Courses of Study 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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STS—Science & Technology Studies |
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STS 2061 - Ethics and the Environment (crosslisted) BSOC 2061 , PHIL 2460
(KCM-AS) (CU-SBY)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Pritchard.
For description, see BSOC 2061 .
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STS 2071 - Introduction to the History of Medicine (crosslisted) BSOC 2071 , HIST 2710
(HB) (HA-AS)
Fall, summer. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Seth.
This course offers an introductory survey of the history of medicine (principally in Europe and the United States) from classical antiquity to the early twentieth century. Using a combination of both primary and secondary sources, students will learn about the “Hippocratic Heritage” of contemporary western medicine; medicine in late antiquity; faith and healing in the medieval period; medicine and knowledge in the Islamic world; medicine during the Renaissance (particularly the rise of the mechanical philosophy); medicine in the age of Enlightenment; professionalization, women-doctors and midwives, and battles over ‘quackery’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the role of medicine in colonialism and empire; and the promises and perils of modern medicine (dramatic decreases in mortality on the one hand, the rise of Eugenics and the importance of Medicine to the National Socialist State on the other). As well as this temporal survey, we will consider a number of ongoing themes: race, bodily difference, and medicine; medicine and the environment; women, gender, and medicine; the history of the body; the history of sexuality; and the close connections between forms of social order and forms of medical knowledge. The course meets three times a week (for two lectures and a section) and is open to all.
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STS 2122 - [Darwin and the Making of Histories] (crosslisted) BSOC 2122 , HIST 2122
(HA-AS)
Fall. Next Offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Student option grading.
P. Dear.
For description, see HIST 2122 .
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STS 2231 - [Energy in History] (crosslisted) HIST 2131
(HA-AS)
Fall. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
V. Seow.
For description, see HIST 2131 .
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STS 2331 - [Agriculture, History, and Society: From Squanto to Biotechnology] (crosslisted) AMST 2331
(HA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Staff.
Surveys the major themes in the development of agriculture and agribusiness in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. These include particular individuals (e.g., Liberty Hyde Bailey, Luther Burbank, G. W. Carver, Henry A. Wallace, and Norman Borlaug), the rise of government support and institutions (including U.S.D.A. and Cornell), noteworthy events (the dust bowl, World War II, and the environmental movement), and the achievements of the Green and “Gene” Revolutions.
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STS 2381 - [Ten Technologies That Shook the World?] (crosslisted) HIST 2881
(HA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Pritchard.
In 1919, journalist John Reed published Ten Days That Shook the World about the 1917 Russian Revolution. Some events are so transformative, Reed argued, they change the course of history. This class examines ten technologies that “shook” the world over the past half millennium. Or did they? Can technology drive history? How should we think about the relationship between technology and culture, society, politics, and the environment? This course challenges many popular understandings of technology and technological change, introducing students to major concepts in the history and social studies of technology, including technological determinism, systems, infrastructure, skill, technopolitics, envirotech, users, and maintenance and repair. Technologies addressed will vary, but may include the slave ship, factory, climate control, atomic bomb, and plastic.
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STS 2451 - [Introduction to Bioethics] (crosslisted) PHIL 2455
(KCM-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
J. Markovits.
For description, see PHIL 2455 .
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STS 2621 - Gendering Religion, Science and Technology (crosslisted) AMST 2621 , FGSS 2621
(KCM-AS)
Spring. 4 credits.
C. Rock-Singer.
There are several “just-so stories” about science and religion: the world’s religions are parallel systems of belief in the supernatural; science has a set method that produces universal truths; and religion and science are in perpetual conflict. This course will challenge these understandings by introducing students to the study of religion, science, and technology, as well as to ways to think about their relationships. To bring these categories down to earth and unsettle engrained scholarly and popular narratives, our approach will be to gender the study of religion, science, and technology. To do so, we will not simply “add women and stir,” to borrow a phrase from feminist historians; rather, we will query how gender, sexuality, and embodiment shape the very construction of knowledge itself.
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STS 2641 - [The Technology of Ancient Rome] (crosslisted) ARKEO 2641 , CLASS 2641
(HB) (HA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
C. Roby.
For description, see CLASS 2641 .
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STS 2751 - Ethical Issues in Intelligent Autonomous Systems (crosslisted) ECE 2750 , ENGRG 2750 , INFO 2750
(KCM-AS)
Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
Prerequisite: a Freshman Writing Seminar.
P. Doing.
For description, see ECE 2750 .
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STS 2761 - [Governing Everyday Life] (crosslisted) SOC 2760
(SBA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
M. Ziewitz.
Traffic lights, elevators, and recycling bins seem rather boring and irrelevant. Yet, while not usually on our minds when thinking about governance and regulation, these seemingly mundane technologies are important features of our lives. This course will take a closer look at everyday solutions to public problems. Combining hands-on exercises with readings from STS, sociology, and politics, we shall explore the role of everyday devices and technologies in establishing, maintaining, and disrupting social order. How to think about these “small” solutions to “big” problems? What are the tools and tricks for analyzing things we take for granted? How might these insights challenge longstanding ideas about accountability, technology, and governance? Working through these questions will be particularly useful for students interested in sociology, design, and public policy.
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STS 2821 - [Science in Western Civilization: Newton to Darwin, Darwin to Einstein] (crosslisted) BSOC 2821 , HIST 2820
(HB) (HA-AS)
Spring. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Seth.
