Courses: Spring 2010
History of Science 202: The Making of Modern Science (meets with ILS 202)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 1:20 MW; B130 Van Vleck, 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week. Prerequisites: Open to freshmen.
Instructor: Richard A. Staley
This course offers an introduction to the history of the sciences between the work of Isaac Newton in the late seventeenth century and Albert Einstein in the early twentieth, with the aim of understanding how science came to be so important in modern culture. Investigating the historical significance of such fundamental scientific concepts as gravity, energy, and evolution, and the complex interrelations between theory and experiment, we study the changing ways that scientific and social values have been interwoven in Western culture. Setting the work of individual scientists in social context the course traces links between ideas, instruments and institutions across both disciplinary and national boundaries. Our studies deliver insight into the changing relations among science and technology, science and religion and science and the state, as we explore the rise of laboratory-based sciences, the changing cultural status of the scientist, and the professionalization of the scientific disciplines.
History of Science 212: The Physician in History
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 2:25 MW, 19 Ingraham, 2 lectures plus 1 discussion section per week. Prerequisites: Open to freshmen, for honors credit concurrent registration in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Thomas H. Broman
General Description
This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the "long perspective" on the history of medicine, the course attempts to challenge some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into four units, each of which is based in a different view of the body. The first unit, called "The Humoral Body" explains the exceptionally flexible ideas of illness and its causes that were first developed in the ancient world and persisted for many centuries until well past 1700. Some of the ideas first developed in humoral medicine, such as the intimate interactions between the body and its environment, are still with us today. The second unit, "The Anatomical-Morphological Body," examines the body as a collection of discrete parts, each of which performs a particular function in the body's overall economy. This anatomical view of the body also first took form in the ancient world, although anatomically based approaches to the study of illness really only became influential in the 1700s and 1800s. The third unit, "The Infected Body," looks at how illness first came to be seen not merely as something affecting individuals, but also as something having important consequences for society as a whole. This kind of thinking first emerged in the wake of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, and it was important in the development of the Germ Theory of Disease in the latter part of the 19th century. Finally, the fourth unit of the course will look at "the body obsessively observed," an appropriate label for the kind of medical practice that evolved during the twentieth century, when physicians developed the idea that seemingly no one's health could be maintained without incessant medical attention and supervision. Needless to say, this is the view of health and illness that persists in our own time. In this unit we also consider how health has become something that can be purchased like any other consumer product, as for example in the case of plastic surgery to correct minor flaws in one's appearance.
Course Requirements:
Aside from attendance in discussion sections, the basic requirement for the course consists of a mixture of four take-home essays, ranging from one page to seven pages, which are based in the readings and meant to illustrate the major issues in each unit. Discussion sections may also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments.
Texts: All readings for 212 are found in a xeroxed course reader.
History of Science 222: Technology and Social Change in History
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 11:00 MW; 120 Ingraham, 2 lectures and 1 discussion section per week. Prerequisites: Open to freshmen.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
Why has technology become such a powerful idea at the beginning the 21st century? Why do people invest so many hopes and fears in this strange concept? Why do inventions seem like an unstoppable force, when they are human creations? Why are some people thrilled by the latest digital devices yet repelled by genetically-modified foods?
This course attempts to demystify technology, using historical examples to cut through the common misperceptions that surround this concept. The course focuses on episodes from the past that illuminate the nature of technology as well as the relationship between technology and other human endeavors.There are three major parts to the course. The first part focuses on the factors that shape technological change. The second part examines the social effects of technology in relation to gender, work, the military, and politics. The third part deals with ethical issues, using the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as one case study.
History of Science 284: The Physician in History - Honors
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
1 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); 3:30 W, 399 Van Hise. Prerequisites: concurrent registration for honors in HS/MH 212 or consent of instructor; open to freshmen.
Instructor: Thomas Broman
This course is a one-credit honors option that accompanies HS/MH 212. By signing up for this course and registering simultaneously for honors in 212, you will receive 4 credits of honors course work. Because we meet in a seminar-type discussion format, enrollment is limited to 12.
