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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Explores the changing roles of physics and physicists during the 20th century. Topics range from relativity theory and quantum mechanics to high-energy physics and cosmology. Examines the development of modern physics within shifting institutional, cultural, and political contexts, such as physics in Imperial Britain, Nazi Germany, US efforts during World War II, and physicists' roles during the Cold War. Enrollment limited.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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2.00 Credits
Focuses on the memoir as a window onto the relationship of the scientist, engineer, and technologist to his or her work. Studies the subjective side of technology and the social and psychological dimensions of technological change. Students write about specific objects and their role in their lives - memoir fragments. Readings concern child development theory and the role of technology in development. Explores the connection between material culture, identity, cognitive and emotional development. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20; no listeners.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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2.00 Credits
Explores emotional and intellectual impact of objects. The growing literature on cognition and "things" cuts across anthropology, history, social theory, literature, sociology, and psychology and is of great relevance to science students. Examines the range of theories, from Mary Douglas in anthropology to D.W. Winnicott in psychoanalytic thinking, that underlies "thing" or "object" analysis. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20; no listeners.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines the role of science and medicine in the origins and evolution of the concepts of race, sex, and gender from the 17th century to the present. Focus on how biological, anthropological, and medical concepts intersect with social, cultural, and political ideas about racial, sexual, and gender difference in the US and globally. Approach is historical and comparative across disciplines emphasizing the different modes of explanation and use of evidence in each field.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
A survey of the contributions of African Americans to science, technology, and medicine from colonial times to the present. Explores the impact of concepts, trends, and developments in science, technology, and medicine on the lives of African Americans. Examples include the eugenics movement, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the debate surrounding racial inheritance, and IQ testing.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines the history of MIT through the lens of the broader history of science and technology, and vice versa. Covers pre-history and founding (1861) to the present. Topics include William Barton Rogers; educational philosophy; biographies of MIT students and professors; campus, intellectual and organizational development; the role of science; changing laboratories and practices; and MIT's relationship with Boston, the federal government, and industry. Guest lecturers discuss recent history. Includes short papers, presentations, and final paper.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Introduction to a rapidly growing literature in new economic sociology, social studies of finance, and an anthropology of markets. The more recent interest for these modalities has cast new light on the role of technologies, theories, and models in the creation of new markets. Review and discussion of these new studies with economics on the question of technologies in markets. Limited to 25.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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2.00 Credits
Examines the linked histories of science and cinema starting from 1895. Introduces themes from the fields of STS and media studies. Mandatory weekly screening sessions alternate among feature-length films, series of short films and direct engagement with technologies of filmic production, screening and visual analysis. Some screening materials available for out-of-class viewing. Assignments include short papers, a collaborative media project, midterm and final. Evaluation includes attendance at screenings and participation in collaborative assignments and classroom discussion. Limited to 40.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. Examine such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. Offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology - ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic - are changing. Examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?", today.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines the relationship between drugs, politics, and society in cross-cultural perspective; use of mind-altering and habit-forming substances by "traditional societies"; the development of a global trade in sugar, opium, and cocaine with the rise of capitalism; and the use and abuse of alcohol, LSD, and Prozac in the US. Finishes by looking at the war on drugs, shifting attitudes to tobacco, and by evaluating America's drug laws.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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