For description, see HIST 2820 .
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STS 2831 - [Introduction to the Philosophy of Science] (crosslisted) PHIL 2810
(KCM-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Staff.
For description, see PHIL 2810 .
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STS 2841 - Viruses- Humans-Viral Politics (Social History and Cultural Politics of HIV & AIDS) (crosslisted) ANTHR 2021 , BSOC 2841 , FGSS 2841 , LGBT 2841
(CA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
C. Roebuck.
This course explores what has been termed “the modern plague.” It investigates the social history, cultural politics, biological processes, and global impacts of the retrovirus, HIV, and the disease syndrome, AIDS. It engages material from multiple fields: life sciences, social sciences, & humanities as well as media reports, government documents, activist art, and community-based documentaries. It explores various meanings and life-experiences of HIV & AIDS; examines conflicting understandings of health, disease, the body; investigates political struggles over scientific research, biomedical & public health interventions, and cultural representations; and queries how HIV vulnerability is shaped by systems of power and inequality. As well, we come to learn about the practices, the politics, and the ethics of life and care that arise in “the age of epidemic.”
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STS 2851 - Communication, Environment, Science, and Health (crosslisted) COMM 2850
(SBA-AS)
Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
Enrollment limited to: second-semester sophomore, junior, or senior standing.
Staff.
For description, see COMM 2850 .
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STS 2871 - Evolution (crosslisted) BIOEE 2070
(PBS-AS)
Fall, summer. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Intended for: students with no background in college biology. Does not meet evolutionary biology requirement for biological sciences major. May not be taken for credit after BIOEE 1780 .
J. Searle.
For description and learning outcomes, see BIOEE 2070 .
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STS 3011 - Life Sciences and Society (crosslisted) BSOC 3011
(SBA-AS)
Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
Enrollment limited to: Senior, Junior and Sophomore students.
M. Lynch, J. Ratcliff.
For description, see BSOC 3011 .
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STS 3020 - Science Writing for the Media (crosslisted) COMM 3020
Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Prerequisite: college-level writing course. Enrollment limited to: 24 students. Not open to freshman.
N. A. Porticella, Staff.
For description, see COMM 3020 .
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STS 3031 - [Making Things Nuclear]
(SBA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Slayton.
Today, nuclear things connote power and perils to nations and people around the world. We will examine the changing reasons that nuclear technologies—the artifacts, experts, and codified knowledge associated with radioactive substances—have been coveted and controlled, with special attention to medical, military, and environmental applications. By examining the changing nature of “nuclear” things from the 19th Century to today, we will gain a deeper understanding of how several interlinked and transnational processes—including industrialization, testing, popularization, and the making of codified and formal knowledge—produce technology’s material and political power. This seminar course is open to advanced undergraduates from diverse backgrounds; we welcome participants from science, engineering, social science, and the humanities as well as historians of science, technology, and medicine.
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STS 3111 - Sociology of Medicine (crosslisted) BSOC 3111 , DSOC 3111 , SOC 3130
(SBA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
Not open to: freshmen.
C. Leuenberger.
This course provides an introduction to the ways in which medical practice, the medical profession, and medical technology are embedded in society and culture. We will ask how medicine is connected to various sociocultural factors such as gender, social class, race, and administrative cultures. We will examine the rise of medical sociology as a discipline, the professionalization of medicine, and processes of medicalization and demedicalization. We will look at alternative medical practices and how they differ from and converge with the dominant medical paradigm. We will focus on the rise of medical technology in clinical practice with a special emphases on reproductive technologies. We will focus on the body as a site for medical knowledge, including the medicalization of sex differences, the effect of culture on nutrition, and eating disorders such as obesity and anorexia nervosa. We will also read various classic and contemporary texts that speak to the illness experience and the culture of surgeons, hospitals, and patients, and we will discuss various case studies in the social construction of physical and mental illness.
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STS 3121 - [Sound Studies: An Introduction] (crosslisted) MUSIC 3432
(CA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
T. Pinch.
Sound as a medium has been neglected not only in the sciences but also in social sciences and humanities. We will engage with new emerging work in sound studies by addressing specific locations and activities where sound is important. These include histories of key sonic technologies such as the phonograph and electronic music synthesizer; places where sound is particularly pertinent such as the recording studio and the Laboratory of Ornithology; and practices where sound is the medium such as the use of the stethoscope in medicine. We will also examine interesting sonic locales such as the rain forests of Papua New Guinea. We will cover how sound figures in everyday activities such as economic exchange and in new media such as movies and video games.
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STS 3181 - Living in an Uncertain World: Science, Technology, and Risk (crosslisted) AMST 3185 , BSOC 3181 , HIST 3181
(HA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Slayton.
This course explores the history, sociology, and ethics of risk. In particular, we will focus on the complex and often ambiguous relationship between science, technology, and risk. A historical perspective shows how science and technology have generated risks while they have also played key roles in managing and solving those very risks. By examining several case studies, including 19th-century mining, the 1911 Triangle fire, nuclear science, the space shuttle disasters, asbestos litigation, Hurricane Katrina, and the contemporary financial crisis, we will consider how risk and ideas about risk have changed over time. By exploring different historical and cultural responses to risk, we will examine the sociopolitical dimensions of the definitions, perceptions, and management of risk both in the past and the present.
