Results for STS

Focus on key social, cultural, and values issues raised by contemporary scientific and technological developments through STS interdisciplinary lens that encompasses historical dimensions (e.g., legacy of scientific revolution); technological impact (e.g., affordances of new tools and media); economic and management aspects (e.g., business models, design and engineering strategies); legal and ethical elements (e.g., intellectual property, social justice); and societal response and participation (e.g., media coverage, forms of activism). Discussion section is required and will be assigned the first week of class.

Preference to sophomores. Students will study recent poetry inspired by the phenomena and history of the sciences in order to write such poems themselves. These poems bring sensuous human experience to bear on biology, ecology, neuroscience, physics, astronomy, and geology, as well as on technological advances and missteps. Poets such as Mark Doty, Jody Gladding, Albert Goldbarth, Jorie Graham, Sarah Lindsay, Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, or C. K. Williams. Grounding in poetics, research in individually chosen areas of science, weekly analytical and creative writing. Enrollment limited to 12.

The Bay Area is renowned for its technological innovations and progressive politics, including environmental justice activism. This course explores the multifaceted intersections of science, technology, and environmental issues, in the Bay Area and beyond. It also facilitates students' engagement with Wikipedia, as contributors and analysts. Throughout, students investigate the politics of place, with an eye to inequalities of race, class, gender, age, disability, and citizenship. Topics include: Internet and "new economy" geographies; public health and urban planning; food systems; climate change; innovation policy; "undone science."

This course will critically interrogate the relationship between science and technology and politics. Politics plays a significant role in the production of scientific knowledge and technological artifacts. Science and technology in turn constitute crucial elements of politics and governance in modern democracy. This course will explore these interactions through (1) key theoretical texts in STS and (2) case studies of such issues as climate change, race and science, urban planning, elections and technology, and information technology in social movements. Preference to juniors and seniors. First class attendance mandatory. Enrollment limited to 16.

Preference to sophomores. Introduction to the STS field. The natures of science and technology and their relationship, what is most distinctive about these forces today, and how they have transformed and been affected by contemporary society. Social, cultural, and ethical issues raised by recent scientific and technological developments. Case studies from areas such as information technology and biotechnology, with emphasis on the contemporary U.S. Unexpected influences of science and technology on contemporary society and how social forces shape scientific and technological enterprises and their products. Enrollment limited to 12.

Humans have long shaped and reshaped the natural world with technologies. Once a menacing presence to conquer or an infinite reserve for resources, nature is now understood to require constant protection from damage and loss. This course will examine humanity's varied relationship with the environment, with a focus on the role of technology. Topics include: industrialization, modernism, nuclear technology, and biotechnology. Students will explore theoretical and methodological approaches in STS and conduct original research that addresses this human-nature-technology nexus. STS majors must have Senior status to enroll in this Senior Capstone course.

Every unit of credit is understood to represent three hours of work per week per term and is to be agreed upon between the student and the faculty member.

Students obtain internship in a relevant research or industrial activity to enhance their professional experience consistent with their degree program and area of concentration. Prior to enrolling students must get internship approved by the STS Program Director. At the end of the quarter, a one-page final report must be supplied documenting work done and relevance to degree program. Meets the requirements for Curricular Practical Training for students on F-1 visas. Student is responsible for arranging own internship. Limited to declared STS majors only. Course may be repeated twice.

The Science Technology and Society (STS) Program has a student journal, Intersect, that has been publishing STS student papers for a number of years. This course involves learning about how to serve as an editor of a peer-reviewed journal, while serving as one of the listed editors of Intersect. Entirely operated online, the journal uses a work-flow management to help with the submission process, peer-review, editing, and publication. Student editors learn by being involved in the publishing process, from soliciting manuscripts to publishing the journal's annual issue, while working in consultation with the instructor. Students will also learn about current practices and institutional frameworks around open access and digital publishing.

This course will examine how politics, culture, and technology intersect in our food practices. Through a survey of academic, journalistic, and artistic works on food and eating, the course will explore a set of key analytical frameworks and conceptual tools in STS, such as the politics of technology, classification and identity, and nature/culture boundaries. The topics covered include: the industrialization of agriculture; technology and the modes of eating (e.g., the rise of restaurants); food taboos; globalization and local foodways; food and environmentalism; and new technologies in production (e.g., genetically modified food). Through food as a window, the course intends to achieve two broad intellectual goals. First, students will explore various theoretical and methodological approaches in STS. In particular, they will pay particular attention to the ways in which politics, culture, and technology intersect in food practices. Second, student will develop a set of basic skills and tools for their own critical thinking and empirical research, and design and conduct independent research on a topic related to food. First class attendance mandatory. STS majors must have Senior status to enroll in this Senior Capstone course.

Genetics, Ethics and Society. This course will explore three socially transforming components of genetics research that hold simultaneously liberating and constraining possibilities for populations and publics, both locally and globally. Topically the course will be divided into three sections. First, we will examine past and present issues dealing with the study of human subjects, as well as recent proposals to eventually bring full genome scans to every individual (personal genomics). Next we will learn of large-scale projects that aim to map the presence of environmental pathogens by their genetic signatures on a planetary scale and how different global populations may be affected. The last section of the course will focus on still other projects and policies that aim to expand the scope and capacity of state and international law enforcement through DNA-based forensics (the FBI CODIS database and the UK¿s Human Provenance Pilot Project). Projects like the latter also overlap with theories about community, families, and citizens who may or may not be linked through DNA. New concepts, such as the forensic "genetic informant" within a family unit, human DNA and isotope ¿country matches¿ in cases of state asylum, and DNA based kinship rules for family reunification in many Western countries, will be explored. In all three sections we will also examine scientific ethics when subject populations are minorities, or somehow structurally disadvantaged globally.n This capstone course will provide students with tools to explore and critically assess the various technical, social, and ethical positions of researchers, as well as the role of the state and certain publics in shaping scientific research agendas that promise to reorganize critical aspects of human life. Students will be encouraged to explore these dynamics within such important societal domains as health, law, markets of bio-surveillance, and the growing industry of disease and heritage DNA identity testing among others. We will read works from social scientists of science practice, ethicists, medial humanists and scientists. This course will equip students with tools to write about the intersection of science and society and to engage in a research project that relates to the topical foci of the course, broadly conceived.

