SSNet Online Course Listings (Previous Years)
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PHIL 560: Seminar in Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
Thursdays
3:30 pm - 5:20 pmMedium-Sized Dry Goods: This seminar is an opportunity to discuss recent philosophical work relating to the physics of scales. Some authors have argued that scientific practices in multiscale modeling, continuum mechanics, renormalization methods, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics should lead us to conceive of scientific endeavors in very different ways than the traditional approaches of early 20th century logical positivists. These developments in physics and applied mathematics relate to philosophical issues concerning reduction, explanation, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. Some background or previous coursework in philosophy of science is strongly recommended.
PHIL 481: Philosophy of Biology (5 credits)
Rose Novick
Day TBA
Time TBAThis course will focus on the philosophy of evolution by natural selection. While some background in evolutionary theory will be helpful, it is not required. The course will start with a general introduction to evolutionary theory, including some of the basic conceptual frameworks (Lewontin's recipe; replicators & interactors) for analyzing it. We will then survey a range of philosophical issues that arise within evolutionary theory. Exact topics remain TBD, but may include: adaptationism and its challenges, group selection and the evolution of altruism, units of selection debates and multilevel selection theory, evolutionary contingency, the nature of fitness, and more.
ANTH 473 Anthropology of Science and Technology (5 credits)
Celia Lowe
Day TBA
Time TBAIntroduces the study of science and technology as social and cultural phenomena. Considers both theoretical and methodological questions. Readings include key texts from interdisciplinary field of science studies as well as selected ethnographic texts. Examples taken from U.S. society and other local contexts.
PHIL 560: Seminar in Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Rose Novick
Day TBA
Time TBAThis seminar will focus on recent "perspectivist" approaches in the philosophy of science. These approaches attempt to make sense of why scientists so frequently understand a single phenomenon using multiple (perhaps seemingly incompatible) models. In doing so, they purport to help us understand the role of idealization, abstraction, and approximation in science. We will consider general arguments for and against perspectivist approaches, as well as how scientific perspectivism relates to other important debates in the philosophy of science (e.g., the realism debate). We will also consider how perspectivism fares when applied to particular case studies, with an emphasis on the biological sciences.
PHIL 460: Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
1:00 pm - 2:20 pmScience is supposed to be the human knowledge-gaining enterprise par excellence. But what distinguishes science from other human endeavors? And what, if anything, makes the methods used by scientists more objective or rational? This course will investigate questions about the nature of scientific knowledge through an introductory survey to contemporary philosophy of science. Topics covered will include empirical meaningfulness, scientific confirmation, scientific explanation, theory change, the engagement of science with social issues and values, and scientific realism. Throughout, we'll pay particular attention to examples from the history of science (including the physical, biological, and social sciences) and the context in which theories develop.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits)
Leah Ceccarelli
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm, GLD 117Provides an advanced introduction to science, technology, and society studies. Includes topics of active research interest in history and philosophy of science; social studies of science; science and technology policy; and ethics and equity issues.
PHIL 562: Seminar in the Social Structure of Science (5 credits)
Carole Lee
Thursdays
3:30 pm - 5:20 pmCritical study of how social structure and power in science contribute to its content and practices.
AES 405: (Bio)politics of Race/Ethnicity (5 credits)
Oliver Rollins
Tuesdays and Thursdays
2:30 pm - 4:20 pmHow do new ideas about biology, technology, and science effect the way we govern individuals, think about life potentials, or restructure debates around race/ethnicity and human value? This seminar will focus on the role science, knowledge, and technology plays in the production of democratic ideals, the making of citizens, and the politics of race. Recent developments in the biomedical sciences are challenging the existing ways we understand life, and as a result, forging new subjectivities and collectives that are actively transforming how we think about and act upon our identities, bodies, and selves. Thus, a different kind of citizenship has emerged, biological citizenship. What does it mean to know your ancestry in the light of genomics? Who can participate in these new configurations of belonging? Are there new interventions, values, or activism made possible through these technoscientific practices? We will start with an examination of citizenship through the exchanges of nation-hood, difference, and power, and continue toward an ethical and social analysis of the contemporary entanglements of democracy, science, and race in the making of biological citizens and governance of 'life itself.'
AFRAM 498: Science, Technology, and Race/Racisms (5 credits)
Oliver Rollins
Mondays and Wednesdays
10:30 am - 12:20 pmRecent scientific developments have promised to vastly improve upon the way we know ourselves and each other, our bodies and health potentials, and our social histories and futures. Scientific solutions to today's social problems, however, are still haunted by the entangled, and highly controversial, history between science and race. This course concentrates on social significance of twenty-first century racial science. What does it mean to know your ethnic ancestry through genetics, and what are the consequences for understanding race/ethnicity in such a way? What are the social and ethical costs, or benefits, to investigating racial bias via brain technologies? Drawing upon an interdisciplinary body of social, scientific, and humanistic literatures, our discussion topics will include: scientific legacies race, inequality and biomedical experimentation, DNA forensics and racial profiling, commercial ancestry testing, and race- specific pharmaceuticals. Overall, students will learn to evaluate the various ways that racial difference is made, maintained, or challenged through contemporary scientific knowledge. Our goal, then, is to better understand the various ways science and technology shape today's social understandings of race.
COM 539 Theories of Technology and Society (5 credits)
Adrienne Russell
Tuesdays and Thursdays
9:30 am - 11:20 amProvides an theoretical foundation for study in the area of communication technology and society by examining different contemporary theories of the social, political, and cultural implications of technological change. Takes a broad view of theories of communication innovations, tools, and technologies - including historical, critical, and comparative approaches.
HPS 400: Colloquium in the History and Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig and Bruce Hevly
Mondays and Wednesdays
12:30 pm - 2:30 pmExamines issues from the perspectives of both history and philosophy.
COM 540: Rhetoric of Science (5 credits)
Leah Ceccarelli
Tuesdays and Thursdays
12:30 pm - 2:20 pm, CMU 242This graduate seminar will examine the interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as the "rhetoric of science." We will study the rhetorical structure of arguments made by scientists to their peers, the rhetorical strategies used by scientists when they communicate outside their fields of expertise, and the persuasive moves made by publics engaging technoscientific issues. Questions for discussion will include: How do scientists use language, situation, culture, and prior tradition to reach intersubjective agreement about their discoveries and theories? In what ways are the argumentative standards applied by scientists in their fields of expertise similar to those applied by arguers in public or private settings? How do scientists communicate with the public? What does public discourse about science reveal about our attitudes toward science? What happens when there is a crisis involving science or technology in the public sphere and scientific expertise is unable to resolve doubt and warrant deliberative action? We will read a number of critical works in the field, to see how rhetorical scholars have added to our collective knowledge about the communicative practices of scientists. We will discuss some of the larger theoretical and practical issues that arise from the rhetorical interpretation of science. And over the course of the quarter, each student will write a paper that engages in the rhetorical criticism of a piece of communication about science. No background in rhetoric or science is necessary to take this course. This seminar can be used by STSS graduate certificate students who are not in the Department of Communication to fulfill the broad perspectives course requirement. For more information, contact the professor at cecc@uw.edu.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits)
David Ribes
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm, MEB 102Provides an advanced introduction to science, technology, and society studies. Includes topics of active research interest in history and philosophy of science; social studies of science; science and technology policy; and ethics and equity issues.
ESS 408/508: Great Geological Issues (3 credits)
Jody Bourgeois
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
9:30 am - 10:20 am, plus an extra reading and discussion session (1 hr.) for graduate students TBAThis course reviews the history and development of geological and paleontological theories and controversies, and the philosophy and methodology that have driven scientific inquiry in the earth sciences. Text: Great Geological Controversies 2nd ed., with supplementary other chapters of secondary reading. Weekly reading and discussion of original texts, primarily 19th century. Some focus on history of climate-change studies leading to present issues. At the graduate (508) level, extra reading and discussion session (to be arranged) and a term research paper, the latter in lieu of the final exam.
PHIL 482: Philosophy of Physics (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
8:30 am - 9:50 amStudy of philosophical issues raised by theories in physics or chemistry, such as whether space (time) is a substance, how causation and locality are treated in quantum mechanics, temporal anistropy and time travel, the nature of a field of force, the reduction of chemistry to physics.
PHIL 482: Philosophy of Physical Sciences (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
9:00-9:50 a.m.Topic: Probability and Determinism in Quantum Mechanics. Description: Quantum mechanics is our best physical theory of the constitution of matter, but infamously it only gives probabilistic predictions. Instead of telling us exactly where an electron is, quantum mechanics can only say, for example, that the electron will be located here with probability one half. In this class, we'll ask how one should interpret the probabilistic statements of quantum mechanics. Could our probabilistic predictions about the electron signify a mere lack of knowledge about where the electron is? Could we find a better theory of the electron with more information, or hidden variables, that allows us to predict where the electron is with certainty? We'll discuss a number of famous mathematical results, including Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem, that are sometimes interpreted as showing that the answer is "no" - quantum mechanics is inherently indeterministic. This course will use mathematical methods: students will be asked to write mathematical proofs using the theory of probability. However, no background in mathematics or physics is assumed or required.
GEOG 522: Space, Technology and Society (5 credits)
Sarah Elwood-Faustino
Mondays
11:30 a.m. - 2:20 pmIn this seminar, we will explore a range of theorizations and literatures that geographers and other scholars have used to examine relationships between space, technologies, and society. We emphasize digital spatial technologies/practices, such as GIS, the geoweb, mobile spatial technologies, big data and their implications for digital subjectivities and inequalities, new forms of social control and exclusion, and (inter)disciplinary debates about epistemology and methodology. We will read work from some of the well-established historical materialist and political economic theorizations of space and technologies, as well as very new work by critical race scholars that considers subjectivities, embodiments, and social relations that arise through digital technologies. The seminar reflects the diversity of ways that critical social scientists have theorized the societal significance of the digital and the spatial, including enduring concerns as well as issues raised by more recent tech/social developments. Our reading list is strongly influenced by my own interest in digitality, visuality, and impoverishment. In particular this seminar is structured to cross-cut these interests with the feminist, post-colonial and critical race theory that has been foundational to relational poverty studies.
