Fall 2025 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. 

We will examine secondary historical scholarship and primary sources from North and South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia in order to better understand the religious and philosophical stakes of earth and environmental science, the role of empire and state building in the development of geoscience, and the interrelationship of science and industry. More Info.

Instructor: Mary Thomas, Miaofeng Yao

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWeFr 11:15am - 12:05pm

Location: Mechanical Engineering 321

Units: 3.0

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.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 3714

Instructor: Jennifer Alexander, Yi Fong LOH, Amy Chidester

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWeFr 01:25pm - 02:15pm

Location: Bruininks Hall 312

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

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, Miaofeng Yao

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: Mo 06:00pm - 08:45pm

Location: Bruininks Hall 420B

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

Development and changing nature of sciences in their cultural context. Babylonian/Greek science. Decline/transmission of Greek science. Scientific Revolution (1500-1700) from Copernicus to Newton. Full description.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 3814

Instructor: Victor Boantza

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWeFr 10:10am - 11:00am

Location: John T. Tate Hall 101

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

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.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 5211.

Instructor: Mark Borrello

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: TuTh 11:15am - 12:30pm

Location: No Room Listed

Units: 3.0

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: Leah Malamut, Elizabeth Root

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: TuTh 09:45am – 11:00am

Location: Bruininks Hall 530

Units: 3.0

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 explore how science and technology are products of human choices—but at the same time, how science and technology enable and constrain the choices we can make. 

Case studies include algorithms and inequality, artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance, privacy and social media, lay expertise and medicine, and environmental and technological disasters. 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. First year students are welcome. More Info.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 5401

Instructor: Hanzhang Ye, Honghong Tinn

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: TuTh 02:30pm – 03:45pm

Location: Civil Engineering Building 212

Units: 3.0

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, Yi Fong LOH, Amy Chidester

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWeFr 01:25 PM – 02:15 PM

Location: Bruininks Hall 312

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

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.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 1715.

Instructor: Mary Thomas, Miaofeng Yao

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: Mo 06:00pm – 08:45pm; We 06:00pm – 08:45pm

Location: Bruininks Hall 420B; Bruininks Hall 412

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

Development and changing nature of sciences in their cultural context. Babylonian/Greek science. Decline/transmission of Greek science. Scientific Revolution (1500-1700) from Copernicus to Newton. More Info.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 1814.

Instructor: Victor Boantza

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWeFr 10:10am – 11:00am

Location: John T. Tate Hall 101

Units: 3.0 - 4.0

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.

Note: Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for CSCI 4921.

Instructor: Dan Challou

Dates: Sep 02, 2025 – Dec 10, 2025

Meeting Times: MoWe 02:30 PM – 03:45 PM

Location: Akerman Hall 225

Units: 3.0