138T Fall 2013 History of Science in the US CalTeach

This course is a parallel course to 180, intended for students interested in teaching elementary or secondary school science and math. Students in the "T" course will attend the regular 180 lectures and a special section; this section will focus on techniques, skills, and perspectives necessary to apply the history of science in the juvenile and adolescent science classroom, including pedagogy, devising lesson plans for their classrooms, finding reliable historical information, and writing.


280S.002 Spring 2013 Enlightenment Science and Rationality

The Enlightenment is more than a name for the eighteenth century in Europe and in its colonial networks. The term has been used to refer to a more or less coherent set of values and beliefs, to a historical process whose moral and political legacy continues to be fiercely contested. This seminar explores the intersection of these two meanings of Enlightenment, through the lenses of the transformation of scientific practice and of the very notion of rationality during the long eighteenth century.

30 Spring 2013 Science and Society

Scientific thought and society have always been interwoven.  In this course, you will explore the various facets of this interrelationship, from deciding what counts as science to the ways that science has shaped and been shaped by the social, political, economic, religious, and natural environments it sits within. The focus for the course is providing historical grounding to the contemporary relationship between science and society.

183A Spring 2013 Global Health and Disease

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: plague, cholera, influenza, sleeping sickness, PTSD, AIDS and malaria.

182A Spring 2013 Technology and Society in the Modern World-CAL TEACH

How do technology and society interact? What drives technological change? How does technology transfer across different cultures? These and other related questions are examined using historical case studies of productive, military, domestic, information, and biomedical technologies from 1700 to the present. We shall discuss the evolution of artifacts and technological systems such as industrial machinery, weapons, microwaves, computers, and contraceptives.

103S.002 Fall 2012 Science Socially Constructed

Scientists and technologists from Archimedes to Zuckerberg have had an enormous influence on the societies of which they were a part. Yet, even as these individuals influenced society, they were also influenced by it and embedded within it. Through a study of the current historiography, this course will examine the links between scientists, technologists, and societies of the past and explore how science and technology—supposedly so objectively factual—can still be historicized as a social construct just like anything else.

280S.002 Fall 2012 Introduction to Science and Technology Studies

This course is designed to provide a rigorous foundation in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It will reconstruct the emergence of the major themes and issues in the field, and offer an overview of leading theories and research methodologies. Students will explore the relationship between science, technology, culture, and politics through exemplary case-studies from different periods and contexts. Attention will focus on the tension between expertise and democracy, and on the ways in which new scientific and political futures are produced.


Subscribe to RSS - Science