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STS 3241 - Environmental Sociology (crosslisted) DSOC 3240 , SOC 3240
(SBA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
J. Zinda.
For description and learning outcomes, see DSOC 3240 .
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STS 3411 - [Engineering in History] (crosslisted) HIST 3411
(HA-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
Staff.
This course surveys the history of engineering in Europe and the United States from the Roman Empire to the present. We will focus on selected cases to examine how both the profession and activity of engineering have developed over the last two millennia, and how these activities have shaped and been shaped by broader historical developments.
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STS 3460 - [Anthropology of the Body] (crosslisted) ANTHR 3465 , BSOC 3460
(GB) (CA-AS)
Fall. Next offered 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Langwick.
For description, see ANTHR 3465 .
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STS 3511 - [Media in Transit] (crosslisted) COML 3112 , GERST 3511 , PMA 3511
(HB) (CA-AS)
Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Taught in English.
E. Born.
For description, see GERST 3511 .
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STS 3561 - Computing Cultures (crosslisted) ANTHR 3061 , COMM 3560 , INFO 3561 , VISST 3560
(CA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Not open to: freshmen. No technical knowledge of computer use presumed or required.
M. Ziewitz.
Computers are powerful tools for working, playing, thinking, and living. Laptops, PDAs, webcams, cell phones, and iPods are not just devices, they also provide narratives, metaphors, and ways of seeing the world. This course critically examines how computing technology and society shape each other and how this plays out in our everyday lives. Identifies how computers, networks, and information technologies reproduce, reinforce, and rework existing cultural trends, norms, and values. Looks at the values embodied in the cultures of computing and considers alternative ways to imagine, build, and work with information technologies.
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STS 3601 - Ethical Issues in Engineering Practice (crosslisted) ECE 3600 , ENGRG 3600
(KCM-AS)
Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
Enrollment open to: sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
P. Doing.
For description and learning outcomes, see ENGRG 3600 .
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STS 3811 - [Philosophy of Science] (crosslisted) PHIL 3810
(KCM-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Staff.
For description, see PHIL 3810 .
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STS 3911 - [Science in the American Polity, 1960 to Now] (crosslisted) AMST 3911 , GOVT 3091
(SBA-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Enrollment limited to: senior, junior and sophomore students.
S. Hilgartner.
This course reviews the changing political relations between science, technology, and the state in America from 1960 to the present. It focuses on policy choices involving science and technology in different institutional settings, such as Congress, the court system, and regulatory agencies. The tension between the concepts of science as an autonomous republic and as just another interest group is a central theme.
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STS 3991 - Undergraduate Independent Study
(CU-UGR)
Fall, spring. 1-6 credits, variable. Student option grading.
Permission of instructor required. No more than 8 credit hours total of independent study (not including hoors) can count toward the STS major. To apply for independent study, please complete the on-line form at data.arts.cornell.edu/as-stus/indep_study_intro.cfm.
Staff.
More information about independent study available in 303 Morrill Hall.
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STS 4041 - Controversies in Science, Technology and Medicine: What They Are and How to Study Them
(SBA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
C. Rock-Singer.
Scientists in the main try to avoid controversy whilst STS scholars argue that controversy can be a motor of scientific change. There is a lengthy tradition of research into different forms of controversies within science, technology, and medicine. We will read selectively and discuss critically this literature. Students will differentiate between “priority disputes” over credit for discoveries and wider controversies, such as “global warming”, which bring in many diverse audiences. We will cover historical cases as well as contemporary ones. Students will critically evaluate the main analytical approaches towards controversies and we will also explore new web-based tools for researching controversies.
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STS 4071 - [Law, Science, and Public Values] (crosslisted) BSOC 4071
(SBA-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
M. Lynch.
Examines problems that arise at the interface of law and science. These problems include the regulation of novel technology, the role of technical expertise in public decision making, and the control over scientific research. The first part of the course covers basic perspectives in S&TS and how they relate to legal decisions and processes. The second part covers a series of examples and legal cases on the role of expert judgments in legal and legislative settings, intellectual property considerations in science and medicine, and legal and political oversight of scientific research. The final part examines social processes and practices in legal institutions, and relates these to specific cases of scientific and technological controversy. Lectures and assignments are designed to acquaint students with relevant ideas about the relationship between legal, political, and scientific institutions, and to encourage independent thought and research about specific problems covered in the course.
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STS 4101 - The Entangled Lives of Humans and Animals (crosslisted) ANTHR 4101 , BSOC 4101
(KCM-AS) (CU-SBY)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Prentice.
One animal behaviorist speculates that big brains develop when species are social; that is, when they must read cues from members of their group to understand when to approach, when to flee, when to fight, when to care. This course looks not only at animals in their social lives, but also at animals in their lives with us. We ask questions about how species become entangled and what that means for both parties, about the social lives of animals independently and with humans, about the survival of human and animal species, and about what it means to use animals for science, food, and profit. The course draws on readings from Anthropology, Science & Technology Studies, and animal trainers and behaviorists.
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STS 4120 - [Scientific Revolution in Early - Modern Europe] (crosslisted) BSOC 4121 , HIST 4120
(HB) (HA-AS)
Fall. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
P. Dear.
For description, see HIST 4120 .