COM 597C: Special Topics - Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (5 credits)
Amanda Friz
Mondays and Wednesdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pm, Remote Learning (Zoom)As an emerging field of inquiry, the rhetoric of health and medicine studies health communication through the lens of critical theory and with the tools of rhetorical criticism. This class will explore ways health intersects with power, identity, and activism and will equip you with an awareness of what makes a rhetorical perspective distinct from and complementary to other approaches to studying health. Inquires may be sent to afriz@uw.edu.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits)
David Ribes
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm, Remote Learning (Zoom)Provides an advanced introduction to science, technology, and society studies. Includes topics of active research interest in history and philosophy of science; social studies of science; science and technology policy; and ethics and equity issues.
SMEA 550D: Qualitative Methods - Theory and Practice for Environmental Social Science (3 credits)
P. Joshua Griffin
Tuesdays and Thursdays
2:30 pm - 3:50 pm, Hybrid (MAR 268 [may change] with Zoom option)From positivism to constructivism, critical realism to feminist, critical race and Indigenous standpoints. This class will survey major paradigms and methodologies for the qualitative understanding and analysis of human ecological phenomena, relationships and systems. Through in-class workshops, students will practice methods and techniques as most appropriate to their thesis, capstone, or future imagined research projects. Valuable for any stage of the research process, students will choose from two practice-based tracks. Track 1: Pre-fieldwork, or pre-data collection (mostly first year), students will define the scope of a research project, develop questions, and begin to develop a research plan. Track 2: Students who have completed at least some fieldwork, or data collection (often second year students), will experiment with specific analysis techniques and begin writing up their emerging narrative, or research findings.
COM 539: Theories of Technology and Society (5 credits)
Adrienne Russell
Tuesdays and Thursdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pmThis course focuses on the social, cultural and political implications of new communication and information technology. This course introduces key theories and ideas to provide a foundation to social science and humanities approaches to technology. For Ph.D. students in the communication department, this course is a foundation for further study in the core area of technology & society. This course also presents key ideas in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and counts toward the broad perspectives core requirement for the STSS certificate.
SMEA 550: Participatory Research Practicum (3 credits)
Cleo Woelfle-Erskine
Tuesdays
10:30 am - 1:20 pmStudents develop a reflexive praxis for conducting research with community, tribal, or agency partners, drawing on theory and case studies from STS, Indigenous research methods, geography, and the environmental justice movement. Students will workshop thesis and dissertation methods and develop guiding principles for a collaborative project.
COM 540: Rhetoric of Science (5 credits)
Leah Ceccarelli
Tuesdays and Thursdays
12:30 pm - 2:20 pmThis graduate seminar will examine the interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as the "rhetoric of science." We will study the rhetorical structure of arguments made by scientists to their peers, the rhetorical strategies used by scientists when they communicate outside their fields of expertise, and the persuasive moves made by publics engaging technoscientific issues. Questions for discussion will include: How do scientists use language, situation, culture, and prior tradition to reach intersubjective agreement about their discoveries and theories? In what ways are the argumentative standards applied by scientists in their fields of expertise similar to those applied by arguers in public or private settings? How do scientists communicate with the public? What does public discourse about science reveal about our attitudes toward science? What happens when there is a crisis involving science or technology in the public sphere and scientific expertise is unable to resolve doubt and warrant deliberative action? We will read a number of critical works in the field, to see how rhetorical scholars have added to our collective knowledge about the communicative practices of scientists. We will discuss some of the larger theoretical and practical issues that arise from the rhetorical interpretation of science. And over the course of the quarter, each student will write a paper that engages in the rhetorical criticism of a piece of communication about science. No background in rhetoric or science is necessary to take this course. This seminar can be used by STSS graduate certificate students who are not in the Department of Communication to fulfill the broad perspectives course requirement. For more information, contact the professor at cecc@uw.edu.
PHG 523/Law H520: Genetics and the Law (3 credits)
Anna C. Mastroianni
Mondays and Wednesdays
1:30 pm - 3:00 pmThis interdisciplinary course explores the response of the law and the legal system to advances in genomic and genetic information and technologies and posits legal responses for the future. This course is offered to students from diverse disciplines, and does not require a genetics, public health, or law background. Topics covered include: medical mistakes in testing; reproductive decision-making; parenting and family building; research with human subjects; privacy and confidentiality; workplace uses; access to insurance and health care coverage; forensics; evidentiary uses in criminal law; direct-to-consumer testing; and intellectual property.
ANTH 479: Advanced Topics in Medical Anthropology - Visuality & Medicine. (5 credits)
Jenna Grant
Mondays and Wednesdays
2:30 pm - 4:20 pmThis course explores techniques and imaginaries of vision and making visible related to medicine, health, and the body. We will examine medical imaging technologies, such as PET, MRI, and ultrasound, as well as photographs and ethnographic film. We will inquire about the histories of technological development, the kinds of knowledge involved in their use, the exclusions they perform, the people and diseases they help to construct. We will read the work of anthropologists, science studies scholars, and films studies scholars who work in the U.S., Viet Nam, India, the U.K., Chile and other contexts.
SMEA 550D/CHID 498: Critical and Imaginative Restoration Ecologies (3 credits)
Cleo Woelfle-Erskine
Fridays
1:00 pm - 3:50 pmIn this graduate seminar we use STS methods read across scientific texts, critical social science analyses, and speculative fiction. Students ground their readings in a speculative and critical project at a local restoration site.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits)
David Ribes
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmProvides an advanced introduction to science, technology, and society studies. Includes topics of active research interest in history and philosophy of science; social studies of science; science and technology policy; and ethics and equity issues.
HPS 400: Colloquium in History and Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Benjamin Feintzeig and Bruce Hevly
Topics to be determined.
PHG 512: Legal, Ethical and Social Issues in Public Health Genetics (3 credits)
Debra Lochner Doyle
Mondays and Wednesdays
11:00 am - 12:20 pmEquips the student to anticipate and assess potential legal, ethical, and social barriers complicating the incursion of new genetic advances, information, and technologies into public and private healthcare delivery efforts.
PHIL 460: Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Benjamin Feintzeig
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
10:00 am - 11:20 amScience is supposed to be the human knowledge-gaining enterprise par excellence. But what distinguishes science from other human endeavors? And what, if anything, makes the methods used by scientists more objective or rational? This course will investigate questions about the nature of scientific knowledge through an introductory survey to contemporary philosophy of science. Topics covered will include empirical meaningfulness, scientific confirmation, scientific explanation, theory change, the engagement of science with social issues and values, and scientific realism. Throughout, we'll pay particular attention to examples from the history of science (including the physical, biological, and social sciences) and the context in which theories develop.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits)
David Ribes
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmProvides an advanced introduction to science, technology, and society studies. Includes topics of active research interest in history and philosophy of science; social studies of science; science and technology policy; and ethics and equity issues.
PHIL 560: Seminar in Philosophy of Science: Philosophy of Probability (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
The use of probability theory is ubiquitous in the sciences---from its theoretical role in quantum and statistical physics to its methodological role in statistical testing and experimentation, and its practical role in modeling the beliefs of agents in the social sciences. How did probability theory come to have such diverse applications? And how should we understand and interpret probability assignments in light of this diversity? This course will take a historical overview of the development of probability theory from the classical view of the Enlightenment to the 20th century frequentist and subjective belief approaches and the mathematical foundation provided by Kolmogorov. Our focus will be primarily on the philosophical questions that motivated these mathematical developments, and their relation to the conceptual, methodological, and epistemological foundation of the sciences.
COM 539: Theories of Technology and Society (5 credits)
Kirsten Foot
This course focuses theories useful for studying the internet and other new communication and information technologies of our present moment. This course contextualizes current communication tools and technologies into longer trajectories of histories of ideas and comparisons to “old” media. We also look at the impact of technological innovation more generally (for example, technologies of the body, the turn to “new materialisms”, and the role of “protocol” as social control).
This course will provide a theoretical foundation for further study in the communication department’s core area of technology & society. The course is also appropriate for graduate students in areas of the social sciences and humanities who are interested in a grounding their research in theories of the social, political, and cultural contexts for and implications of technological change. As it addresses key ideas from the technology half of science and technology studies, it is appropriate for students interesting in UW’s Science, Technology and Society Studies certificate (and counts as a course in that certificate program). At the end of the course, students should be able to
1) Identify key literatures, topics, and debates in the area of technology & society from a broad multidisciplinary perspective and locate their own research interests within these debates;
2) Use the theoretical basis of this course to ground further research, prepare for qualifying exams, and do continued coursework in the technology & society area in communication or within their home departments and programs;
3) Develop an extended paper on a topic of their choice related to course material; and
4) Begin independent, professional-quality research in the area of technology & society.
PHIL 464: Philosophical Issues in Cognitive Science (5 credits)
Carole Lee
Philosophical problems connected with research in psychology, artificial intelligence, and other cognitive sciences. Topics vary. Readings from both philosophical and scientific literature. Accessible to nonphilosophers with suitable interests and backgrounds.
HONORS 393: Rhetoric of Science (5 credits)
Leah Ceccarelli
Mondays and Wednesdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pmInsofar as scientists use language and visual displays to communicate with others, they use rhetoric, selecting some aspects of reality to convey, and deflecting other aspects of reality from attention. Studying how scientists use rhetoric to communicate, and how nonscientists use rhetoric to argue about science and its effects in the public sphere, students in this class will discover the means of persuasion available to shape science, its products, and the relationship between both and the publics that surround them. Those who are considering a career in science will learn how to think critically about the internal and external discourse of science, improving their use of rhetorical tools in the process. Those who do not intend to become scientists will learn how to critically analyze the claims of science and respond thoughtfully and effectively to its potential influence on them in the modern world.
