Fall 2023 HSTM Undergraduate Courses

This course investigates the many ways people across the globe have sought to understand the environment and the earth from antiquity to the present. We will study the context in which the modern earth and environmental sciences emerged, asking throughout the semester what knowledge traditions contributed to the development of the sciences we know today. We will investigate the historical perspectives that shaped three intersecting themes throughout the semester: the questions of geological time and of change in the study of the earth; human use of natural resources in industry and agriculture; and understandings of the earth and environment as a global system. More Info

Instructor: Anna Graber
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: MoWeFr 11:15AM - 12:05PM
Location: Ford Hall 130
Units: 3

Technology is an enormous force in our society, and has become so important that in many ways it seems to have a life of its own. This course uses historical case studies to demonstrate that technology is not autonomous, but a human activity, and that people and societies made choices about the technologies they developed and used. It asks how technological differences between nations influenced their different courses of development, and why some societies seemed to advance while others did not. We ask how technological choices can bring about consequences greater than people expected, and how we might use this knowledge in making our own technological choices. In particular, we explore the historical background, development, and character of the most widespread technological systems the world has known, from prehistoric stone tool societies, through Egypt and the pyramids, ancient Greece and Rome, the explosion of Islam, and the dynamic and often violent technologies of medieval Europe. More Info

Instructor: Jennifer Alexander
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: MoWeFr 1:25PM - 2:15PM
Location: Anderson Hall 310
Units: 3-4

This course explores the many technological systems that have come to span our globe, alongside the widespread persistence of traditional technologies. We start with the earliest glimmerings of modernity and industrialization, and move on in time to the building of global technological networks. How have people changed their worlds through technologies like steam engines and electronics? Is it a paradox that many traditional agricultural and household technologies have persisted? How have technologies of war remade the global landscape? We ask how business and government have affected technological entrepreneurs, from railroads to technologies of global finance. We end by considering the tension between technologies that threaten our global environment and technologies that offer us hopes of a new world. More Info

Instructor: Mary Thomas
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: Mo 6:00PM - 8:45PM; We 6:00PM - 8:45PM
Location: Bruininks Hall 512B; Bruininks Hall 412
Units: 3

Development and changing nature of the sciences in cultural and intellectual contexts. Babylonian and ancient Greek science; decline and transmission of science in the Middle Ages; the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton. More Info

Instructor: Victor Boantza
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: MoWeFr 10:10AM - 11:00AM
Location: Lind Hall 302
Units: 3-4

Changing conceptions of life and aims and methods of biology; changing relationships between biology and the physical and social sciences; broader intellectual and cultural dimensions of developments in biology. More Info

Instructor: Mark Borrello
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: TuTh 11:15AM - 12:30PM
Location: TBA
Units: 3

We examine environmental ideas, sustainability, conservation history; critique of the human impact on nature; empire and power in the Anthropocene; how the science of ecology has developed; and modern environmental movements around the globe. Case studies include repatriation of endangered species; ecology and evolutionary theory; ecology of disease; and climate change. More Info

Instructor: Susan Jones
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: TuTh 9:45AM - 11:00AM
Location: Blegen Hall 150
Units: 3

In addition to examining the idea of ethics itself, this course will examine the ethical questions embodied in specific historical events, technological systems, and scientific enterprises. Commonly, technology is assumed to be the best engineered solution for a particular goal and (good) science is supposed to be objective; however, this is never truly the case, values and moral choices underlie all of our systems for understanding and interacting with the world around us. These values and choices are almost always contentious. Through a series of historical case studies we will grapple with the big issues of right and wrong and the role of morality in a technological world.  Our goal will be to learn to question and think critically about the things we create, the tools we use, and the ideology and practice of science. More Info

Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: TuTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM
Location: Nicholson Hall 125
Units: 3

Developments in the last 150 years; evolution of hardware and software; growth of computer and semiconductor industries and their relation to other business areas; changing relationships resulting from new data-gathering and analysis techniques; automation; social and ethical issues. More Info

Instructor: Honghong Tinn
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: TuTh 1:00PM - 2:15PM
Location: Nicholson Hall 125
Units: 3

Introduction to intellectual/social history of European/American medicine, health care from classical antiquity through 18th century. More Info

Instructor: Jole Shackelford
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: MoWeFr 10:10AM - 11:00AM
Location: Rapson Hall 45
Units: 4

How technology came to medicine's center-stage. Impact on production of medical knowledge, professionalization, development of institutions/industry, health policy, and gender/race disparities in health care. More Info

Instructor: Evan Roberts
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: MoWe 11:15AM - 12:05PM
Location: Bruininks Hall 432

Units: 3

This course explores the history of medicine and society in East Asia from the ancient period to the present day. From the globalization of acupuncture practices to the fight against the deadly SARS and COVID viruses, East and Southeast Asians in their homelands and abroad have sought to develop, transform, and disseminate their ways of healing. By critically examining how physicians, nurses, patients, politicians understood diseases, healthcare, and the body in East Asia temporally, this course critically examines the persistence, transformation, and globalization of classical medicine in the region and beyond. Topics covered include the history of traditional Chinese medicine, the encounters of Asian medicine with Western biomedicine, the contestation over vaccination and pharmaceuticals, the role of colonialism in shaping medical practices, the construction of gender in medicine, and the imaginations of Asian medicine in the United States. By critically examining how physicians, nurses, patients, politicians understood diseases, healthcare, and the body in East Asia temporally, this course critically examines the persistence, transformation, and globalization of classical medicine in the region and beyond. Topics covered include the history of traditional Chinese medicine, the encounters of Asian medicine with Western biomedicine, the contestation over vaccination and pharmaceuticals, the role of colonialism in shaping medical practices, the construction of gender in medicine, and the imaginations of Asian medicine in the United States. More Info

Instructor: Wayne Soon
Dates: 09/05/2023 - 12/13/2023
Meeting times: TuTh 9:45AM - 11:00AM
Location: Blegen Hall 110
Units: 3