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STS 4122 - Darwin and the Making of Histories (crosslisted) BSOC 4122 , HIST 4122
(HA-AS)
Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
P. Dear.
For description, see HIST 4122 .
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STS 4131 - [Comparative Environmental History] (crosslisted) BSOC 4131 , HIST 4131
(HA-AS) (CU-SBY)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Pritchard.
One of the most troubling realizations of the 20th century has been the extent to which human activities have transformed the environment on a global scale. The rapid growth of human population and the acceleration of the global economy have meant that the 20th century, in environmental terms, has been unlike any other in world history. This course takes a comparative approach, examining crucial themes in the environmental history of the 20th-century world in different times, places, and ecologies.
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STS 4200 - [Information Policy: Research, Analysis, and Design] (crosslisted) COMM 4201 , INFO 4200
Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.
Prerequisite: INFO 2040 , INFO 2921 , or INFO 3200 . Enrollment limited to: undergraduate third-year standing or above; or graduate standing.
S. Jackson.
For description, see INFO 4200 .
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STS 4221 - [New York Women] (crosslisted) FGSS 4220
(HA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Staff.
Over the centuries New York State has been the site of activity for a great many women of consequence. This course is a one-semester survey of the past and present activities and contributions of rural and urban women in a variety of fields of interest to Cornell students: politics, medicine, science, the law, education, business (including hotels), entertainment, communications, government, labor, religion, athletics, the arts, and other areas. Weekly readings and discussion and a paper, possibly using local or university archives.
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STS 4231 - [Gender and Technology in Historical Perspectives] (crosslisted) FGSS 4231 , HIST 4231
(HA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Pritchard.
Why are some technologies such as cars and computers associated with men and masculinity? How did vacuums and sewing machines become gendered female? How do technological artifacts and systems constitute, mediate, and reproduce gender identities and gender relations? How do technologies uphold gender hierarchies and thus social inequalities? This class explores the relationship between gender and technology in comparative cultural, social, and historical perspective. Specific themes include meanings, camouflage, and display; socializations; industrialization, labor, and work; technologies of war; the postwar workplace; sex and sexuality; and reproductive technologies. Most course materials focus on Western Europe and the United States since the late 18th century, but the issues raised in this class will prepare students to think about the relationship between gender and technology in other contexts including our own.
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STS 4240 - Designing Technology for Social Impact (crosslisted) INFO 4240
(CA-AS)
Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Technical background is not needed for this course.
P. Sengers.
For description, see INFO 4240 .
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STS 4251 - Climate History: New Perspectives on Science, Society, and Environment (crosslisted) HIST 4255
(HA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
J. Giacomelli.
For description, see HIST 4255 .
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STS 4291 - [Politics of Science] (crosslisted) BSOC 4291 , GOVT 4291
(SBA-AS)
Fall. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Herring.
For description, see GOVT 4291 .
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STS 4301 - Social Studies of Space, Technologies and Borders (crosslisted) DSOC 4301 , GOVT 4807
(CA-AS)
Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.
C. Leuenberger.
In this course we will discuss how society, culture and politics shape technological artifacts and the natural and built environment, such as bridges, roads, and landscapes in diverse cultural contexts. We will examine reasons for the rise in bordering mechanisms - ranging from walls, barriers to fences within cities as well as along national borders, in such countries such as Ireland, Korea, Germany, the US, and Israel. We will compare how such ‘strategies of exclusion’ impact local communities, transnational relations and social connectivity across such divides. We will also examine how the growth of gated communities has reconfigured urban spaces and given rise to new forms of spatial and social segregation.
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STS 4303 - [The GMO Debate: Science and Society] (crosslisted) BSOC 4303 , GOVT 4303 , IARD 4303 , PLSCS 4303
(SBA-AS)
Fall. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Evanega, R. Herring, J. Thies.
For description and learning outcomes, see PLSCS 4303 .
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STS 4311 - [From Surgery to Simulation] (crosslisted) ANTHR 4311 , BSOC 4311
(SBA-AS) (CU-UGR)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
R. Prentice.
A cliche among medical professionals says, “If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” In other words, treatment decisions often are dictated by available technologies. This course looks at medical technologies from dissection to X-rays to antidepressants and the ways they shape how medical professionals look at and practice upon the human body. Takes a broad view of technology, encompassing systems of practice that shape how work is conducted and the body is understood, as well as specific machines and treatments with specific uses. Considers how these technologies often are not only treatments for individual patients but also metaphors for larger cultural questions.
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STS 4331 - [Science, Technology and Globalization]
(HB) (HA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
J. Ratcliff.
An introduction to current debates about the role played by science and technology in the history of globalization, international relations, and transnationalism. Covers the period 1600 to the present and gives some attention to capitalism, imperialism, world systems theory, the great divergence debate, inequality and development, and transnational cultures of knowledge production. Weekly readings and a research paper.
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STS 4351 - Postcolonial Science (crosslisted) ANTHR 4435 , BSOC 4351
(GB) (CA-AS)
Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Co-meets with ANTHR 7435 .
S. Langwick.
For description, see ANTHR 4435 .
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STS 4352 - [Medieval Cosmologies: Text, Image, and Music] (crosslisted) ARTH 4352 , CLASS 4753 , MEDVL 4352 , MUSIC 4352 , NES 4352 , RELST 4352 , VISST 4352
(HB) (CA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Permission of instructor required. Co-meets with ARTH 6352 /CLASS 7753 /MEDVL 6352 /NES 6352 /RELST 6352 /STS 6352 .