PHIL 482: Philosophy of Physical Science: Probability and Determinism in Quantum Mechanics (5 credits)
Benjamin H. Feintzeig
Tuesdays and Thursdays
9:30 am - 11:20 amQuantum mechanics is our best physical theory of the constitution of matter, but infamously it only gives probabilistic predictions. Instead of telling us exactly where an electron is, quantum mechanics can only say, for example, that the electron will be here with probability one half. In this class, we'll ask how one should interpret the probabilistic statements of quantum mechanics. Could our probabilistic predictions about the electron signify a mere lack of knowledge about where the electron is? Could we find a better theory of the electron with more information, or hidden variables, that allows us to predict where the electron is with certainty? We'll discuss a number of famous mathematical results, including Bell's theorem and the Kochen-Specker theorem, that purport to show the answer is "no"--quantum mechanics is inherently indeterministic. This course will use mathematical methods: students will be asked to write mathematical proofs using the theory of classical and quantum probability. At times, some familiarity with formal logic will be helpful. However, no background in mathematics is assumed or required.
TEDUC 520: Multicultural Education (3 credits)
Matthew Weinstein
Mondays
4:15 pm - 6:15 pmThis graduate class explores the meaning of diversity in education, the role of culture, race and language in education. This class combines an academic focus on research on those variables upon schools and student achievement and practical approaches. This course focuses specifically on mathematics and science as special problems in thinking about multiculturalism in terms of both their function in the education system, content and pedagogy.
BISSTS 497A: History of Medicine (5 credits; IAS - UW Bothell)
Laura Harkewicz
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:15 pm - 3:15 pm
In the last few decades, medicine and the life sciences have become the locus for some of society’s most extravagant hopes and acute anxieties. Medicine, History, and Society is aimed at students who would like to uncover the history behind the headlines and take the "longer view" of some of these issues. It will cover some basic facts and concepts, featuring three broad themes: 1) medical ways of knowing, 2) technological contributions, and 3) the effects of existing philosophies, paradigms, or political/social/cultural conditions. We will discuss a variety of characters from the history of medicine and consider their contributions to the medical field. We will investigate the origins of aspects of contemporary life familiar to us all, from the vitamins we take daily to giving birth in a hospital, bringing a historical perspective to bear on topics such as the politics of pharmaceutical patents, the emergence of the new genetic determinism, and ways cultural representations of medicine and doctors inform our health care decisions.
COM 540: Rhetoric of Science (5 credits)
Leah Ceccarelli
Mondays and Wednesdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
This graduate seminar will examine the interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as the “rhetoric of science.” We will study the rhetorical structure of arguments made by scientists to their peers, the rhetorical strategies used by scientists when they communicate outside their fields of expertise, and the persuasive moves made by publics engaging technoscientific issues. Questions for discussion will include: How do scientists use language, situation, culture, and prior tradition to reach intersubjective agreement about their discoveries and theories? In what ways are the argumentative standards applied by scientists in their fields of expertise similar to those applied by arguers in public or private settings? How do scientists communicate with the public? What does public discourse about science reveal about our attitudes toward science? What happens when there is a crisis involving science or technology in the public sphere and scientific expertise is unable to resolve doubt and warrant deliberative action? We will read a number of critical works in the field, to see how rhetorical scholars have added to our collective knowledge about the communicative practices of scientists. We will discuss some of the larger theoretical and practical issues that arise from the rhetorical interpretation of science. And over the course of the quarter, each student will write a paper that engages in the rhetorical criticism of a piece of communication about science. No background in rhetoric or in science is necessary to take this course. For more information, contact Professor Leah Ceccarelli, cecc@uw.edu.
HCDE 548: Design as Inquiry: Methods and Trajectories (4 credits)
Daniela Rosner
Sarah Fox
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
As programs of design continue to have an ever-widening impact, investigators have an obligation to re-examine design’s core commitments and trajectories. In this course, we draw together analyses of design methods with meditations on the research process. Along this path, we consider case studies of alternative approaches rooted in feminist technoscience. For many, intervention and inquiry represent separate and distinct categories of practice. On one side, interventionists aim to shift the situation of those with whom they work, developing mechanisms for social change, whether malignant or benign. On the other side, inquirers make a given situation into their object of study, revealing something of the people who comprise and inhabit it. This seminar introduces students to what it means to treat design as an integrative practice of both intervention and inquiry. Through close readings and in-class exercises, students will examine the intellectual legacies of different approaches to studying and theorizing design and gain fresh perspectives on integrative techniques. Students will investigate how an integrative inquiry may produce distinct ethical-political stances other methodological orientations tend to ignore. Together these differences in method generate distinct research questions and different ways of making sense of design encounters. Approaching a design situation through such integrative methods changes processes of inquiry and intervention, as well as the always-situated investigators themselves.
HUM 597A: Observation, Objectivity, and Object Biographies: Reading Lorraine Daston (1 credit, C/NC)
Alison Wylie
Mondays (April 3, 10, 24, 3:30 pm - 5:20 pm) & Daston events on April 19 and 20
This microseminar is convened in conjunction with the visit of Lorraine Daston to the University of Washington as a Katz Distinguished Lecturer in April 2017. A widely respected historian of science, Daston’s pivotal publications on the transformations of ideals of objectivity, biographies of scientific objects and conventions of image-making have been widely influential and exemplifies the interdisciplinary vision that animates UW's graduate certificate in Science, Technology & Society Studies. We will discuss a sampling of Daston’s work, both common readings and work identified by participating students as relevant to their research interests. Details are available on the course website.
INFX 598A & 598B: Information Infrastructure Studies (3 credits)
Megan Finn
Tuesdays
1:30 pm - 4:20 pm
In this seminar, we will examine the making, maintenance, and use of infrastructures for circulating information. This class covers theoretical and historical perspectives on the development of infrastructure, methods for studying infrastructure, and studies of infrastructures. We will pay close attention to the cultural, social and political aspects of information infrastructure as we examine case studies of how vast means for circulating information developed and endured over centuries, or, equally importantly, failed.
MCB 543: Logic Constructs and Methodologies of Biological Research (3 credits)
James Zimring
Tuesdays and Thursdays
3:30 pm - 4:50 pm
Both undergraduate and graduate education in the basic sciences consist largely of a mastery of the “scientific facts” of a field, an understanding of the dominant theoretical paradigms in an area, and learning the linguistic particulars of specialized vocabulary. However, little formal attention is paid to the workings and process of science itself. For at least 2400 years, philosophers have been analyzing modes of reasoning, fallacies of thinking, and the legitimacy or truth claims made by different methods of scientific exploration. Moreover, it is a myth that there is, or ever has been, an agreed upon “scientific method” that constitutes the correct way to investigate. In recent centuries, fields dedicated to the analysis of science itself (philosophy of science, history of science, sociology of science) have emerged, each of which analyzes the process that scientists engage in as a part of their everyday function. Most graduate students learn method and process through their individual research projects, interactions with mentors and peers, and by attending scientific seminars and meetings. However, little attention has been traditionally paid, within the basic science curriculum, to codifying the issues in an organized way. This course will provide an overview of the practice of science itself, and introduce the students to historical issues, matters of consensus, and cutting edge issues of ongoing controversy. Attention will be paid to both theoretical and practical application of scientific method, with a distinct focus on the practical application of the covered concepts to the practice of everyday scientific exploration. After completing the course, students should understand and interface differently with science they encounter, papers they read, and their own projects.
PHIL 291 / VALUES 291: Ethics in Science (5 credits)
Alison Wylie
Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pm
Quiz sections: Wednesday and Friday
12:30- 1:20 pm, 1:30 - 2:20 pm, or 2:30 - 3:20 pm
Scientific research has an impact on all of us, and on every aspect of our lives. Most of us will be research subjects at one time or another; all of us are affected by science-based policies; our everyday-lives have been transformed by the results of scientific research – in good and bad ways. Scientific research raises ethics issues that have never been more pressing or more consequential than now. This course is designed to explore these issues, primarily with reference to the non-medical sciences. For the details of focal topics and course requirements, please see the course website.
BISSTS 497A: Race, Gender, Science and Medicine (5 credits; IAS - UW Bothell)
Laura Harkewicz
Mondays and Wednesdays
5:45 pm - 7:45 pmIn this course, we will focus on the interplay between science, technology, and medicine on the one hand, and race, gender, and sexuality on the other. We will discuss how cultural ideas about race, gender, and sexuality influence knowledge and knowledge production as well as how scientific claims and technological developments influence cultural understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. We will examine the implications of developments in science and medicine for politics, social identity, and cultural belonging. In addition, we will explore the efforts by individuals and social movements to challenge scientific institutions while asserting new claims about identity, inequality, and difference. Among other questions, we will ask how these ideas influence who is involved in knowledge production or what it means to experience these constructs on a personal level. This course examines recent scholarship on the role of race, gender, and sexuality in the social studies of science drawing from the fields of biology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and (especially) history.
PHIL 243 / ENVIR 243: Environmental Ethics (5 credits)
Stephen Gardiner
Tuesdays and Thursdays
11:30 am - 12:50 pmIn this course we will explore how to identify, articulate and think critically about the ethical dimensions of environmental challenges. We will learn about various general theories in environmental ethics, and also how to apply philosophical skills and concepts to specific environmental problems, such as restoring local ecosystems and global climate change. Topics will include: the nature and extent of individual and social obligations to distant people, nonhuman animals, plants and ecosystems; the role of economic considerations in environmental policy-making; the origins of environmental problems; and the relevance of concepts such as justice and responsibility to solutions. The course will focus partly on the contributions of standard philosophical theories and techniques to environmental debates, and partly on the challenges that environmental issues raise to familiar theoretical approaches.
