Courses
Course Descriptions: Regularly Offered Core Courses
STS 10
Reading Lab - Various
STS Reading Lab is a companion course, intended to be taken concurrently with
one or more classes in mathematics, the physical and natural sciences, and
engineering. Meets once per week in seminar style to discuss readings from a
list that is tailored to the syllabus of a technical course. On the syllabus of
each Reading Lab, the instructor will list courses that are pre-approved to pair
with the Lab. A lab (2 SHUs) plus its paired class (x SHUs) are entered as 1 STS course and x+2 SHUs in the checklist and have automatic Core status.
Topics vary semester by semester and include:
Models — pairs with mathematical modeling courses
Energy — pairs with many physics and engineering classes and some political
science
Equity — pairs with science education classes
Life — pairs with biology classes
STS 12 (HIST 12)
Science and Technology in World History - Rankin
A broad survey of the history of science from the ancient world to the 20th
century. The course places a particular emphasis on the wider context of global
trade, knowledge sharing, and colonialism throughout the development of what
many now consider "western" science. Topics and themes include: science in
ancient Greece, India, and the Mayan peninsula; Chinese science in the Ming
dynasty; Islamic science and its influence on medieval Europe; conceptual and
philosophical changes of the "Scientific Revolution"; globalization and
colonialism; Darwin and human evolution; race, science, and eugenics; science
and warfare. Students will be challenged to consider the processes involved in
the development of scientific theories and the ways in which global developments
affected (and continue to affect) scientific thought.
STS 32 (ANTH 32)
Introduction to the Anthropology of Science & Technology - Seaver
This course introduces students to the sociocultural study of science and
technology. Popular understandings of science and technology suggest that they
work independently from their social and cultural contexts; this course surveys
work demonstrating the various ways that this is untrue. Texts will be drawn
from across the history of anthropology and from science and technology studies.
We will cover major theories about the relationship between science, technology,
society and culture such as technological determinism and social construction.
We will investigate how facts are made and how sociocultural contexts shape
technologies, from Papuan eel traps to music recommender systems. Potential
topics include the relationship between magic, technology, science, and
religion; how Western science has and has not recognized "other knowledges" from
around the world; cyborg feminism; the rituals of laboratory science; genetics
and new kinship studies; and the social life of algorithms.
STS 33 (MUS 58)
Music, Technology, and Digital Culture - Auner
Study of the interactions between music, technology, and culture in popular and
concert music since WWI. Issues of production, distribution, and reception,
involving such topics as the impact of radio on composition in the 1920s and
30s, recording technologies and ideas of authenticity, early synthesizers and
the rise of electronic music, digital sampling, hip-hop, and DJ culture, gender
and technology, the internet, interactivity, and new models of consumption.
STS 50-01/02
STS Lunch Seminar Series - Various
Weekly speaker series featuring scholars and experts that engage critically and culturally with STS topics. Talks are open to the greater Tufts and Boston STS community. Visit https://sites.tufts.edu/stslunch for upcoming series details and a list of past speakers.
STS Lunch Seminar Series (1 SHU) may count toward the co-major and minor total SHU requirement but does not count toward the total course requirement. Students may take Lunch Seminar more than once.
STS 50-xx
Topics in STS - Various
This course rotates through topics across Science, Technology, & Society. Recent
and planned courses include:
- Technoscience and the State - governance, policy and ethics in science
- Physics in the 20th Century - modernization of physics through Einstein's time, the nuclear age, and the space race
- Measuring People: The Racialized History of Intelligence - intertwined social histories of genius, criminality, insanity, and IQ
- Political Implications of the Big Data Age - uses and abuses of data science
STS 116 (PHIL 116)
Philosophy of Science - Smith
An examination of central philosophical problems concerning scientific method
and scientific knowledge, such as: How is theory related to observation, or
prediction to explanation? How can we justify scientific method? Induction?
Notions of space and time? Do scientific theories and methods impose a structure
on the world? Do they tell us about the real world?