B. Anderson, A. Hicks.
For description, see ARTH 4352 .
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STS 4411 - [Philosophy of Medicine] (crosslisted) BSOC 4411 , PHIL 2961
(KCM-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
Staff.
This senior seminar offers an intensive research and reading experience in the philosophy of medicine, considering, in particular, questions about what physicians know, how that knowledge informs current medical practice, and the nature of central concepts in medicine, including disease and health. Students will meet weekly to discuss foundational readings, both books and articles, in the field and are expected to produce a piece of original writing in the field.
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STS 4441 - [Historical Issues of Gender and Science] (crosslisted) FGSS 4440
(CA-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Not open to: freshmen.
Staff.
A one-semester survey of women’s role in science and engineering from antiquity to the present, with special emphasis on the United States in the 20th century. Readings include biographies and autobiographies of prominent women scientists, educational writings and other primary sources, and recent historical and sociological studies. By the end of the semester, students attain a broad view of the problems that have faced women entering science and those that still remain.
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STS 4451 - Making Science Policy: The Real World
(SBA-AS) (CU-CEL)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
C. Leuenberger.
This course focuses on what happens when science meet the policy-making world. We will discuss theoretical and empirical studies in Science & Technology Studies that analyze the interactions between science, society and politics. We will specifically investigate the mechanisms by which science may impact policy-making by focusing on: the rise of science diplomacy, initiatives to use science in order to further development goals, and efforts to produce evidence-based foreign policy. We will also focus on currently hotly debated political issues in government affairs, including the politization and militarization of space, the rise of big data, the politics of climate change, and the construction of border walls. As part of this course we will hear from experts in the federal government on how they attempt to integrate science into the everyday workings of governance.
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STS 4541 - [Risk and Society]
(SBA-AS)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Hilgartner.
Hurricanes. Guns. Zika. Contaminated food. Climate change. Hazardous chemicals. Accidents. Cyber warfare. We live in a hazardous world of uncertainty, surrounded by claims about risks, some sounding the alarm, some seeking to reassure. Scientists, engineers, and managers try to measure and model the risks embedded in complex systems, hoping to improve our understanding and guide decisions. This seminar will consider risk from the perspective of the social sciences. How do individuals, organizations, and societies produce knowledge about hazards? How do they decide which threats deserve their attention? How do conflicting viewpoints about risk shape technology and politics? We will examine controversies in public health, disaster management, medicine, finance, emerging technologies, and the environment. The central theme of the course will be a social investigation of how natural and social sciences have approached the problem of risk.
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STS 4561 - Stars, Scores, and Rankings: Evaluation and Society (crosslisted) INFO 4561 , SOC 4560
(SBA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.
M. Ziewitz.
Evaluation is a pervasive feature of contemporary life. Professors, doctors, countries, hotels, pollution, books, intelligence: there is hardly anything that is not subject to some form of review, rating, or ranking these days. This senior seminar examines the practices, cultures, and technologies of evaluation and asks how value is established, maintained, compared, subverted, resisted, and institutionalized in a range of different settings. Topics include user reviews, institutional audit, ranking and commensuration, algorithmic evaluation, tasting, gossip, and awards. Drawing on case studies from science, technology, culture, accounting, art, environment, and everyday life, we shall explore how evaluation comes to order our lives – and why it is so difficult to resist.
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STS 4616 - Corrupting Environmental Media (crosslisted) COML 4614 , SHUM 4616
Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Enrollment limited to: 15 students. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
R. Mukherjee.
For description, see SHUM 4616 .
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STS 4618 - Data Corruption’s Deep History (crosslisted) ARKEO 4618 , CLASS 4632 , COML 4615 , MEDVL 4718 , SHUM 4618
Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Enrollment limited to: 15 students. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.
C. Roby.
For description, see SHUM 4618 .
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STS 4631 - [Ordering Knowledge: Pliny’s Encyclopedia and its Successors] (crosslisted) CLASS 4639 , COML 4639
(HB) (HA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 3-4 credits, variable. Student option grading.
Co-meets with CLASS 7639 /COML 6639 /STS 7631 .
V. Platt, C. Roby.
For description, see CLASS 4639 .
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STS 4661 - [Public Communication of Science and Technology] (crosslisted) COMM 4660
Spring. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Prerequisite: COMM 2850 , or COMM 3020 , ENGRC 3500 , or permission of instructor.
B. Lewenstein.
For description, see COMM 4660 .
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STS 4691 - Food, Agriculture, and Society (crosslisted) BIOEE 4690 , BSOC 4691
(PBS-AS) (CU-SBY)
Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.
Prerequisite: introductory ecology course or permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to: 20 students.
A. Power.
For description and learning outcomes, see BIOEE 4690 .
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STS 4751 - Science, Race, and Colonialism (crosslisted) HIST 4751
(HA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Seth.
This course is divided into three major thematic sections. The first looks at the history of racial thinking in the West. We begin with the existence (or not) of conceptions of biological race in the early- modern period, focusing on early voyages of discovery and so-called “first encounters” between the peoples of the Old and New Worlds. In the second part of the course we will look at early enunciations of racial thought in the late 18th century and at the problems of classification that these raised, before examining the roots of “Scientific Racism.” We close with a look at Darwin, Social Darwinism, and eugenics movements in different national contexts. The last third of the course looks at science and technology in colonial contexts, including “colonial technologies” (guns, steam- ships, and telegraphs) as well as medicine and public hygiene.