The theme for 284 this time will be "Heroic Narratives of Medicine and Doctors." During the early part of the 20th century, the idea that doctors were the "conquerors of disease," an idea that still dominates media images of medicine today, began to be very widespread. I want to explore this idea as it was presented in movies from the period, such as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1931), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940) and other films, and through novels such as Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith (1925).
Requirements: Students will be required to attend scheduled discussions and movie screenings or find times to watch required movies on their own. At the beginning of the semester, students will produce a short (2-3 page) essay describing their understanding of medicine as a career and what they would expect to do as a physician. Later on, each student will write a 2-3 page review of a movie or book for circulation to the class for discussion during regular meetings.
History of Science 323: The Scientific Revolution: from Copernicus to Newton
(crosslisted with History)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR; B231 Van Vleck. Essay exams and in-class exercises. Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor; graduate students must enroll concurrently in History of Science 623.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
An investigation of the renaissance and revolution in European science that began in 1543 with the heliocentric astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus and ended with Isaac Newton's death in 1727. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to issues of tradition and novelty, institutional settings for scientific activity, and the relationship between science and religion. Topics covered will include the Copernican cosmology and the trial of Galileo, the mechanical philosophy, Newton's theory of gravitation, the appearance of new scientific organizations such as the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences, the role of science in European exploration and expansion, and 17th-century perceptions of the scientist's place in society.
History of Science 326: History of Physics: The Modern Period
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 9:30-10:45 TR, 351 Moore; Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Instructor: Richard Staley
At the dawn of the twentieth century physicists won a new world view from the measurement of space and time and new theories of matter; by mid-century they had delivered a weapon that shadowed an era; and at century's end cosmologists sought ways to describe the first seconds of evolution on the basis of astronomical observations. This course will explore the span of physics from the laboratory bench to the congressional lobbyist, and by setting the discipline in social context will investigate the changing relations between modern science and modern culture. In addition to tracing the unfolding philosophical and technological implications of physics, we will examine the nature of its debts to industry, military concerns and government, and explore the perspective that anthropologists and sociologists have offered on its practices. We chart the rise of the physics discipline from the opening of microphysics in the 1890s to its status as the pattern for big science (and beyond?) at the present. Our aim is to understand how the dynamic interplay between theory and experiment; the tensions between national and international interests; and the stresses and opportunities of hot and cold wars have all changed the nature of our knowledge of the physical world.
History of Science 333: History of Modern Biology
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 11-12:15 TR; 6112 Social Science. Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Lynn K. Nyhart
The word "biology" was coined in 1800, to describe a science of life that would be more than "mere" natural history - a science that would unite all the living world into a single scheme. From then to now, the desire to find a single "key" to life has been a powerful motivator. In this year's course, we focus on a series of efforts to unify the study of life around a single theme or idea, including Lamarck and Treviranus' "Biologie" of 1800; the cell theory; Darwinian evolution; the theory of the gene ("classical" genetics); the "modern" evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s; DNA and molecular biology; systems ecology; the "new synthesis" of sociobiology in the 1970s; recombinant DNA and genomics; and the newest evolutionary synthesis, evo-devo. Across these topics, we will grapple with biologists' ideas about reductionism, holism, and levels of biological organization; analyze different modes of scientific practice (fieldwork, lab work, theorizing); and consider the institutional and broader politics of biology as it has developed over the last century or so. Finally, we will also consider how these various themes are reflected in the ways that the history of biology has been written, by critically examining and comparing scientists' and historians' accounts.
General requirements: Because this course revolves in good part around discussion, its success depends on its participants' having read the material carefully and being willing to talk about it. We will read both 'primary sources' (scientific writings by participants) and 'secondary sources' (writings by historians and scientists reflecting on and analyzing what happened), with an emphasis on the latter. The reading load for any given week (2 sessions) will range from 100 pages to a (shortish) book. Sample readings from past years: Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly; James Watson, The Double Helix; E.O. Wilson, Naturalist, Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution of Biology.
