Courses:

Technology and Culture >> Content Detail



Syllabus



Syllabus

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A list of topics can be found in the Calendar.



Course Description


This course examines relationships among technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from 19th century factories to 21st century techno dance floors, from colonial Melanesia to capitalist Massachusetts. We organize our discussions around three questions: What cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology? How have computers changed the way we think about ourselves? How are politics built into our infrastructures? We will be interested in whether technology has produced a better world, and for whom.



Requirements and Grading


Students will write three 5-7 page papers (see below). Each represents 30% of the subject grade. No emailed papers accepted. Papers correspond to three thematic sections of the syllabus and will integrate class readings with a topic of each student's choosing. Students will also be evaluated on class participation, including discussion and in-class writing exercises (10% of subject grade). Punctual attendance is obligatory. There is no final.


ACTIVITIESPERCENTAGES
Paper 1: Biology and Biotechnology Paper30%
Paper 2: Computers and Information Technologies Paper30%
Paper 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms Paper30%
Class Participation10%



Required Texts


Amazon logo Rapp, Rayna. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: A Social History of Amniocentesis in America. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 0415916453.

Amazon logo Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 069109019X.

Amazon logo Latour, Bruno. Aramis, or The Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0674043235.



Calendar



LEC #TOPICSKEY DATES
Introductory Themes
1Introduction
2Theories of Technology and Culture
Theme 1: Biology and Biotechnology
3Technologies of Sex and Gender: Reproduction, Birth, Risk
4Technologies of Race: Medical Experimentation
5Technologies of Death: Risk and the Biopolitics of Radiation
6Genetically Modified FoodPaper 1 due
Theme 2: Computers and Information Technologies
7Sociologies of Computing
8From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Life
9Our Machines, Our Music: From White Noise to Black Noise
Theme 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms
10InfrastructurePaper 2 due
11Trains, Automobiles, Organs
12Student Paper Presentations
13Party and Student Paper PresentationsPaper 3 due

 








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