PHIL 406A: Philosophical Topics in Feminism - Feminist Philosophy of Science (5 credits)
Alison Wylie
Mondays and Wednesdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmCritics of the very idea of feminist philosophy of science insist that, because feminism is an explicitly political stance, it can have nothing to do with science or how we understand it philosophically. Feminists have been prominent among those who contest the epistemic ideals implicit in such arguments and who, at the same time, insist that a robust contextualism need not entail a reductive relativism. The aim of this seminar is to explore the range of positions articulated by feminist philosophers of science in response both to conventional ‘aperspectival’ ideals and charges of relativism.
VALUES 512: Justice Matters (5 credits)
Stephen Gardiner
Thursdays
3:30 pm - 5:20 pm
This course aims to introduce graduate and professional students from a wide range of backgrounds to some central moral questions about social structures and institutions. Discussion will center on issues of justice, broadly construed as the basic virtue of social institutions. In particular, the course will ask what it is to treat people as equals, and consider different answers to this question proposed by (for example) utilitarians, liberals, libertarians, socialists and communitarians. It is assumed that perspectives brought from different fields will prove mutually illuminating. Students will consider conceptual frameworks for thinking about the increasingly familiar difficulties that arise in any attempt to fashion fair and decent policies in various areas of our lives. This course serves as the core course for the Graduate Certificate in Ethics, but is also routinely taken as an independent course. Those interested in the certificate program are encouraged to contact the Director of the Program on Values in Society, Steve Gardiner, at smgard@uw.edu.
BISSTS 497A: History of Medicine (5 credits; IAS - UW Bothell)
Laura Harkewicz
Mondays and Wednesdays
8:45 am - 10:45 amIn the last few decades, medicine and the life sciences have become the locus for some of society’s most extravagant hopes and acute anxieties. Medicine, History, and Society is aimed at students who would like to uncover the history behind the headlines and take the "longer view" of some of these issues. It will cover some basic facts and concepts, featuring three broad themes: 1) medical ways of knowing, 2) technological contributions, and 3) the effects of existing philosophies, paradigms, or political/social/cultural conditions. We will discuss a variety of characters from the history of medicine and consider their contributions to the medical field. We will investigate the origins of aspects of contemporary life familiar to us all, from the vitamins we take daily to giving birth in a hospital, bringing a historical perspective to bear on topics such as the politics of pharmaceutical patents, the emergence of the new genetic determinism, and ways cultural representations of medicine and doctors inform our health care decisions.
GEOG 522: Space, Technology and Society (5 credits)
Sarah Elwood
Thursdays
2:30 pm - 5:20 pmIn this seminar, we will explore a range of theorizations and literatures that geographers and other scholars have used to examine relationships between space, technologies, and society. We emphasize digital spatial technologies/practices, such as GIS, the geoweb, mobile spatial technologies, big data and their implications for digital subjectivities and inequalities, new forms of social control and exclusion, and (inter)disciplinary debates about epistemology and methodology. We will read work from some of the well-established historical materialist and political economic theorizations of space and technologies, as well as very new work by critical scholars that considers subjectivities, embodiments, and social relations that emerge from and with spatial technologies. The seminar reflects the diversity of ways that critical social scientists have theorized the societal significance of the digital and the spatial, including enduring concerns as well as issues raised by more recent tech/social developments. In particular this seminar is structured to read questions of digitality, visuality and poverty with feminist, post-colonial and critical race theory.
PHIL 560: Explanation and Understanding (5 credits)
Andrea Woody
Mondays
3:30 pm - 5:30 pmThe first half of this course will be devoted to a survey of the core literature on scientific explanation. This survey will include the original inferential (Hempel), causal (Salmon), erotetic (Van Fraassen), and unificationist (Kitcher, Friedman) approaches to explanation. We will then to turn more contemporary work, including mechanistic explanation, Streven’s kairetic account, and Woodward’s highly influential counterfactual/interventionist approach. We will also consider a reorientation of philosophical work concerning explanation that I have advocated under the label of a “functionalist perspective”. In the final weeks of the term we will consider recent work on the topic of scientific understanding, drawing from writings by de Regt, Dieks, Mizrahi, Khalidi, Kuorikoski, Ylikoski, and Rice, and consider the links between explanation and understanding.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits, C/NC)
Leah Ceccarelli
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmThis course introduces graduate students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to Science, Technology, and Society Studies (STSS) as an interdisciplinary area of study at the University of Washington. It is designed especially for those enrolled in, or thinking of applying to, the STSS graduate certificate program. Each week, a different member of the STSS faculty network will introduce a theme or area of active research interest. By the end of the quarter, students should be able to: evaluate the different disciplinary research methodologies that are applied to questions in the contextual study of science and technology; integrate STS concepts and methods with the core ideas of their home disciplines; navigate the ethics, policy and equity issues that arise at the interface of science, technology and society; and critically appraise and deploy robust content knowledge of relevant science, technology and society studies research beyond their home disciplines. In addition, social science and humanities students will demonstrate the ability to situate disciplinary interests in science and technology in an interdisciplinary context; and STEM program and Professional program students will demonstrate an understanding of the history, social context, and philosophy of the research traditions in which they work.
ANTH 473: Anthropology of Science and Technology
Celia Lowe
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (A-term)
9:40 am - 12:20 pm
Since the early 1990s, anthropologists have joined scholars from other disciplines who are interested in examining science and technology as much more than a window on the natural world. While science can give us purchase on describing and understanding the physical and biological world around us, it is also a rich field of cultural and social production. In the process, both “nature” and “society” are revealed as outcomes of the practice of science rather than precursors. This kind of engagement with science and technology as culture is part of a new anthropological interest in understanding elite cultures, or, in other words, “studying up.” After a brief introduction to the field of STS (science and technology studies), we will pursue three exemplary themes: endangerment; the human; and science and its publics. These themes will provide a rich series of cases documenting the social life of science and technology, and where studies of science have provided new methods for elaborating older fields of study in anthropology. We will use these themes to understand the general idea that science and technology are social through and through.
ARCHY 574A: Meta-Archaeology - Evidence
Alison Wylie
Tuesdays
5:30 pm - 7:20 pm
This is a seminar about evidence: what counts as archaeological evidence and as best practice reasoning with evidence in archaeological contexts. We’ll be reading selections from Material Evidence: Learning from Archaeological Practice (ed. Chapman and Wylie 2015), juxtaposed with philosophical accounts of evidential reasoning that bring into focus several different ways of conceptualizing the nature and role of evidence in empirical inquiry. The approach we’ll take is resolutely case-based; the central aim of this seminar is to tease out the assumptions about evidence that underpin archaeological debate, and to build a framework for thinking critically and constructively about evidential reasoning in archaeological practice.
BIS 490: Advanced Seminar: The History and Politics of HIV
Johanna Crane
Tuesdays and Thursdays
8:45 am - 10:45 am
This advanced seminar is an immersion into the history, politics, culture and science of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic from the early 1980s to the present. By paying particular attention to questions of sexuality, race, gender and poverty, we will explore how social relations of power have shaped disease risk, prevention, science, and access to treatment. This class requires completion of an advanced research project related to the course material.
B H 421 / DIS ST 421: History of Eugenics
Joanne Woiak
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:50 pm
The eugenics movement of the early 20th century proposed and implemented a variety of policies for “improving the hereditary quality of the race” by controlling human reproduction. The history of eugenics illustrates the interplay between social values and science and medicine, especially involving the social construction and meanings of human differences such as disability, race, class, gender, and sexuality. We will examine the development and authority of eugenic science; policies and practices such as sterilization and immigration restriction; public responses and connections to other social movements; and impacts on communities. By reading primary and secondary sources, we will address the intersections and tensions between the history of eugenics, disability studies, and bioethics. What are the legacies of eugenics for health care, scientific research, reproductive rights, and social justice? How is eugenics remembered and forgotten?
HSTCMP 410A: Medicine, History and Society
Laura Harkewicz
Mondays and Wednesdays
3:30 pm - 5:20 pm
In the last few decades, medicine and the life sciences have become the locus for some of society’s most extravagant hopes and acute anxieties. Medicine, History, and Society is aimed at students who would like to uncover the history behind the headlines and take the "longer view" of some of these issues. It will cover some basic facts and concepts, featuring three broad themes: 1) medical ways of knowing, 2) technological contributions, and 3) the effects of existing philosophies, paradigms, or political/social/cultural conditions. We will discuss a variety of characters from the history of medicine and consider their contributions to the medical field. We will investigate the origins of aspects of contemporary life familiar to us all, from the vitamins we take daily to giving birth in a hospital, bringing a historical perspective to bear on topics such as the politics of pharmaceutical patents, the emergence of the new genetic determinism, and ways cultural representations of medicine and doctors inform our health care decisions.
PHIL 416 / ENVIR 416: Ethics and Climate Change
Stephen Gardiner
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
Several politicians and scientists have said that climate change is the most important international problem facing the world today. This course will investigate many of the philosophical issues relevant to this problem. Such issues include: What can economic analysis tell us (and not tell us) about problems with a long time horizon, such as climate change? Is climate change a commons problem? If so, what kind? What would constitute a just allocation of the burdens of climate change? Can our pollution harm future generations when their very existence might depend on our decision to pollute? What are we individually required to do about global and intergenerational problems of this sort?
PHIL 460: Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
Andrea Woody
Mondays and Wednesdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
This course serves as an introduction to contemporary philosophy of science and will have a survey format (that is, we’ll try to get a feel for the “landscape”). Philosophy of science is concerned generally with what makes science a distinctive enterprise and what makes the claims of science and the activities of scientists epistemically respectable, if they are. Attempts to address these issues have tended to focus attention on a few key concepts, which we will discuss and analyze throughout the term. Topics will include explanation, confirmation and the nature of evidence, theory development, and issues concerning theory interpretation, e.g. realism/anti-realism debates. Where possible, these topics will be illustrated through contemporary and historical episodes of actual scientific practice. Classes will be a mixture of lecture and discussion. Students will be required to write several short papers aimed, first and foremost, at clear, concise explication of the philosophical issues. In effect, students will be introduced to both the "content" and the "methods" of modern philosophy of science.
