STS 1116 - FWS: Global Darwin

(CU-ITL, CU-UGR)

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

J. Ratcliff.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) lived during an extraordinary period in global history. In Darwin’s time, imperial politics combined with the rise of industrial capitalism to produce a world order dominated by Victorian Britain. This class will investigate how these larger social developments would become crucial to the origin and reception of Darwin’s scientific work. We will explore topics such as: natural history and colonialism; Darwin’s scientific theories and Victorian political and economic theories; social Darwinism and scientific racism; and the use of evolutionary ideas by anti-imperialist intellectuals in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. We will tackle recent Darwin scholarship, and we will also make use of online databases of Darwin’s letters and Victorian texts in the library’s special collections.