Disasters, Technology, and Society

Catalog description

Disasters today define the cutting edge of technology, scientific discovery, and policy creation. From climate change to COVID and AI, risk and disaster are central features of high-tech capitalism and political struggle around the world. This seminar examines disasters in their social and political contexts, introducing students to the analysis of historical and contemporary public policy formation around global risk and disaster concerns. The course pays special attention to historical contests over power in the application of science and technology to understand, anticipate, and respond to disaster. Students will work with critical debates and methods of analysis in science, technology, and society (STS), and the affiliated disciplines of the history of science, medicine, and technology, science studies, multi-species STS, policy studies, and disaster studies. Topics include: war, pandemic, pollution and discards, environmental racism, historical memory, nuclear weapons/power and radiation, climate and weather-related disaster, genocide, and slow disaster.