PHIL 560: Seminar in the Philosophy of Science - OBJECTIVITY
Alison Wylie
Thursdays
3:30 pm - 5:20 pm
Of all the epistemic ideals that have come in for critical reassessment in recent decades, ‘objectivity’ is perhaps most sharply contested. What counts as objectivity has been shown to have a history, to be contingent and changeable depending on context, interest, and the specific types of epistemic failings it is meant to counteract, and sometimes to mask the operation of the very distorting interests researchers are meant to transcend in the name of objectivity. The aim of this seminar is to take stock of this epistemic ideal and assess what is at issue in debates that turn on claims of ‘objectivity’. We will begin with two retrospective accounts: Kitcher’s philosophical assessment in Science, Truth and Democracy (2001), and Daston and Galison’s social history of Objectivity (2007). We then turn to a close reading of contemporary philosophical accounts of objectivity as informed, on one hand, by analysis of scientific methodology and, on the other hand, by debate about the role of values in science. Philip Kitcher is the 2016 Stice Lecturer; he will join the seminar meeting on April 7.
POL S/ENVIR 385: Political Ecology and the World Food System
Karen Litfin
Tuesdays and Thursdays
12:00 pm - 1:20 pm
This course will address these questions and more: How does what we eat reflect the interpenetration of science, technology, economics, culture and politics? Who wins and who loses in the global food economy? To what extent are non-state actors altering the world food system? How is climate change likely to impact the world food system? How does our planetary food web challenge our sense of personal identity and ethical responsibility? In particular, we will focus on the pivotal role of petroleum in the world food system, the global carbon and nitrogen cycles, the questions of meat and genetically modified food, and new food movements around the world.
COM 539: Theories of Technology and Society (5 credits)
Gina Neff
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
This course focuses theories useful for studying the internet and other new communication and information technologies of our present moment. This course contextualizes current communication tools and technologies into longer trajectories of histories of ideas and comparisons to “old” media. We also look at the impact of technological innovation more generally (for example, technologies of the body, the turn to “new materialisms”, and the role of “protocol” as social control).
This course will provide a theoretical foundation for further study in the communication department’s core area of technology & society. The course is also appropriate for graduate students in areas of the social sciences and humanities who are interested in a grounding their research in theories of the social, political, and cultural contexts for and implications of technological change. As it addresses key ideas from the technology half of science and technology studies, it is appropriate for students interesting in UW’s Science, Technology and Society Studies certificate (and counts as a course in that certificate program). At the end of the course, students should be able to
1) Identify key literatures, topics, and debates in the area of technology & society from a broad multidisciplinary perspective and locate their own research interests within these debates;
2) Use the theoretical basis of this course to ground further research, prepare for qualifying exams, and do continued coursework in the technology & society area in communication or within their home departments and programs;
3) Develop an extended paper on a topic of their choice related to course material; and
4) Begin independent, professional-quality research in the area of technology & society.
HCDE 548: Advanced Topics in HCDE: Foundations of Science and Technology Studies (4 credits)
David Ribes
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
Experts speak in the name of our societies' most powerful institutions, such as science, engineering, medicine, and finance. They make and disseminate knowledge and technologies, shaping how we all see and act in the world. How have experts come to play such an important role in our society and what are the consequences?
This course is an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS), a lively interdisciplinary field dedicated to studying the social worlds of experts. We will draw from approaches such as the sociology of knowledge, actor-network theory and social shaping of technology in order understand today's most challenging issues, such as climate change, financial crises or revolutions in biotechnology.
This is ‘classic’ seminar style course, focused on closely discussing readings of key texts. The course begins from STS’ foundations in sociology, philosophy and history and works its way forward through the advances and debates in topics, concepts and methods to arrive at the contemporary field. The final project is a group based literature review of a new or old topic, issue, theory, or method within STS.
INSTSCI 200: Controversies in Science and Society (3 credits)
Brian Buchwitz
Tuesdays and Thursdays
12:30 pm - 1:50 pm
In INTSCI 200, we will focus on societal controversies that emphasize intersections among science communication, education, policy, and research. For example, why do parents choose to vaccinate, or not vaccinate, their children? How should genetically-modified organisms be regulated? If you have any questions, please feel free to email the instructor at: bjb@uw.edu
INTSCI 403/HONORS 392: Science in Context (5 credits)
Brian Buchwitz
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
1:30 pm - 2:50 pm
This course is typically co-taught by a scientist and a social scientist with an interest in science from an ethical or societal perspective, and will focus on a case study examination of how science operates within broad social, political, and ethical contexts. Discussion topics vary, but may include the growth of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, the societal impact of scientific results and developed technologies, the political environment surrounding scientific practice, ethical responsibilities of scientists, the acceptability of censorship, the complex mechanisms for funding scientific research, and the power inherent in claims to knowledge. Topics for case study may include global climate change, evolution, stem cell research, or other topics.
LAW H520/PHG 523: Law and Genetics
Anna C. Mastoianni
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:10 pm
This course explores legal aspects of genetics in diverse contexts:
- Reproductive decision-making
- Parenting
- Research (from bench science to the marketplace, including intellectual property)
- Privacy and confidentiality
- Workplace
- Insurance
- Courtroom uses (forensics, and criminal prosecution and defense)
- Direct-to-consumer marketing
The course will examine the response of the law and the legal system to advances in genetic information and technologies and posit what the response should be in the future. Law and Genetics is open to all graduate students interested in learning about legal aspects and implications of genetics and genomics. No prerequisites.
BISSTS 307 A & B (2 sections): Science, Technology, and Society
Tuesday and Thursday (section A)
11:00 am - 1:00 pmTuesdays and Thursdays (section B)
3:30 pm - 5:30 pmIn this introduction to the field of Science and Technology Studies, we will study historical, sociological, and anthropological accounts of scientific knowledge-making and technological development in order to learn more about the ways in which science and technology are inherently social and political. This is the core course for the major in Science, Technology, and Society.
STSS 591: Science, Technology, and Society Studies in Action (2 credits, C/NC)
Leah Ceccarelli
Fridays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pm
This course introduces graduate students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to Science, Technology & Society Studies (STSS) as an interdisciplinary area of study. It orients students enrolled in the STSS graduate certificate to the expectations of the program, especially the design of their STSS portfolio. Each week, a different member of the STSS core faculty will introduce an area of active research interest. Examples of themes include gender and science, ethical issues in scientific research, science and public policy, and postcolonial science studies.
INTSCI 200: Controversies in Science and Society (3 credits)
Brian Buchwitz
Tuesdays and Thursdays
12:30 pm - 1:50 pm
In INTSCI 200, we will focus on societal controversies that emphasize intersections among science communication, education, policy, and research. For example, why do parents choose to vaccinate, or not vaccinate, their children? How should genetically-modified organisms be regulated?
First-year Interest Group (FIG) students should register for section B; all other students should register for section A. If you have any questions, please feel free to email the instructor at: bjb@uw.edu
HSTCMP 410A: Medicine, History and Society (5 credits)
Laura Harkewicz
Mondays and Wednesdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pm
In the last few decades, medicine and the life sciences have become the locus for some of society’s most extravagant hopes and acute anxieties. Medicine, History and Society is aimed at students who would like to uncover the history behind the headlines and take the “longer view” of some of these issues. It will cover some basic facts and concepts, featuring three broad themes: 1) medical ways of knowing, 2) technological contributions, and 3) the effects of existing philosophies, paradigms, or political/social/cultural conditions. We will investigate the origins of aspects of contemporary life familiar to us all, from the vitamins we take daily to giving birth in a hospital, bringing a historical perspective to bear on topics such as the politics of pharmaceutical patents, the emergence of the new genetic determinism, and ways cultural representations of medicine and doctors inform our health care decisions.
HSTCMP414: The Ocean Frontier: History of Science and Exploration at Sea (5 credits)
Antony Adler
Mondays and Wednesdays
9:30 am - 11:20 am
This course covers the historical development of the marine sciences with a consideration of political, social, and economic context. The chronological scope ranges from roughly the mid-nineteen century to the modern era. Topics covered will include: the history of navigation, fisheries and aquaculture, marine telegraphy, the discovery of hydrothermal vents, oceanography during the Cold War, and the history of climate change research.
IMT 589 A/B: Monetary Informatics (4 credits)
Dave Stearns
Thursdays
4:30 pm - 8:20 pm
Examines money and payments as information systems with social as well as technical dynamics. Provides an introduction to the most commonly-used international and domestic payment networks, as well as a few unique and alternative models. Introduces the emerging world of mobile payments, alternative electronic currencies, and the possibility of a completely “cashless society.”
This will be a small masters-level seminar, and the content will come from my own research into payment systems as sociotechnical infrastructures. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the course.
SOC 401: Nature, Society, Environment (5 credits)
Kelly Kistner
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
A central theme of this course will be the relationship between how humans attempt to know nature and how we live with nature. This course will provide students with a background in cross-cultural and historically variable conceptions of nature and the human relationship to it. We will also examine contemporary theories on the complexity and interconnectedness of social, economic, technological, and ecological systems and how environmental issues pose challenges for social order.
This course may be of interest to undergraduates in history, philosophy, HPS, anthropology, biology, CHID, and the College of Environment. No sociology prerequisites needed, interdisciplinary perspectives will certainly be welcomed, 5 credits including writing credit.
PHG521/ANTH574/NURS582: Culture, Society, and Genomics (3 credits)
Barbara Burns McGrath
Mondays
1:30 pm - 4:20 pm
The results of dramatic advances in human genetics research are making their way from the laboratory through the media and the clinic into the lives of everyday people. This course will bring a social science perspective to the dialogue by exploring the ways social research and other influences are used to frame science and biotechnology. Topics include: the place of science in our society; the post modern body in a genomic era; stigma; genetic testing and prenatal diagnosis; medicalization of the family; quality of life and disability; and the role of the media in science discourse.