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STS 4811 - [Topics in the Philosophy of Science] (crosslisted) PHIL 4810
(KCM-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
R. Boyd.
For description, see PHIL 4810 .
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STS 4821 - [What was Film?] (crosslisted) COML 4312 , GERST 4312 , PMA 4512
(CA-AS)
Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Taught in English. Film screening one evening per week TBA.
E. Born.
For description, see GERST 4312 .
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STS 4841 - What is (an) Epidemic? (Infectious Diseases in Historical, Social, and Political Perspective) (crosslisted) ANTHR 4041 , FGSS 4841
(SBA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
C. Roebuck.
The term “epidemic” travels widely and wildly in contemporary worlds. But, what, when and where is “the epidemic”? How and why does epidemic unfold? This senior seminar offers an interdisciplinary exploration of infectious diseases. Our investigations take us from medieval Europe’s “Black Plague,” to Tuberculosis in early twentieth century United States and its global resurgence at the turn of the twenty-first, to Ebola and its ongoing, periodic outbreaks today. We consider the consequences epidemics have for how we live and imagine shared ecological futures. Examining work from the life sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities, we explore the ways in which life and death, disease and survivability, health and thriving are shaped by infectious microbes, embodied eco-social forces, and contingent regimes of knowledge-power.
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STS 4951 - [Social Studies of the Human Sciences]
(CA-AS)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
C. Leuenberger.
Explores how the human and social sciences have provided the knowledge and categories we use to make sense of human beings and their behavior. Looking across a range of disciplines-including sociology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and economics-we will look at how human beings have become objects of scientific investigation. We will focus on how culture, politics, and the professional environment impact the human sciences and how the use of rhetoric constitutes academic discourse. We will also focus on the social scientific construction of selves, sex, and gender.
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STS 4991 - Honors Project I (crosslisted) BSOC 4991
(CU-UGR)
Multi-semester course (fall, spring). 4 credits. R grade only (in progress).
Permission of instructor required. Enrollment limited to: senior STS majors with overall Cornell cumulative GPA of 3.00 and 3.30 cumulative GPA in courses taken for major. Students must enroll for both the fall and spring semesters (STS 4991-STS 4992 ). Students who are admitted to the honors program are required to complete two semesters of honors project research and to write an honors thesis. The project must include substantial research, and the completed work should be of wider scope and greater originality than is normal for an upper-level course. The student must find a project supervisor and a second faculty member willing to serve as faculty reader; at least one of these must be a member of the Science & Technology faculty. Apply in 303 Morrill Hall.
Staff.
For description, see BSOC 4991 .
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STS 4992 - Honors Project II (crosslisted) BSOC 4992
(CU-UGR)
Multi-semester course (fall, spring). 4 credits. Letter grades only.
Permission of instructor required. Enrollment limited to: senior STS majors with overall Cornell cumulative GPA of 3.00 and 3.30 cumulative GPA in courses taken for major. Apply in 303 Morrill Hall.
Staff.
For description, see BSOC 4992 .
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STS 6031 - [Cyber Conflict and Trust]
(CU-CEL, CU-SBY)
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Slayton.
Hacktivism, cyber-crime, cyber-espionage, and cyber-war have become worrisome for individuals, corporations, and nation-states. This course analyses cyber conflict as technopolitics, showing how the specific affordances of information technology shape political possibilities, and how politics in turn shape the evolution of information technology. It is a reading, discussion, and writing-intensive course is designed for graduate students in any field of study who wish to gain a better understanding of the interactions between social, political and technical dimensions of cyberspace. Subjects include the origins of hacker culture and computer security expertise; the rise of public concerns over computer security and privacy; critical infrastructure’s growing dependence on information technology; market failures in computer security; and government policies aimed at correcting those failures.
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STS 6061 - Science, Technology and Capitalism (crosslisted) HIST 6065
Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.
J. Ratcliff.
This course examines the relationship between scientific development, technological innovation and maintenance, and the capitalistic forces that support and benefit from these activities.
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STS 6071 - [Ethnomethodology]
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
M. Lynch.
Ethnomethodology (literally people’s methodology) is the study of practices through which people collectively organize and sustain social activities. After being introduced as a subfield of sociology in the 1960s, ethnomethodology became an interdisciplinary program with representation ins several social science fields, including Science & Technology Studies. This course begins with an examination of ethnomethodology’s philosophical roots. It then examines some of the main theoretical and conceptual issues in ethnomethodology, before focusing on ethnomethodological studies of the natural science and mathematics, and other areas of technical work. The aim of the course is to acquaint students with a conceptual background and research strategies that continue to have value for developing insightful empirical studies of a broad range of social phenomena.
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STS 6101 - Sense, Movement, Sociality
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Prentice.
This course begins from the premise that bodies and sensing are the ground of sociality. Drawing on texts from Anthropology, Science & Technology Studies, Disability Studies, and Animal Studies, as well as some classics of social theory, this course brings bodies and senses to the fore in thinking about how humans live, work, relate, and create together. It considers all the senses from “the big five” (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) to the “hidden senses” (balance, kinesthesia, proprioception, and affect). The goal is to read and think materially, semiotically, and theoretically about how humans, as a social species, interact with our own and other species through our bodies, our senses, and our movements.