STS 118 (PHIL 118)
Philosophy of Biology - Forber
We will examine the conceptual foundations of evolution, ecology, and genetics,
with special attention to outstanding philosophical problems. The course begins
with Darwin, and his original presentation of natural selection in the Origin of
Species. We will then look at two very different "big picture" views on
evolutionary biology and the importance of natural selection, the first defended
by Richard Dawkins and the second by Richard Lewontin. The course continues by
discussing specific philosophical and theoretical controversies, such as those
over the units of selection, the nature of fitness, biological functions,
causation, biological individuals, and what natural selection explains.
STS 136 (ANTH 136)
Cultures of Computing - Seaver
This course offers a mid-level survey of topics in the cultural analysis of
computing. Where popular discourse around computing often takes it to be a
universalizing force that "impacts" culture and society without being
significantly influenced by them, we will take the opposite approach,
investigating how computers embody cultural ideals and depend on social
contexts. Areas of inquiry will range from the mines that provide the rare earth
metals necessary for computers to function, to the culture of Silicon Valley
workplaces, to global distributions of labor in chip manufacturing and new forms
of "micro-work." In addition to ethnographic research on the contemporary
variability of experiences with computers, we will attend to the historical
development of computing as a cultural form, from its origins in gendered
calculational labor to the mid-century emergence of cybernetics to the
connections between counterculture and cyberculture. Through regular written
responses, student-led discussions, and experimental exercises, students will
learn how to examine the sociocultural aspects of computing in their everyday
lives. Topics will also include the cultural life of algorithms and big data,
the social analysis of mathematics, post-colonial computing, and social media.
STS 148 (ANTH 148)
Medical Anthropology - Chudakova/Pinto
This course is an introduction to anthropological approaches to illness, health,
healing and the body, and their relationships to culture and power. We will ask
how social and political forces impact – and are themselves shaped by – illness,
disease and bodily experience, addressing such issues of concern to medical
anthropologists as crosscultural models of suffering and the body, ritual
aspects of healing, the politics of health intervention, social impact of new
technologies, and the cultures of the clinic. Throughout, we will be attuned to
race, gender, and class, asking how they are meaningful in the ways people live
and die, get sick and get well, care for others and are cared for. We ask, how
are illness and wellness are shot through with moral concerns?
STS 154 (HIST 154)
Health and Healing in Medieval and Early Modern Europe - Rankin
Medicine in Western Europe from approximately 1100-1700. Key intellectual,
social, and cultural themes and trends in pre-modern medicine. Major topics
include the development of university medicine from its Greek and Arabic roots
through the theoretical upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;
medical practice, particularly the diverse types of healers and their
relationship with patients; epidemic disease such as plague and syphilis and
early public health measures formed in response; the development of hospitals
and other medical institutions. Overlapping naturalistic, religious, and magical
approaches to disease and healing.
STS 195 (SOC 195)
Politics, Policies, and Risk in Science and Technology - Taylor
How do democratic governments cope with risks? How does science find its way
into policymaking? Dilemmas of decision-making in realms such as: climate
change, financial regulation, nuclear power, biotechnology, and pandemics, where
trade-offs entail putting some groups at risk in order to reduce the risks faced
by others. Examines how the relevant science is produced and how policy-makers
evaluate it. Traces ideas about the appropriate roles of government, experts,
and citizens in policy-making. Explores the interdependence and efforts of
local, national, and international knowledge communities at global governance.
ANTH 24
Anthropology of the Environment - Blanchette
Key issues and frameworks of environmental anthropology across the 20th and 21st
centuries. Provides students with an introduction to both the discipline of
anthropology and changing forms of environmental thought. Introduces students to
anthropological concepts including culture, nature, ethnography, adaptation, and
human exceptionalism using cross-cultural materials and case studies.
