MLA Practicum: Science, Technology, and Society: Past, Present, Future

Catalog description

This brief course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of science & technology studies (STS), also known as Science, Technology & Society. It's a broad area that includes history, sociology, anthropology, ethics, and humanistic scholarship. We'll explore STS through recent scholarship on global infrastructure: the widely shared networks, systems, and services that undergird modern life, from power grids and classification systems to container shipping and climate knowledge. For STS, a lot of infrastructure is technological, but it always has organizational, political, and human dimensions as well. It reflects social choices, but also shapes them. How did modernity's infrastructures develop? What are the technopolitics of infrastructure today? What kinds of infrastructural change loom ahead of us in the age of AI, climate change, and energy transitions?