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STS 6116 - [Scale Matters: Problems in the Global Study of Science and Technology]
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
J. Ratcliff.
What does it mean to study knowledge and society on a global scale? Some scholars remain understandably skeptical of attempts to do so. Others believe that, despite the challenges, efforts to scale up to the global have become necessary given the nature of contemporary society, and the declining influence of western-centric perspectives. In this seminar we will review the debate over scale and perspective in global studies. We will also consider recent work in STS that attempts in different ways to scale up to larger views. Potential topics include: infrastructures, migration, transnationalism and global governance, the globe as a subject of science, cultural cosmopolitanism, and information imperialism. We will also explore some of the geographical and quantitative methods used by those attempting to tell “big” stories.
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STS 6121 - Environmental History (crosslisted) HIST 6221
(CU-SBY)
Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Pritchard.
This graduate seminar offers an introduction to environmental history—the study of human interactions with nonhuman nature in the past. It is a subfield within the historical discipline that has complex roots, an interdisciplinary orientation, and synergies with fields across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. This seminar explores environmental history on three levels: historically, historiographically, and theoretically. What are some of the key historical processes that have shaped humans’ historical relationships with the environment at various scales? How have environmental historians (re)conceptualized the field as it has developed over the past half-century? What analytic concepts have environmental historians used to understand human-natural relations? Select themes include ecological imperialism, labor and work, body/environment, global environmental history, “mainstreaming” environmental history, and the Anthropocene.
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STS 6131 - [Posthumanism, Cybernetics, Systems Theory] (crosslisted) GERST 6315
Fall. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Enrollment limited to: graduate students only or instructor permission. Taught in English.
P. Gilgen.
For description, see GERST 6315 .
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STS 6181 - [Confluence: Environmental History and Science & Technology Studies] (crosslisted) HIST 6181
(CU-SBY)
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Pritchard.
This course uses water to examine the confluence of two fields: environmental history and the social and historical studies of science and technology. Although preliminary scholarship has begun to demonstrate the fruitful integration of these fields, a number of methodological and theoretical tensions remain. Some of these tensions include the social construction of “nature,” nature as a historical actor, accounts of the emergence of “environmental” “problems,” constructivist models of science and technology, and scholars’ use of technoscientific sources to assess environmental change. This class, therefore, examines a number of scholarly debates about key terms, definitions, and categories (both historical actors’ and analysts’), knowledge-making about “nature” and human interactions with nonhuman nature, and the concept of agency. Weekly seminars are organized around readings in environmental history, science studies, and/or their intersection that explore these issues in diverse ways while usually addressing various aquatic environments in comparative historical and cultural perspective.
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STS 6231 - [The New Atlantis: Early Modern Literature, Science, and Empire] (crosslisted) ENGL 6230
Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
J. Mann, S. Seth.
For description, see ENGL 6230 .
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STS 6251 - [Visualization and Discourse in Science]
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
M. Lynch.
This seminar covers two interrelated areas of science and technology studies: visualization and discourse. Visualization refers to the practices and technologies through which scientists and designers develop images, graphs, models, and other representations. Discourse refers, broadly, to practical uses of language. In the context of this course, discourse and visualization will be treated as important aspects of the production of scientific data and technological artifacts. The course will focus mainly on historical and ethnographic studies that pay close attention to the material practices and linguistic repertoires through which scientific and technological innovations are made visible, palpable, and intersubjectively accountable.
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STS 6261 - [Seminar in the History of Technology] (crosslisted) HIST 6190
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
Staff.
A seminar on the global historiography of technology. Typical topics include industrialization; military science and technology; science and engineering in corporate settings; engineering as a profession; technology, colonialism, and development; race, gender, class, and technology; labor and technologies’ users; urbanization, “modernization,” and technology in rural life; consumers of technology; technology and the nation-state; and environmental technologies.
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STS 6301 - [Social Theory]
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
R. Prentice.
Sociologist C. Wright Mills challenged his readers to develop their “sociological imagination” to understand the social and historical forces at work in seemingly individual events, such as the receipt of a pink slip, a draft card, or a drug prescription. Within science and technology studies, scholars have documented how social issues can become scientific, technological, or medical, often appearing to leave the social realm naturalized, normalized, or pathologized. This course introduces graduate students to classic texts and concepts in social theory with a focus on how scholars apply such theories to empirical research. It will consider major thinkers and schools of social thought, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Foucault, and the Frankfurt School. It will also consider how a nuanced interplay of theory and empirical data can bring critically important insights to both theoretical and empirical understandings of the world. The course is relevant for students in sociology, history, and anthropology who are interested in social theory.
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STS 6311 - Qualitative Research Methods for Studying Science (crosslisted) SOC 6310
Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
T. Pinch.
In this Graduate seminar we will discuss the nature, politics and basic assumptions underlying qualitative research. We will examine a selection of qualitative methods ranging from interviewing, oral history, ethnography, participant observation, archival research and visual methods. We will also discuss the relationship between theory and method. All stages of a research project will be discussed - choice of research topic and appropriate methods; human subject concerns and permissions; issues regarding doing research; as well as the process of writing up and publishing research findings.
