501 001 (cross-listed with PHIL 561A) – Term 1 (Alison Wylie)

The thematic focus of this seminar will be the nature, status, production and circulation of data, facts and evidence. The empirical foundations and products of science have been a perennial focus of research in all the cognate fields of STS, and their study in contextualist, constructionist terms has been a flashpoint for science wars-style debates within these fields, between them, and in popular debate about the status and authority of the sciences. So this conceptual framework provides a useful lens for reviewing “classic work in the history, philosophy, rhetoric, and sociology of science,” taking stock of the formation of STS as a field, and exploring current work that represents new and emerging lines of inquiry.

STS 502 002 (cross-listed with ENGL 509A) – Term 2 (Judy Segal)

Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) is an assembly of theoretical and methodological dispositions aimed at discovering what is going on, in contexts of health and medicine, when people act discursively on other people. Rhetoricians of health and medicine may take among their objects of analysis medical journal articles, illness narratives, doctor-patient interviews, diagnostic manuals, public health messages, pharmaceutical ads, health-information web sites, and health technologies, including wellness apps. They study health citizenship beyond the individual body, taking among their topics, for example, health ideologies, health politics and policies, and health inequities: health power in general—and rhetorical power.

Over the past two decades, especially, RHM has established itself as a robust field, with allegiances and intellectual commitments to Science and Technology Studies, Health/Medical Humanities, and Disabilities Studies, among other interdisciplines—and, particularly now, in pandemic times, ties to the project of Public Humanities. Rhetoricians of health and medicine have, over time, turned their attention to discursive/persuasive elements in matters of, for example, HIV/AIDS (J. Blake Scott), contested illnesses (Lisa Keränen), mental illness (Carol Berkenkotter), neurodiversity (Melanie Yergeau), health and race (Kelly Happe), global health (Raquel Baldwinson), pain (S. Scott Graham), breast cancer (Phaedra Pezzullo), food (Colleen Derkatch and Philippa Spoel), vaccination (Heidi Lawrence), hormones (Amy Koerber), in/fertility (Robin Jensen), sexual desire (Judy Segal), and gender identity (Karen Kopelson).

It’s not a straightforward thing to separate work directly informed by rhetorical theory and done by self-identified rhetorical critics (exemplified in the scholarship cited above) and work done by sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, historians, literature specialists and others with a deep interest in rhetoric (scholars like Joseph Dumit, Emily Martin, Ian Hacking, Keith Wailoo, and Catherine Belling, respectively). But this course will, in the first instance, focus on the work of, well, card-carrying rhetoricians, in order to give an account of RHM both in itself and in its inter-, pan-, poly-, and post-disciplinary modes. The course will formulate an answer to the question of what rhetorical studies has to offer to STS and to other interdisciplinary conversations concerning perspectives, problems, and practices, in health and medicine.

STS 597/598 Colloquium in Science and Technology Studies – Term 1-2

STS Related Courses Taught by STS Affiliated Faculty

Graduate Courses

PHIL 560A 001 Philosophy of Science – Term 1 (John Beatty)

ENGL 561A 001 Topics in Science and Technology Studies – Term 1 (Kavita Philip)

We understand ourselves to be living in the Age of Information. How do scholars, activists, and artists understand the nature of the “revolution” that brought this Age into being? How has it reconstituted subjectivity, society, economics, and geopolitics? What changes has this brought to the arts, humanities, and culture? Examining the rise of digital information and its consequences, we ask whether the information revolution has drawn historical patterns of inequality (including race, gender, orientalism, and post-colonial geopolitics) into new political configurations. This course is an introduction to the transnational politics of information. We pursue a long historical view, a global political perspective, and a cultural analysis. Assigned texts (subject to change) include Mario Biagoli on early modern authorship; Foucault on the Enlightenment and classical authorship; Rosemary Coombe on the cultural life of intellectual property; Wendy Chun, Gabriella Coleman and Chris Kelty on coding; Brian Larkin on Nigerian media infrastructures; Samuel Delaney’s short novel Babel-17; and selections from two decades of feminism at the intersection of art and technology. This course is cross listed with LIBR 569B.