ANTH 130
History of Anthropological Thought - Pinto/Seaver
Anthropology as a discipline is uniquely concerned with its own history, and
that history began, by most accounts, with an interest in kinship and
classification. This course surveys the history of anthropological thought
through these lenses, tracing the disciplinary relationships and changing
categories through which anthropologists have made sense of the world since the
late 19th century. By engaging writings, theories, and debates from across
anthropology's history, we will try to understand how contemporary research
interests fit into broader patterns of inquiry. We will treat anthropology as a
knowledge-making project, which, since its inception, has been entangled with
other knowledge-making projects, both among the people it has studied and in
adjacent academic disciplines.
ANTH 178
Animals and Posthuman Thought - Blanchette
The social movement for Animal Rights has grown with surprising resiliency over
the past 30 years in pockets of the West and beyond, provoking trenchant public
debates on both the limits of human knowledge and the ethics of how we live with
non-human Others. This advanced seminar does not offer a comprehensive history
of Animal Rights on its own terms, nor is it a straightforward political
endorsement of the idea. Instead, we marshal Animal Rights as a lens to examine
changing forms of posthuman consciousness and concerns about species,
anthropocentrism, nature, food, and the idea of the human. The seminar thus
gathers together classic anthropological questions – of representation,
difference, hierarchy, violence, and the good life – and re-examines them in
light of Animal Rights' insistence on a new social contract that cuts across
species lines (while troubling the very idea of species). In order to grasp
Animal Rights as reflective of emerging eco-political philosophies in this
historical moment, we will read across seemingly discordant topics including the
concept of "the animal"; the domestication of plants and animals; human
exceptionalism and uniqueness; consumptive ethics in terms of food, clothing,
and medicine; meanings of life and death; ideas of liberation and democracy;
climate change; biopolitics; and industrial capitalism. Course materials will
include ethnographies of interspecies relations, philosophies of the animal,
exposés, novels, blogs, and films.
CH 106
Health, Ethics, and Policy - Ladin
Ethical analysis has become an increasingly integral part of health policy and
public health. A foundation in normative ethics and political philosophy is
central to policy and medical decision-making because at the core of many policy
and medical debates lie questions of distributive justice. This course will
focus on evaluating how values, ethical approaches, and evidence should inform
policy making, clinical medicine, and public health practice. How should scarce
resources, such as organs for transplantation or hospital beds, be allocated?
How much personal responsibility do people have and how accountable should they
be for their own health and health behaviors? How should public health
effectively balance equity and efficiency? Should medicine or public health be
specifically concerned with the health of vulnerable or marginalized
populations?
CLS 146
History of Ancient Medicine - Phillips
A course designed to survey the historical development of ancient Greek and
Roman medicine with emphasis on methodology and sources, as well as to assess
the influence of ancient medicine on the development of modern clinical
medicine. Topics covered include ancient views and practices with regard to
anatomy, physiology, surgery, pharmacology, the etiology of disease, and medical
deontology.
CLS 192-02 / PHIL 192-04
Ancient and Medieval Philosophy of Science - Strobino
The course will introduce students to the idea of scientific knowledge in
Ancient and Medieval philosophy. The primary focus of the course will be on the
text and content of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and its reception in the
Arabic tradition and in the Latin Middle Ages. We will examine traditional
questions such as the nature of the principles accepted in each science for the
derivation of its specific content, the way in which boundaries between
disciplines are drawn, the logic of demonstrative discourse and the theory of
definition. We will trace the development of these ideas from Aristotle through
the Greek Commentators; al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Averroes in the Arabic tradition;
Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, William of Ockham, and John
Buridan in the Latin tradition, with a view to identifying several original ways
in which the Aristotelian framework is modified and enriched over time, and
solutions to some of its internal tensions are offered. The course will also
deal with the problem of the transmission of the Posterior Analytics and the
various stages of its translation. Similarities and differences from
"alternative" models of knowledge from Antiquity through the late Middle Ages
will be kept constantly in view. All readings will be in translation.
HIST 196-99
Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe - Rankin
Did religion inhibit scientific activities in early modern Europe? Or did it
help foment scientific engagement? What effect did Martin Luther's break from
the Catholic Church have on the development of science? How was science used in
religious imperialism? How important was the condemnation of Galileo? This
research seminar focuses on the interplay between science and religion from ca.
