Curriculum in Science and Technology Studies

The Department of Comparative Studies has launched an exciting new Science and Technology Studies major and minor.

This emerging field focuses on the comparative study of the many relationships between science, technology, and culture. The concentration offers courses covering a wide range of concerns and perspectives. These include an introduction to the history and philosophy of science, the role of technology in contemporary society, cultural dimensions of medicine, relations between gender and science, historical and contemporary studies of visuality, and the intertwining of science and technology with western and other cultures in local and global contexts.
In Science Studies students consider not only the ways in which science and technology shape culture, but how culture shapes the direction and growth of science and technology and how science is interwoven with other aspects of culture. The contributions of science to our understanding and misunderstanding of difference—racial, ethnic, gender, sexual—is also of central concern, along with social and political problems related to economic globalization, environmental deterioration, and global networks of communication, transportation, and migration.