Beginning with cave painting, carving, cuneiform, hieroglyph, and other early textual innovations, survey of the history of writing, image, sound, and byte, all text technologies employed to create, communicate and commemorate. Focus on the recording of language, remembrance and ideas explicating significant themes seen throughout history; these include censorship, propaganda, authenticity, apocalypticism, technophobia, reader response, democratization and authority. The production, transmission and reception of tablet technology, the scroll, the manuscript codex and handmade book, the machine-made book, newspapers and ephemera; and investigate the emergence of the phonograph and photograph, film, radio, television and digital multimedia.The impact of these various text technologies on their users, and try to draw out similarities and differences in our cultural and intellectual responses to evolving technologies. STS majors must have senior status to enroll in this senior capstone course.

Humans have long shaped and reshaped the natural world with technologies. Once a menacing presence to conquer or an infinite reserve for resources, nature is now understood to require constant protection from damage and loss. Humanity's relationships with the environment have changed over time and differed across societies. In this course, students (1) explore diverse ways in which people in different historical and cultural settings have conceptualized nature and their relationships with it, with a focus on the role of technology; and (2) learn the basics of STS research and conduct an original study that addresses this human-nature-technology nexus. First class attendance mandatory. STS majors must have senior status to enroll in this senior capstone course.

This course examines the social, cultural, and economic factors that foster novelty. We will study a wide array of historical contexts, from the Renaissance to the present day, in which clusters of related innovations transformed the way things are done. We ask when do such innovations cascade out and produce social inventions that, for good and bad, create profound changes in how things are done, leading to new forms of organizations and new categories of people. Seminar/lecture format, reading intensive, final term paper. Prerequisite: admission to the course is restricted to declared STS seniors and is by application only. Email Andrew Weger (aweger@stanford.edu) for an application. Applications must be submitted by 5pm on November 14th.

"Paperwork" is an intensive reading course in a seminar format, concerning the production, circulation and mediation of "paperwork" both as a material and symbolic infrastructure for the operation of modern institutions and governance. We will explore diverse techniques and technologies of paperwork, including note-taking, memos, lists, files, and documents, and forms of paperwork such as medical record, petition, passport, ID card, immigration paper, as well as archives and other mnemonic technologies both as cultural practices and reflexive objects. The goal of the course is to understand "bureaucracy" in the fields of law, business, and public administration, as well as in civil society generally, from the vantage point of concrete inscription, circulation, and storage of papers and documents. Readings will include works by Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Cornelia Vismann, Friedrich Kittler, and others.

Critical analysis of ethical issues raised by recent or emerging advances in science and engineering. Issues: privacy, intellectual property, design equity, the public interest, ethical responsibilities of technical practitioners, research ethics, and freedom of inquiry. Advances from fields such as IT, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, construction technology, and transport technology. Seminar limited to 25 senior STS majors. Prerequisite: a course in ethics or permission of the instructor.

The dynamic relationship between art and technology and its formative impact on culture, politics and society. Beginning with Aristotle on the notion of techne and its implications for art and craft, the seminar will focus primarily on the modern period as well as contemporary developments. Topics: The invention of linear perspective during the Renaissance as influenced by Arab mathematics; the culture of optical devices and painting; the birth of photography and cinema and new forms of pictorial representation; the avant-garde and the ¿Machine Age¿; art and technology collaborations during the 1960s; interactivity and the rise of media arts; sound art; biotechnology and the arts. Guest speakers and possible field trips. Enrollment limited to STS Senior majors and art and art history majors.

Informed citizens living in today's world, and especially in Silicon Valley, should be able to formulate their own, articulate positions about the role of technology in culture. The course gives students the tools to do so. Against the trend towards the thoughtless celebration of all things technological, we will engage in critique in the two senses of the term: as careful study of the cultural implications of technology and as balanced, argumentative criticism. Can technology make life more meaningful, society more fair, people smarter, and the world smaller? Selections by fiction writers, philosophers and thinkers (such as Heidegger and Beller), as well as recent popular works of social commentary, such as You are not a Gadget, The Shallows, 24/7, and Present Shock.

For students in the STS Honors program. Every unit of credit is understood to represent three hours of work per week per term and is to be agreed upon between the student and the faculty member. May be repeated for credit.

(Formerly COMM 165N.) Preference to freshmen. Focus is on the past, present and future of the automobile, bridging the humanities, social sciences, design, and engineering. Focus on the human experiences of designing, making, driving, being driven, living with, and dreaming of the automobile. A different theme featured each week in discussion around a talk and supported by key readings and media. Course is informed by history, archaeology, ethnography, human-technology interaction, mechanical engineering, and cognitive science.

In this STS senior capstone seminar, students will study the local and global impacts of the technologies that have increased personal mobility. STS majors must have Senior status to enroll in this Senior Capstone course.

Ethical issues raised by advances in science and technology. Topics: biotechnology including agriculture and reproduction, the built environment, energy technologies, and information technology. Prerequisite: 110 or another course in ethics. Limited enrollment.