Fall 2026 Undergraduate Courses
HSCI
HMED
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HSCI 1585: Mammoths, Minerals, Monoculture: History of Earth and Environmental Science
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: Anna Graber
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MWF 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM (50 minutes)
Location: Amundson Hall 240
Units: 3.0
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HSCI 1714: Stone Tools to Steam Engines: Technology and History to 1750
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 3714.
Instructor: Jennifer Alexander
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MWF 01:25 PM – 02:15 PM (50 minutes) & one discussion section
Location: Anderson Hall 350
Units: 4.0
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HSCI 1715: History of Modern Technology: Waterwheels to the Web
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for HSCI 3715.
Instructor: Mary M. Thomas
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times:
Sec. 001 Meeting Time and Location: M 6:00 PM-8:45 PM (165 minutes), Bruininks Hall 131A
Sec. 002 Meeting Time and Location: W 6:00 PM-8:45 PM (165 minutes), Bruininks Hall 530
Location: Rapson Hall 100
Units: 3.0
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HSCI 1814: How Science Came to Be
Modern culture is a culture of science. Many of our key cognitive and social values are modeled after and subordinated to science. In this course we will examine the emergence of modern science—from antiquity through the end of the seventeenth century—to understand the nature of scientific knowledge and its contexts of production and validation. Our main focus will be on western science, or the way science developed in Europe, but we will also consider non-western influences like the culture of ancient Mesopotamia or medieval Islam. More info.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 3814
Instructor: Victor Boantza, Hannah Carlson
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MWF 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM (50 minutes)
Location: Lind Hall 302
Units: 3.00 – 4.00
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HSCI 3211: Biology and Culture in the 19th and 20th Centuries
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 5211
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: TTh 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM (75 minutes)
Location: Amundson Hall 116
Instructor: Mark Borrello
Units: 3.0
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HSCI 3244: Nature's History: Science, Humans, and the Environment
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 5244
Instructor: Susan Jones, Elizabeth Root
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: TTh 09:45 AM – 11:00 AM (75 minutes)
Location: Bruininks Hall 412
Units: 3.0
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HSCI 3714: Stone Tools to Steam Engines: Technology and History to 1750
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 1714
Instructor: Jennifer Alexander
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MWF 01:25 PM – 02:15 PM (50 minutes) & one discussion section
Location: Anderson Hall 350
Units: 3.0 - 4.0
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HSCI 3715: History of Modern Technology: Waterwheels to the Web
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 1715
Instructor: Mary M. Thomas
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times:
Sec. 001 Meeting Time and Location: M 6:00 PM-8:45 PM (165 minutes), Bruininks Hall 131A
Sec. 002 Meeting Time and Location: W 6:00 PM-8:45 PM (165 minutes), Bruininks Hall 530
Location: Rapson Hall 100
Units: 3.0
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HSCI 3814: How Science Came to Be
Modern culture is a culture of science. Many of our key cognitive and social values are modeled after and subordinated to science. In this course we will examine the emergence of modern science—from antiquity through the end of the seventeenth century—to understand the nature of scientific knowledge and its contexts of production and validation. Our main focus will be on western science, or the way science developed in Europe, but we will also consider non-western influences like the culture of ancient Mesopotamia or medieval Islam. More info.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for: HSCI 1814
Instructor: Victor Boantza, Hannah Carlson
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MWF 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM (50 minutes)
Location: Lind Hall 302
Units: 3.0 - 4.0
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HSCI 4321: History of Computing
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.
Credit will not be granted if credit has been received for CSCI 4921.
Instructor: TBD
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: TBD
Location: TBD
Units: 3.0
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HMED 1015W: The Value of Health: An Introduction to Health Humanities
This course introduces students to the study of Health Humanities, a field that recognizes all the ways that the achievement of health and the practice of medicine are deeply rooted in the human experience of culture, power, history, ethics, as well as science. By applying the methods, concepts, and content from traditional humanities disciplines, the health humanities aim to improve health care by influencing its practitioners to refine and complexify students’ judgments based on a deep and complex understanding of illness, suffering, personhood, and related issues. We will explore all the ways that health and medicine are shaped not just by the clinical encounter, but by social, political, and cultural forces that make the experience of medicine, health, and care ever more important.
This course prioritizes BIG CONVERSATIONS about health, wellness, illness, care, and selfhood. It also prioritizes the need to develop effective skills of communication through in-class conversation and out-of-class writing. Additionally, this course recognizes the relationship between reading, searching for and interpreting evidence, and the clinical skills of diagnosis, patient advocacy, and humane medicine. In order to achieve these aims, we will be writing about the readings in formal and informal ways, always with an eye toward how we see agency, power, and humanity at work in the representation of medicine, illness, and health. More info.
Instructor: Matthew Reznicek
Dates: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: TTh 09:45 AM – 11:00 AM (75 minutes)
Location: Nils Hasselmo Hall 2-101
Units: 3.0
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HMED 3075: Technology and Medicine in Modern America
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.
Period: Sep 08, 2026 – Dec 16, 2026
Meeting Times: MW 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM (50 minutes)
Instructor: TBD
Location: Bruininks Hall 530
Units: 3.00
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HMED 3993: Directed Study
Guided individual reading or study. More info.
Course is repeatable for 3 completions and a maximum of 12.00 credits.
Units: 1.00 – 4.00