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STS 6321 - [Inside Technology] (crosslisted) SOC 6320
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
T. Pinch.
Rather than analyze the social impact of technology upon society, this course investigates how society gets inside technology. In other words, is it possible that the very design of technologies embody assumptions about the nature of society? And, if so, are alternative technologies, which embody different assumptions about society, possible? Do engineers have implicit theories about society? Is technology gendered? How can we understand the interaction of society and technology? Throughout the course the arguments are illustrated by detailed examinations of particular technologies, such as the ballistic missile, the bicycle, the electric car, and the refrigerator.
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STS 6331 - [Anthropology of Biomedicine]
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
R. Prentice.
In recent decades, anthropologists have begun to treat biomedicine as ethnomedicine, opening up the cultural assumptions, differences, and contingencies underpinning biomedical science and practice. This course examines biomedicine as a global cultural system, treating human health as a shifting product of nature and culture. Among topics covered will be approaches to illness and suffering, biomedical epistemologies, theories of embodiment, medicalization, and new medical technologies.
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STS 6401 - [Science, Technology, Gender: Historical Issues] (crosslisted) FGSS 6400 , HIST 6410
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Seth.
This course explores five, often interrelated, aspects of the literature on gender, science, and technology: (1) The historical participation of women (and men) in scientific work; (2) the embodiment of scientific, medical, and technical knowledge; (3) the scientific construction of sexuality; (4) the gendering of technological systems and artifacts; and (5) feminist critiques of scientific knowledge. We b egin with an analysis of reason, gender, and sexuality in the classical and late-antique western world, before moving on to an examination of the origins of modern western science in the scientific revolution, considering the claim that “science,” by its very nature, is an androcentric enterprise. The rise of scientific and medical disciplines and professions in the 19th century will provide a focus for discussions of the systematic exclusion of women from the production of scientific knowledge at precisely the point that women’s bodies become the object of intensive scientific study. Drawing on a range of material, the course considers the construction of homosexual and intersexual individuals in scientific discourse. In later weeks, we will discuss so-called “postmodernist” critiques of science, and will debate the possibilities for “feminist science.”
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STS 6460 - [Bodies and Bodiliness] (crosslisted) ANTHR 6465
Fall. Next offered 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Langwick.
For description, see ANTHR 6465 .
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STS 6481 - Readings in the History of Medicine
Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
S. Seth.
This graduate course offers an introduction to the history of western medicine from the classical age to the 20th century. Students will be introduced to major events, figures, and themes, as well as to significant historiographical debates.
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STS 6541 - Science and Policy-Making: The Two Cultures
Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.
C. Leuenberger.
This course focuses on what happens when science meets the policy-making world. We will specifically focus on: the rise of science diplomacy, the use of science in order to further development goals, and on efforts to produce evidence-based foreign policy. We will further focus on currently hotly debated political issues in government affairs, including the politization and militarization of space, the rise of big data, the politics of climate change, and the construction of border walls. As part of this course we will hear from experts in the federal government on how they attempt to integrate science into the everyday workings of governance.
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STS 6561 - [Technologies of Valuation] (crosslisted) INFO 6561
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
M. Ziewitz.
Valuation is a pervasive feature of contemporary life. Professors, universities, hotels, markets, movies, user experience, intelligence - almost everything is subject to some form of review, rating, or ranking these days. This course examines valuation as a key techno-scientific practice and asks how value is established, maintained, compared, subverted, resisted, and institutionalized in a range of different settings. Through a mix of reading, writing, and practical exercises, we shall engage with theoretical, historical, and ethnographic studies of (e)valuation in science & technology studies, but also draw on related areas like economic sociology, the sociology of evaluation, accounting studies, anthropology, and information science.
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STS 6661 - Public Engagement in Science (crosslisted) COMM 6660
Spring. Offered alternate years (even years). 3 credits. Student option grading.
B. Lewenstein.
For description, see COMM 6660 .
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STS 6671 - Tools for Analyzing Energy and Society Module (crosslisted) CHEME 6673 , ECE 5510
(CU-SBY)
Spring. Offered alternate years. 1 credit. Student option grading.
P. A. Doing.
For description, see CHEME 6673 .
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STS 6751 - [Science, Race, and Colonialism] (crosslisted) HIST 6751
Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
S. Seth.
Scholarly work in the last two decades has increasingly focused on the oft-neglected linkages between technology and science on the one hand and the discourses and practices of colonialism and imperialism on the other. Texts of broad conception like Michael Adas’ Machines as the Measure of Men and Gyan Prakash’s recent Another Reason have made an attempt to provide an overview of many of the issues involved, but the field awaits a genuinely synthetic treatment. This course will aim to provide the framework for such a treatment by looking at a number of key areas of current interest. The first half of the course begins with a survey of the history of ideas of race and the development of “race-sciences” in the 19th century, including a sampling of primary materials on Darwinian theories of race and later formulations of social Darwinism. The latter part of the course will explore a number of specific themes, including the importance of social statistics and technologies of identification (fingerprinting), medicine and hygiene, scientific nationalism and nationalist science, the periphery as laboratory, and gender, savagery, and criminality. Readings will comprise a mixture of primary and secondary sources, and students are encouraged to contribute topics and texts of particular interest.
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STS 6811 - [Topics in Philosophy of Science] (crosslisted) PHIL 6810
Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.
R. Boyd.
For description, see PHIL 6810 .
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