PHIL 466: Seminar in Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Looping Effects, Social Kinds, and the Goals of Social Inquiry
Alison Wylie (PHIL)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
11:30 am - 1:20 pmCan human, social subjects be studied “scientifically” or do they require, instead, a distinctive interpretive methodology? We’ll address this question, first, in relation to Winch’s classic, Idea of a Social Science (1958), and the debate it generated about ideals of objectivity in the social sciences. We then turn to a related set of ontological questions: what kind of subjects are social entities and social kinds? The focus here is Hacking’s account of the impact of “looping effects” on what he calls “interactive kinds.” We end the quarter with recent reappraisals of social identity constructs due to feminist and critical race theorists, and arguments based on them for various forms of standpoint theory. The 2015 joint meeting of the Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable and the European Network for Philosophy of the Social Sciences (RT/ENPOSS) will be hosted by the Simpson Center this quarter: May 8-10. This seminar is designed to complement the proceedings of this conference: http://www.poss-rt.net/
ARCHY 467A: Research Ethics in Archaeology: Conservation, Accountability, Stewardship
Alison Wylie (PHIL)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
4:30 pm - 6:20 pm
Archaeological practice raises profoundly challenging ethics issues. The central question we address in this seminar is: to whom and to what are archaeologists accountable? More specifically: What responsibilities do archaeologists have to those whose cultural heritage they study?; Do archaeologists have an obligation, or a right, to serve as “stewards” of archaeological resources?; Is it ever legitimate to work with archaeological material that has been looted and commercially traded? These issues are central to debates that are changing the way archaeology is practiced, so we address them through analysis of cases juxtaposed with theoretical and philosophical literature on research ethics.
Course readings will include the following texts: Atalay’s Community-Based Archaeology: Research with, by, and for Indigenous and Local Communities (2012); Scarre & Scarre (eds.), The Ethics of Archaeology (2006); Zimmerman, Vitelli & Hollowell (eds.) Ethical Issues in Archaeology (2003).
BISSTS 307: Science, Technology, and Society
Joanne Crane (IAS - UW Bothell)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
8:45 pm - 10:45 pm
The class is an introductory course to the field of Science & Technology Studies, and a core requirement for our undergraduate major in STS. Presents concepts and theories used to investigate the creation, application, and governance of science and technology. Addresses the nature of scientific and technological knowledge, social construction of science and technology, democracy and science, and public understanding.
COM 540: Rhetoric of Science
Leah Ceccarelli (COM)
Thursdays
1:30 pm - 4:20 pmThis graduate seminar will examine the interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as the “rhetoric of science.” We will study the rhetorical structure of arguments made by scientists to their peers, the rhetorical strategies used by scientists when they communicate outside their fields of expertise, and the persuasive moves made by publics engaging technoscientific issues. Questions for discussion will include: How do scientists use language, situation, culture, and prior tradition to reach intersubjective agreement about their discoveries and theories? In what ways are the argumentative standards applied by scientists in their fields of expertise similar to those applied by arguers in public or private settings? How do scientists communicate with the public? What does public discourse about science reveal about our attitudes toward science? What happens when there is a crisis involving science or technology in the public sphere and scientific expertise is unable to resolve doubt and warrant deliberative action? We will read a number of critical works in the field, to see how rhetorical scholars have added to our collective knowledge about the communicative practices of scientists. We will discuss some of the larger theoretical and practical issues that arise from the rhetorical interpretation of science. And over the course of the quarter, each student will write a paper that engages in the rhetorical criticism of a piece of communication about science. No background in rhetoric or in science is necessary to take this course. For more information, contact Professor Leah Ceccarelli, cecc@uw.edu.
GEOG 258: Digital Geographies
Sarah Elwood (GEOG)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmThe way we know and experience the world around us is increasingly mediated by digital technologies – many of them with geographic or locational capabilities. Google’s MyMaps and geo-tagged Tweets have been used to coordinate pro-democracy and anti-inequality protests around the world. Geo-social ‘check-in’ apps like FourSquare can alert us when a friend is nearby. Smart phone apps let citizens send photos of urban problems to government officials in some cities. Crisis mapping apps compile and map real-time observations of disaster relief needs or human rights violations around the world, sharing this information with first responders, the international community, and many others. In short, making and using digital maps and geographic information is an increasing part of life in many parts of the world. This class explores the key components, applications and societal impacts of these new spatial media, including online mapping software, handheld geographic devices, the geoweb, location-based services, crowdsourced spatial data, and open source mapping. The central idea of this class is that digital technologies make (or ‘mediate’) the world we live in – including its social and spatial relationships, connectivity / interactions, and forms of inclusion, exclusion, empowerment, and exploitation. We will explore how they do so through visual representation, data schemes, data collection practices, political economic structures, collective action politics, and our own everyday practices.
HPS 400: History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium / PHIL 401: Topics in Philosophy
Bruce Hevly (HIST) and
Alison Wylie (PHIL)
Mondays and Wednesdays
1:00 pm - 2:50 pmAgnatology: Historical and Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Ignorance
Historians and philosophers of science have traditionally been concerned with knowledge: what counts as scientific knowledge, how it is produced and ratified, whether its authority is warranted, whose interests it serves, whether it is distinctive or in what ways it is continuous with everyday, practical understanding. Recently, however, they have turned their attention to questions about ignorance. How are we to understand knowledge if we don’t understand ignorance, ask the proponents of “agnotology” – the study of ignorance? We begin an exploration of this emerging body of HPS research with a set of readings on “values in science” and arguments for pluralism that draw attention to ways in which scientific inquiry is inevitably selective, and then consider a selection of contributions to Agnotology (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008), the collection of essays that brought the topic of ignorance to prominence. At the end of the quarter we focus on a particular sustained study of ignorance by Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt (2010).
This course is required for students in History and Philosophy of Science, but we welcome non-majors who have a background in history and/or philosophy of science (HIST 311/312, PHIL 160/460), and graduate students who have an interest in HPS.
SOC 201: Scientists are People Too: The Role and Practice of Science in Modern Society
Kelly Kistner (SOC)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
8:30 am - 9:50 amWhen sociologists look at the social world they consider aspects of organization, coordination, and institutions; authority, trust, and power; material tools, places, and technologies; conflict, change, communication, and cooperation. This course will introduce students to a sociological way of thinking about science as a social phenomenon. We will consider science in its different forms and in comparison to other ways of knowing. We will consider the historical development of modern science and the social structures that support its practice and place in society today. We will consider how the broader social world is imprinted in scientific practices, and how science permeates modern life. By more fully examining these social dimensions of science, students will gain an appreciation of science as a collaborative and adaptable source of social order, while recognizing the potential challenges of scientific work and within modern techno-scientific societies.
BISSTS 307: Science, Technology, and Society
Joanne Crane (IAS - UW Bothell)
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
11:00 am - 1:00 pm
The class is an introductory course to the field of Science & Technology Studies, and a core requirement for our undergraduate major in STS. Presents concepts and theories used to investigate the creation, application, and governance of science and technology. Addresses the nature of scientific and technological knowledge, social construction of science and technology, democracy and science, and public understanding.
ESS 408/ ESS 508: Great Geological Issues
Joanne Bourgeois (ESS)
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
9:30 am - 10:20 am
History and development of geological and paleontological theories and controversies; philosophy and methodology that have driven scientific inquiry in the earth sciences. We read and discuss excerpts from primary sources each week; there are two take-home exams, or the final can be replaced by a term paper. W credit available by arrangement.
PHG 551/ BH 551 / GENOME 573: Human Genomics: Science, Ethics, and Society
Malia Fulerton
Thursdays
1:30 pm - 4:20 pm
This course aims to provide an overview of recent topics in human genetics and genomics while simultaneously placing those topics in a broader social and ethical context. The approach to learning is unstructured and collaborative. Students will explore, in a sustained manner, the science involved in recent research advances, ranging from next gen sequencing to RNA-mediated “gene drives”. They will also use a range of ethical arguments to assess the implications of such advances for scientists, clinicians, research participants, and society at large.
T EDUC 520: Multicultural Education
Matthew Weinstein
Mondays
4:15 pm - 6:45 pm
Explores major theoretical, political, and pedagogical issues in multicultural education. Studies institutional and cultural discrimination such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, disability, and language. Examines the relationship between schooling and the reproduction of stratification and discrimination, as well as examines curricular and pedagogical approaches to address these variables.
HPS 400/PHIL 401C: Topics in Science and Pseudoscience
Bruce Hevly and Andrea Woody (HPS/PHIL)
Tuesday and Thursday
1:30 pm - 3:20 pmBoth history and philosophy of science are frequently enlisted in efforts to defend the frontier between science and non-science. These efforts, in turn, reflect fundamental problems arising in the two fields, ones that might be resolved in part by a more integrated HPS perspective, and the creation of this perspective will be one of the collective tasks of this seminar. For philosophers, the identification of satisfactory demarcation criteria to allow the objective definition of science was a central task of the twentieth century, albeit an increasingly problematic one. For historians of science, an unwillingness to draw a line between science and non-science seemed to smack of an unsavory relativism, threaten their credibility with scientists, and undermine their sense of disciplinary identity; at the same time, a sense of how the line between science and non-science has shifted over time seemed to provide a crucial contextual element for historical practice. We will begin by reading Michael Gordin’s recent book (2012) The Pseudoscience Wars: Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, which explores scientists’ varying responses to Immanuel Velikovsky and the relationship of these responses to the science wars arising in the 1980s and 1990s. From this piece of contemporary scholarship, we will work backwards to issues of demarcation in history and philosophy of science, look at what may be regarded as unsatisfactory responses to this problem (for example, in the science wars and in the skeptic’s movement of scientism), and ultimately try to find a set of better approaches. The course will be run as a discussion-based seminar, and students will prepare their own case studies relevant to our efforts to make sense of demarcation and its significance. This course is open to HPS majors and other graduate and undergraduate students with suitable backgrounds.