1450-1700. We will examine a few specific cases, e.g. the trial of Galileo; the
role of Copernicanism in the Catholic Church's calendar reform; the witchcraft
accusations against Johannes Kepler's mother; the university reforms put forth
by Luther's disciple Philip Melanchthon; the religious fanaticism of Isaac
Newton; and the merging of religion and science in the conquest of the New
World. In each session we will also discuss sources, historical methodology, and
research strategies. Students will then choose a topic of research on which to
write an extensive paper.
MATH 112
History of Mathematics - Duchin
This course will cut across the timeline from antiquity to the present, looking
at mathematical accomplishments in the context of mathematical cultures. Modern
mathematics is bewilderingly specialized, and mathematicians have done a much
worse job than our counterparts in other sciences of communicating our most
important breakthroughs to the educated public. The history of mathematics
provides a wonderful opportunity to open the\black box" and get to know how math
works in all of its messy, contested complexities. In this course we'll look at
shapes, numbers, and the infinite as they've been conceived across cultures and
settings. We'll investigate the cast of characters who have contributed to the
story, visiting colonial India, Nazi Germany, an interwar French fraternity,
medieval Baghdad, royal courts, prisons, war rooms, and underground religious
meetings. In doing so, we'll both explore and get beyond individual biography to
understand who mathematicians are (and are not) and what they are up to.
PHIL 167
Science Before Newton's Principia - Smith
This is the first part of a two-course sequence focusing on Newton's Principia,
the book that first showed the world how to do science in the modern sense of
the term. In Philosophy 168 in the spring semester we will read the Principia
itself. The revolution produced by the Principia is undoubtedly the most
important single event in the history of science, ending controversies begun by
the Copernican model of the planetary system and leading over the next 60 years
to what we now call Newtonian mechanics. It produced no less of a revolution in
scientific method by illustrating a way of marshaling evidence that stood in
sharp contrast to both the narrow empiricist line then prevalent in England and
the rationalist line prevalent on the continent. Because of this, the Principia
is as important to philosophy of science as it is to history of science. It is
the perfect work to focus on in investigating how science at its best succeeds
in turning data into decisive evidence. In keeping with this, the question
answered over the course of the two semesters is, How did we first come to have
high quality evidence in any of the sciences? The Principia is accessible to a
wide range of students. It requires no background in physics or calculus. It
does, however, require historical knowledge of the scientific context in which
it was written. Thus, the goal of the fall semester is to cover the background
needed to grasp the force of the evidential arguments in the Principia. We will
review the work on planetary orbits by Kepler and those after him; Galileo's
efforts toward a science of motion; Descartes' theory of planetary motion; and
studies of curvilinear motion by Huygens and Newton that led directly into the
Principia.
SOC 94-03
Sociology of Science and Risk - Taylor
This course speaks to the central dilemmas of democratic policy-making in the
face of risk. How do democracies weigh and address risks that require careful
evaluation of complex and evolving science and technology? We will consider
decision-making in many different areas including climate change, financial
regulation, biotechnology and health-related risks such as pandemics. In each
case, politicians and officials are asked to draw conclusions about scientific
evidence that may seem arcane to them, to choose among responses that often
carry political costs, and to weigh the value of putting some groups at risk to
reduce the risks faced by others. We will examine how science is produced, what
is recognized as expertise and efforts at global governance.
SOC 108/CH 108
Epidemics: Plagues, Peoples, and Politics - Taylor
Origins, epidemiology, and evolution of epidemics, rooted in biology, behavior,
social organization, culture, and political economy. Societies' efforts to
contain diseases, their effects on world history, and their cultural record in
literature and contemporary sources. Cases range from early plagues (syphilis,
smallpox, bubonic plague) and the recurrent threats of influenza, malaria, and
tuberculosis, to nineteenth-century famines, and "modern" scourges such as the
global challenge of AIDS and Ebola.