STS 6181 - Confluence: Environmental History and Science & Technology Studies

(crosslisted)
(also HIST 6181)

Spring. 4 credits.

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.