Results for STS

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.

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.

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.

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.