CHID 222: Biofutures
Phillip Thurtle (CHID/HIST/ANTH)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (Friday Discussion Sections)
1:30 pm - 2:20 pmThis class explores key legal, ethical, cultural, scientific, and commercial aspects of the rapidly changing world of biotechnology and bioinformatics. It specifically asks how new discoveries in biology encourage us to rethink issues of ownership, communication, geography, identity, and artistic practice.
DXARTS 490: Art and the Brain
James Coupe
Friday
9:30 am - 12:30 pmThis interdisciplinary seminar explores the intersections between art and neuroscience. Led by faculty from DXARTS and the Neurobiology & Behavior Program, a range of topics will be explored, including systems, neural networks, electronic media, data visualization, consciousness, artificial intelligence, perception, ethics/politics, neuroaesthetics, art and creativity. The course will include lectures, paper review, student presentations and discussion. Students will select areas of focus and develop individual or collaborative research projects that intersect both fields. Readings may be drawn from the following sample bibliography but will vary in response to the specific interests of seminar participants.
HIST 219: Science and the Arts in Europe
Katie Zimmerman (History)
Tuesday, Thursday
11:30 am - 1:20 pmExamines themes in the history of science with a focus on the relationship between the scientific enterprise and the arts in Europe. Traditionally thought of as separate social and intellectual pursuits, this course surveys the long and entangled history shared by science and art (understood broadly as artisanal crafts, and the technical and fine arts). We will explore how each has inspired the other conceptually and materially, and how scientists and artists have often been united by their shared pursuit of truth and beauty. Topics covered will include craft knowledge in early modern Europe; artists on voyages of exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries; Darwinism and Victorian visual culture; and the invention and uses of photography. Through these and other topics we will see how natural phenomena has been observed, collected, recorded, explained, and communicated in the laboratory as well as in the artist’s studio.
PHIL 416/ENVIR 416: Ethics and Climate Change
Stephen Gardiner (Philosophy)
Tuesday, Thursday
1:30 - 3:20 pm
Several politicians and scientists have said that climate change is the most important international problem facing the world today. This course will investigate many of the philosophical issues relevant to this problem. Such issues include: What can economic analysis tell us (and not tell us) about problems with a long time horizon, such as climate change? Is climate change a commons problem? If so, what kind? What would constitute a just allocation of the burdens of climate change? Can our pollution harm future generations when their very existence might depend on our decision to pollute? What are we individually required to do about global and intergenerational problems of this sort?
Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or environmental studies, no freshmen or sophmores
B H 421: History of Eugenics
Joanne Woiak (Disability Studies)
Tuesday, Thursday
1:30 - 3:50 pm
The eugenics movement of the early 20th century proposed and implemented a variety of policies for “improving the hereditary quality of the race” by controlling human reproduction. The history of eugenics serves as an important case study of the influences of social values on science and medicine, especially involving the social construction and meanings of human differences such as disability, race, class, gender, and sexuality. We will examine the development and authority of eugenic science; policies and practices such as sterilization in the US and Germany; public responses and connections to other social movements; and impacts on communities. What are the legacies of eugenics for public policy, scientific research, health care, reproductive rights, and social justice? How is eugenics remembered and forgotten?
PHIL 482: Philosophy of Natural Sciences
Arthur Fine (Philosophy)
Tuesday, Thursday
11:30 am
The quantum world, its paradoxes and puzzles.
Prerequisite: advanced UG standing
PHG 523/Law H520: Genetics and the Law
Anna Mastroianni (Law; Public Health Genetics)
Tuesday, Thursday
1:30 - 2:50 pm
This class explores the legal, policy and ethical consequences of genetic technologies and information. It will begin with an overview of genetic science, the recent explosion of knowledge about the human genome, and an introduction to law and public health. We will first focus on the implications of medical mistakes in genetic testing, reproductive decision-making, parenting, and domestic relations and then on testing on the broader clinical context. The course then examines the concepts of privacy and confidentiality and their application to genetic information. The course continues by considering genetic information and its use in the workplace, and its role in access to insurance and health care coverage. Our attention then turns to exploring the use of DNA in the courtroom, forensics, behavioral genetics, and use of genetic evidence in the criminal context. We will then move on to look at the movement of genetics from bench science to the marketplace, including a brief consideration of intellectual property and direct-to-consumer marketing, and finish by looking at the evolving controversies regarding genetically modified foods. The overarching context for the course will be to address the response of the law and the legal system to advances in genetic information and technologies and posit what the response should be in the future.
VALUES 591A: Ethics Matters in Science: Research Questions as Moral Questions
Alison Wylie (Philosophy)
Tuesday
6:00 - 7:50 pmThis seminar is designed to introduce graduate and professional students from a wide range of fields to key moral questions that commonly arise in the course of doing scientific research in the non-medical sciences. These include not only the issues associated with “Responsible Conduct of Research” (RCR) – like professional conduct in mentoring, training and collaboration; appropriate credit and authorship; safety and confidentiality – but also issues of accountability for the social and environmental impacts of research, and broader questions about values embedded in scientific practice that are often not recognized as ethical. This spring the anchor for discussion will be three normative concepts that cross-cut research contexts: ideals of integrity, norms of consent, and an ethic of stewardship. Discussion will be informed by public panel discussions sponsored by the BioFutures project, and students will be asked to develop case studies that illustrate how these concepts are articulated in specific contexts of practice.
Texts: David B. Resnik, The Ethics of Science (Routledge, 1998).
The majority of assigned readings will take the form of articles available online (ERES).
VALUES 291: Ethical Issues in the Non-Medical Sciences
Laura Harkewicz (Biological Futures and the Program on Values in Society/Philosophy)
HIST 312: Science in Civilization: Science in Modern SocietyMonday, Wednesday, Friday
2:30 - 3:20 pm
In this course we will explore the ethics of science and scientific research – with an emphasis on the non-medical sciences. This course will provide a foundation for thinking about and recognizing the ethical dimensions of a variety of issues. We will become familiar with current ethical debates in a range of scientific fields. Topics will include: misconduct in research, conflicts of interest and scientific objectivity, publication and peer review, intellectual property, and ethical decision making. Students will engage these issues with the help of philosophical tools, apply these tools to case studies, and be challenged to think broadly about the role of scientists in society as well as learn how to critically assess the ethical consequences of science for humankind.
This course is sponsored by Biological Futures in a Globalized World, a cluster of initiatives hosted by the Simpson Center for the Humanities in partnership with the Center for Biological Futures at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The goal of the Biological Futures program is to foster better thinking about the global impact of dramatic increases in biological knowledge that now put us in a position to manipulate and build living systems on an unprecedented scale.
Learning goals:
* Students will learn key philosophical concepts related to responsible conduct of research.
* Students will develop familiarity with current debates in, and case studies of, ethical issues in non-medical scientific research.
* Students will acquire skills to describe and explain the rationale behind philosophical ethical positions.
* Students will practice thinking philosophically about real-world scientific research ethical issues/challenges.
* Students will demonstrate mastery of the objectives noted above orally, in written form, and in constructive debate.
Katie Zimmerman (History)
Tuesday, Thursday
1:20 - 3:20 pm
Growth of modern science since the Renaissance. This course surveys the past five centuries and samples from a wide variety of disciplines to explore the many practices, people, and places that have shaped how knowledge about the natural world has been made.
PHIL 470: Intermediate Logic
Arthur Fine (Philosophy)
Tuesday, Thursday
11:30 am
Completeness and its consequences for predicate logic.
Prerequisite: Philosophy 120 or equivalent
ARCHY 508: Histories of Archaeological Theory and Practice
Alison Wylie (Philosophy; Anthropology)
Monday, Wednesday
4:30 - 6:20 pm
Archaeology has not been much studied by professional historians of science, but archaeologists have been prodigious historians of their own field, and they have put histories of various kinds to work in a number of quite different ways. In this seminar we will explore the variety of internal histories that are in play, identifying several distinct genres of history-making ranging from sweeping histories of disciplinary formation and program-defining histories that have legitimated one after another “new archaeology,” to a range of critical counter-histories that call into question pivotal ideas and forms of practice that are now taken for granted. We will consider, as well, examples of histories that play a direct role in archaeological research, recontextualizing evidence and bringing into view new interpretive possibilities.
JSIS 586A: Influenza Pandemics in Perspective
Celia Lowe (Anthropology)
Fridays: Jan. 25, Feb. 1, Feb. 15
9:30 - 11:20 am
Friday: Feb. 8
2:30 - 4:00 pm
Monday: Feb. 11
12:00 - 1:30 pm
This microseminar will prepare stundents to engage with the Flu Forum and with a guest lecture by evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace (see Colloquium schedule), and to think through issues of global health, international studies (with an emphasis on East and Southeast Asia), and science and technology studies all in relation to their own research.
See course webpage for more information.
CHID 222: Biofutures
Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday
1:30 - 2:20 pm
This class explores key legal, ethical, cultural, scientific, and commercial aspects of the rapidly changing world of biotechnology and bioinformatics. It specifically asks how new discoveries in biology encourage us to rethink issues of ownership, communication, geography, identity, and artistic practice. The class will be structured around six specific case studies that students will use to understand some of the major themes of BioFutures. Come find out about the often exhilarating and frequently frightening scenarios for the future of your body.
Students will be specifically encouraged to ask the following questions:
- What are the ethical and legal issues involved in patenting human cell lines?
- How are recent biotechnologies portrayed in science fiction films? What can we learn by studying these portrayals?
- What does it mean to suggest that biotechnology is part of "an information society"?
- How are race, class, gender, and disability mapped onto or intersect with biomedicine?
- How are artists using live organisms in their art work? What can we learn about art, ethics, and scientific practice by studying this work?