HIST 575 101 Readings in International and Global History – Term 1 (Jessica Wang)

“Landscapes of Power: Resources, States, and Societies”

This seminar brings together approaches from environmental history, agrarian studies, the history of capitalism, and studies of state power to explore the global contexts of cultivation and extraction from the early modern period to the near-present, with a particular focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land use, control of waterways, the development of agricultural commodities and mineral resources, and efforts to manage and govern rural and nomadic peoples have constituted pivotal sites of political and economic development and conflict. From processes of state-building, nation-building, exploration, trade, and projection of imperial power emerged the basic commodities, built environments, property regimes, and forms of governmentality that we now take for granted on a daily basis. “Landscapes of Power” examines the historical underpinnings of these processes in diverse parts of the world in order to interrogate the collisions between nature, state, society, and humanity that undergird the material world we live in and the systems of resource management and exploitation that we depend on for food and other basic necessities.

RES 500D 101 (Gunilla Öberg) Expertise under fire. Navigating the divide between scientific practice and science studies

Scientific expertise is under fire. There is an urgent need for scientists and science scholars alike to jointly grapple with the attacks on science by populist politicians who claim that expertise is elitist and a threat to democracy. In this course, students will jointly explore how science experts can support democracy without turning democracy over to experts.

Science students will grapple with the role of value-judgements in science and how it is plays out in their own field of research.

Humanities students studying the scientific enterprise will grapple with the communication barrier between science studies and the scientific practice.

Through the use historic and contemporary cases, students will work in mixed groups to jointly seek ways to fruitfully navigate the divide between the two communities to find ways to appreciate the social elements of science while seeking a constructive way out of the post-truth quagmire.

Background: Science studies have raised questions about the role of expertise in a democracy. Who counts as an expert? Who should be at the table? It is well documented that scientists on opposite sides of a policy-relevant scientific controversy commonly perceive the other side as biased but see themselves as objective. More data and rigorous analysis rarely resolve such conflicts, yet the expectation is that it is possible to reach consensus. This expectation hinges on the idea that the scientific enterprise is free of values and that science is a deliverer of irrefutable facts. Value-judgements are a necessary part of rigorous science because 100% certainty will never reign. Consensus is therefore not always possible and probably not even desirable. Yet, little is known about how to sensibly navigate this terrain.

Undergraduate Courses

ENGL 309 001 Rhetoric of Science, Technology, Medicine – Term 2 (Sara Press)

The Rhetoric of Science and Medicine examines the role of language, argument, and persuasion, and how it affects the production, translation, and circulation of scientific and medical knowledge. Our guiding questions for the course are based on what rhetorician of medicine Judy Segal identifies as the central questions of rhetorical criticism: “Who is persuading whom of what?” and “what are the means of persuasion?” We will read articles from rhetorical theory and criticism, rhetoric of science, science and technology studies, rhetoric of health and medicine, and public news sources to examine the persuasive elements in science and medicine.

We will interrogate how argument is used to “manufacture controversies” regarding issues like vaccination, and observe how metaphors work in science and medicine (genes as maps; the egg and sperm as romance; wars against Covid-19) to communicate concepts of biological processes. We will be attentive to the biased practices in medicine that discriminate against marginalized populations based on race, gender, class, sexuality, age, and ability. We will also examine the persuasive interactions between pharmaceutical companies and patient consumers, as well as the power dynamics between doctors and patients. Throughout the course, we will be thinking about how experts communicate to the wider public, and how non-experts interact with science and medicine with their own motivations and vocabularies. Given the prominence of health topics in public discourse, the course will pay special attention to the rhetoric of health and medicine.

PHIL 464 001 Philosophy of Biology – Term 2 (Chris Stephens)

2020/21