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Recommended STS Reads
We asked our core faculty to nominate a few classic STS texts that they'd love to see a major read before they graduate. Think of this as the staff picks shelf at your favorite bookstore.
Alex Blanchette, Assistant Professor, Anthropology | |
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Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the
Neoliberal Era by Melinda Cooper (University of Washington Press, 2008) |
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Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
by Donna Haraway (Routledge, 1990) |
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The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in
Post-Cold War New Mexico by Joseph Masco (Princeton University Press, 2006) |
Tatiana Chudakova, Assistant Professor, Anthropology | |
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The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice by Annemarie Mol (Duke University Press, 2003) |
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Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (Zone Books, 2007) |
Ricky Crano, Lecturer, English | |
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Technics and Time 1-3 by Bernard Stiegler (Stanford University Press, 1998/2008/2010) |
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Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media by Wendy Chunn (The MIT Press, 2016) |
Moon Duchin, Associate Professor, Mathematics | |
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The Taming of Chance (Ideas in Context) by Ian Hacking (Cambridge University Press, 1990) |
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Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life by Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin (Princeton University Press, 2017 [1985]) |
Sam Weiss Evans, Research Assistant Professor, Science, Technology, and Society | |
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Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences by Geoff C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (The MIT Press, 2000) |
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Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States by Sheila Jasanoff (Princeton University Press, 2005) |
Patrick Forber, Associate Professor, Philosophy | |
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The Dynamics of Reason by Michael Friedman (CSLI Publications, 2001) |
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Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (Princeton University Press, 1986) |
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Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate
Aggression and Sexuality by Helen E. Longino (The University of Chicago Press, 2013) |
Jess Keiser, Assistant Professor, English | |
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Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the
Scientific Image by Joseph Rouse (The University of Chicago Press, 2015) |
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Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life by Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin (Princeton University Press, 2017 [1985]) |
Sheldon Krimsky, Lenore Stern Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning | |
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The Logic of Scientific Discovery By Karl Popper (Routledge, 2002 [1959]) |
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Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology By Evelyn Fox Keller (Columbia University Press, 1995) |
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The Social Construction of What? By Ian Hacking (Harvard University Press, 2000) |
Keren Ladin, Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy and Community Health | |
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Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure by Charles Bosk (The University of Chicago Press, 2003 [1979]) |
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Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation
of Health by Ivan Illich (Marion Boyars Publishers, 1999 [1976]) |
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The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of
Reproduction by Emily Martin (Beacon Press, 2001 [1987]) |
Anne Mahoney, Senior Lecturer, Classics | |
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Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner and James Newman (Dover Publications, 2001 [1940]) |
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The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C. P. Snow (Martino Fine Books, 2013 [1959]) |
Alecia McGregor, Assistant Professor, Community Health | |
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People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell
Frontier Ruha Benjamin (Stanford University Press, 2013) |
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The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black
Disease By Jonathan M. Metzl (Beacon Press, 2010) |
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Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight
against Medical Apartheid by Alondra Nelson (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) |
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The Social Transformation of American Medicine By Paul Starr (Basic Books, 1982) |
Sarah Pinto, Professor, Anthropology | |
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The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium &
Discovery by Amitav Ghosh (Harper Perennial, 2001 [1996] |
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The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies by Marcel Mauss (W.W. Norton Company, 2000 [1923]) |
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Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship, and the
New Reproductive Technologies by Marilyn Strathern (Routledge, 1992) |
Alisha Rankin, Associate Professor, History | |
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Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (Zone Books, 1998) |
Nick Seaver, Assistant Professor, Anthropology | |
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Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers
through Society by Bruno Latour (Harvard University Press, 1987) |
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Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False
Promise of Genetic Science by Kimberly Tallbear (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) |
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Beamtimes and Lifetime: The World of High Energy
Physicists by Sharon Traweek (Harvard University Press, 1992) |
George Smith, Professor, Philosophy | |
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The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory by Pierre Duhem (Princeton University Press, 1991 [1954]) |
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (University of Chicago Press, 2012 [1962]) |
Jeffrey Taliaferro, Associate Professor, Political Science | |
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Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and
International Conflict by Vipin Narang (Princeton University Press, 2014) |
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Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History by Thomas Rid (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016) |
Rosemary Taylor, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Community Health | |
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Science and Public Reason By Sheila Jasanoff (Routledge-Earthscan, 2012) |
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Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
By Eric Klinenberg (University of Chicago Press, 2015 [2002]) |
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An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape
Markets By Donald MacKenzie (MIT Press, 2006) |
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The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and
1866 By Charles E. Rosenberg (University of Chicago Press, 1987 [1962]) |
Ben Wolfe, Assistant Professor, Biology | |
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn (University of Chicago Press, 2012 [1962]) |
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Philosophy of Microbiology by Maureen A. O'Malley (Cambridge University Press, 2014) |