- How do scientists manipulate space and time in the laboratory?
This class is designed to appeal to all. No prerequisites needed!
PHG 300: Public Health Genomics: Implications for the Modern World
Patricia Kuszler (Law; Institute for Public Health Genomics)
Monday, Wednesday
3:30 - 5:20 pm
In this course we'll talk about how genetic developments are changing the world around us and how genes continue to connect us. The course surveys compelling genetic and social issues emerging in the wake of the Human Genome Project -- for example, many fresh genomic applications have ethical, societal, political and legal dimensions that are only just beginning to be appreciated. This course will develop students' ability to analyze these dimensions and evaluate new genetic technologies that are currently being developed in the marketplace. We'll use perspectives from public health, clinical, anthropology, law, and social studies to investigate the hopes and hype presented by genomics.
PHIL 360: Topics in the Philosophy of Science
Andrea Woody (Philosophy)
Tuesday, Thursday
10:30 am - 12:20 pm
In this course, we will conduct a close reading of Daniel Dennett’s book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea to gain an introduction to both philosophy of evolutionary theory and general philosophy of science. This National Book Award finalist offers a provocative and searching analysis of evolutionary theory. We will discuss the conceptual structure and evidential basis for Darwinian evolution as well as the implications this work has for a wide range of issues including philosophy of mind, the nature of language, and the origins of morality. Each week we will read 2 chapters of Dennett’s book, supplemented with additional readings as needed. The course will focus on development of general philosophical skills including close reading, identifying primary theses and summarizing content, constructing explicit arguments, developing lines of criticism, articulating consequences of positions, and providing constructive feedback to others. With this general aim, the course will require short exercises and written commentary throughout the term.
Class time will include introductory lectures to clarify content, discussion among all class participants, periodic presentations by students, and time for working on required exercises. Regular attendance and participation will be necessary for making good progress.
Basic familiarity with the central tenets of evolutionary theory (such as would be gained in a college level introductory biology course) will be helpful and is recommended.
TEXT: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life; Daniel C. Dennett.
BIOL 380: Biomedical Advances and Society
Mandy Schivell (Biology)
Tuesday, Thursday
11:30 am
Recent biological advances studied in the context of our society, designed to foster critical thinking, public awareness, and policy impact. Topics may include human reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, embryonic stem cell research, and medical scanning improvements.
Prerequisite: Biology 220
GEN ST 391: Research Ethics Exposed!
Laura Harkewicz (Biological Futures and the Program on Values in Society)
Alison Wylie (Biological Futures; Philosophy; Anthropology)
Mondays
10:30 - 11:20 am
Research Ethics Exposed! offers undergraduate students in all areas of study an opportunity to learn about ethics issues that are an active concern for University of Washington faculty working in cutting edge fields of research in the social and natural sciences.
This course will begin with an introduction to framing concepts and issues, and close with an open forum class discussion convened by the course instructor. Each week through the quarter a faculty member from a different field will identify key ethics issues with which they wrestle in their own research. Here are some of the questions they will be addressing:
- Is there research scientists shouldn’t do?
- Are researchers responsible for the impact of their work, good and bad?
- Do the ends justify the means, for example, where risks of harm to animal or human subjects are concerned?
- What counts as research integrity? How do scientists navigate the conflicting demands of funding agencies, industry, their own research communities?
- What lessons should we take away from high profile examples of scientific fraud and misconduct?
- Do scientists have a responsibility to communicate the results of their research, its risks as well as its benefits, to the public? What kinds of public outreach make a difference to the science and to those who have a stake in its outcomes?
- Should scientists play an active role in setting policy that affects the funding and conduct of their research, and the use made of its results, or should they serve as hands-off consultants?
For more details, see the course website.
ESS 408/ ESS 508: Great Geological Issues
Jody Bourgeois (Earth and Space Sciences)
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
9:30 - 10:20 am
History and development of geological and paleontological theories and controversies; philosophy and methodology that have driven scientific inquiry in the earth sciences.
Graduate level (508) requires a research paper and an extra reading/discussion each week.
Undergrads can get W credit for the course if they do the term-paper option.
Last year's class website, open to those with UW netid:
https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/jbourgeo/24011/
LAW H504AB/ PHG 512AB/ BH 514A/ HSERV 590D: Legal, ethical and social issues in public health genetics
Anna Mastroianni (Law; Institute for Public Health Genetics)
Monday, Wednesday
1:30 - 2:50 pm
This core course offered by the Institute for Public Health Genetics provides an introduction to the legal, ethical, policy, and social issues arising as genetic knowledge and technologies are developed and made available to individuals and populations. Students will learn to identify and anticipate potential legal, ethical, policy and social concerns that complicate incorporating new genetic advances into public health efforts. The course introduces the analytic tools used to examine public health genetics issues from multidisciplinary perspectives, including ethics, law, social sciences, and policy. It examines the development and uses of genetic information in reproductive and medical decision-making, public health policy, and genetics research, as well as multidisciplinary examinations of privacy and confidentiality and genetic discrimination.
GEOG 522: Space, Technologies and Society
Sarah Elwood (Geography)
Tuesday, Thursday
2:30 - 5:20 pm
In this seminar, we will explore a range of theorizations and literatures that geographers and other scholars have used to examine relationships between space, technologies, and society. We emphasize digital spatial technologies/practices, such as GIS, the geoweb, neogeography, mobile spatial technologies, and their implications for digital subjectivities and inequalities, new forms of social control and exclusion, and (inter)disciplinary debates about epistemology and methodology. We will read work from some of the well-established historical materialist, political economic, and feminist theorizations of space and technologies, as well as very new work by critical scholars that considers subjectivities, embodiments, and social relations that emerge from and with spatial technologies. As well, we consider diverse ways that critical scholars practice spatial technologies, examining epistemological and ontological critiques associated with the uptake of spatial technologies in several fields and new methodologies spawned by these debates. At the end of this seminar, you should be able to:
- Understand diverse social scientific and humanistic theorizations of space, technologies, and their interrelationships;
- Use these theorizations to critically assess the social/cultural, political and disciplinary implications of GIS, the geoweb, mobile spatial technologies, and new spatial media;
- Understand a range of creative epistemological and methodological frameworks emerging from trans-disciplinary engagements with new spatial technologies.
For more information, see the course website: https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/selwood/31350/
COM 540: Rhetoric of Science
Leah Ceccarelli (Communication)
Tuesday, Thursday
11:30 am - 1:20 pm
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as "rhetoric of science," with special attention given to studies of persuasive discourse in and about the biological sciences. We will examine the rhetorical structure of arguments about scientific truth claims as well as the rhetorical strategies used by scientists when they communicate outside their fields to scientists in other disciplines and to the public.
Questions for discussion will include: How do scientists use language, situation, culture, and prior tradition to reach intersubjective agreement about their discoveries and theories? In what ways are the argumentative standards applied by scientists in their fields of expertise similar to those applied by arguers in public or private settings? How do scientists communicate with the public? What does public discourse about science tell us about our attitudes toward science? What happens when there is a crisis involving technology in the public sphere and scientific expertise is unable to resolve doubt and warrant deliberative action?
We will read a number of critical works in the field, to see how rhetorical scholars have added to our collective knowledge of the communicative practices of scientists. We will discuss some of the larger theoretical and practical issues that arise from the rhetorical interpretation of science. And over the course of the quarter, each student will write a paper that engages in the rhetorical criticism of a piece of communication about science.
No background in rhetoric or in science is necessary to take this course.
HUM 597A: Synthetic Biology in Question
Celia Lowe (Anthropology and International Studies)
Gaymon Bennett (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center)
Mondays (October 29, November 5, November 19)
9:30 - 11:20 am
Tuesday (November 13) and Wednesday (November 14) time TBA
Designed for graduate students across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and professions, this course aims to prepare students to engage with and reflect on a two-day conference on “Synthetic Biology in Question,” to be held at the Simpson Center for the Humanities on November 13 and 14, 2012.
Over the last decade, engineers, social scientists, funders and the media have established synthetic biology as a prominent new brand of bio-engineering, one promising the routinized and standardized engineering of living systems. The brand’s success has turned on its claims to technical novelty and a re-imagined future of health, wealth and security, as well as the fact that proponents offer a unified story to justify and draw together divergent research programs—from the modularization of genetic circuits to the production of biofuels. Crucially, synthetic biology’s rise to prominence has been facilitated by the sustained engagement of scholars from the human and social sciences, who have helped make talk of ethics, openness, and security part of synthetic biology’s self-definition.
This micro-seminar will examine synthetic biology's rise to prominence, and pose the question of the extent to which synthetic biology may be exemplary of the dynamics of new engineering and scientific subfields as well as the political, ethical and cultural conditions of their rise and stabilization. It will examine the ways in which social scientists, philosophers, anthropologists and others have involved themselves in synthetic biology's formation, and raise the question of the ethics of such attempts at collaboration.“Synthetic Biology in Question” is part of Biological Futures in a Globalized World , a jointly sponsored project of the University of Washington and the Center for Biological Futures at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. See course flyer.
SOC 401: Sociology of Knowledge and Science
Kelly Kistner (Sociology)
Tuesday, Thursday (full term)
10:50 am - 1:00 pm
Explores various knowledge institutions (e.g. religion, folklore, “common sense,” science) through which humans interpret the world. Particular attention will be given to the structures and history of scientific knowledge production. The course will consider ways in which science affects society, and how societies and social interaction influence scientific thought and practice. Students will conduct independent research on the history, environment, and practices of a particular scientific discipline of their choice and collaborate with classmates on a comparative analysis. Previous coursework in sociology is not required. Eligible for W credit.
History and Philosophy of Science - Major (UW Seattle)
http://depts.washington.edu/hps/Science, Technology and Society - Major (UW Bothell)
http://www.uwb.edu/sciencetechsociety
Comparative History of Ideas - Major (UW Seattle)
http://depts.washington.edu/chid/