Undergraduate writing requirements: two take-home essay exams (4-5 pages) and a final paper (7-9 pages). For the final paper, students may choose between an exam-question style essay discussing a broad question provided by the professor or a research paper, the topic chosen in consultation with the professor. Students taking the course for Honors credit will write both a final essay and a research paper. Some class sessions may be devoted to workshopping take-home essays and/or presentations of research.
Graduate writing requirements: 20+ pages of scholarly prose (5 book reviews, a bibliographic or historiographical essay to prepare for prelims, a research paper, a dissertation proposal) as determined by your individual needs. Graduate students will meet separately from undergrads to discuss the readings and read a small number of additional books.
The Friday discussion section is exclusively for graduate students, for whom it is required, not optional. Undergraduates are not permitted to join the discussion section without consulting first with the professor.
History of Science 339: Technology and Its Critics Since World War II
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced); 2:30-3:45 MW; 120 Ingraham. Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor; graduate students must enroll concurrently in History of Science 639.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This course examines intellectuals and activists who questioned the dominant faith in technology in the United States from World War II until roughly 1980. The course begins with the tremendous enthusiasm for science and technology that emerged after World War II, an enthusiasm inspired in part by new military technologies like the atomic bomb, radar, digital computers, and ballistic missiles.
Faith in the inevitable benefits of these new technologies did not go unchallenged. At first the challenge was limited to a few intellectuals, some of whom criticized the consumer society of the 1950s with its bland suburbs, conformist white-collar bureaucracies, and mind-numbing advertising. In the late 1950s, this critique was taken up by new social movements that attacked the most dramatic technological achievement of World War II, the atomic bomb. In the early 1960s, critics shifted ground to other technologies, most importantly synthetic pesticides and the automobile. Critics of technology drew strength from the counterculture of the 1960s and the emerging environmental movement, which encouraged activism against large-scale technologies like nuclear power. The counterculture also encouraged groups seeking to create counter-technologies like solar energy. Even in the midst of today's enthusiasm for everything digital, technology's critics continue to question the benefits of technological change.
History of Science 353: History of Ecology
(crosslisted with Environmental Studies)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 1:00-2:15 TR, B223 Van Vleck; Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Amrys O. Williams
The word "ecology" has come to have many meanings and connotations: a scientific field dealing with the relation of organisms and the environment, a way of thinking about the world emphasizing holism and interconnection, a handmaiden of the environmental movement, to name a few. This course covers the history of ecology as a scientific discipline from the eighteenth-century natural history tradition to the development of population, ecosystem, and evolutionary ecology in the twentieth century, situating the science in its cultural, political, and social contexts. Along the way, it traces the connections between ecology and economic development, political theory, ideas about society, the management of natural resources, the preservation of wilderness, and environmental politics. How have scientists, citizens, and activists made use of ecological ideas, and to what ends? How have they understood and envisioned the human place in nature? How have the landscapes and places in which ecologists have done their work shaped their ideas? Other major themes include the relationship between theories of nature and theories of society, ecology and empire, the relationship between place and knowledge about nature, the development of ecology as a professional discipline, the role of ecologists as environmental experts, relationship between the state and the development of ecological knowledge, and the relationships among ecology, conservation, agriculture, and environmentalism.
History of Science 401: History of Pharmacy
(crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy)
2 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); 11:00 TR, 2006 Rennebohm; Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Gregory Higby
Pharmaceutical field, from antiquity to modern medical care; professional; structuring in principle countries of the West.
History of Science 431: Childbirth in the United States
(crosslisted with Med Hist and Women's Studies)
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 1:00-2:15 TR; 1010 Medical Sciences Center. Prerequisites: Women Studies 103 or 430 or equiv.; or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Judith W. Leavitt
American women's childbirth experiences from the colonial period to the present. Childbirth as a cultural as well as a biological event. Basic physiological information for understanding and evaluating changing approaches to pregnancy and childbirth.
History of Science 517: Monsters and Science: A History of Vertebrate Paleontology
(crosslisted with Geology)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate); Prerequisites: junior standing. Internet course only.
Instructor: Joseph Skulan
A History of Vertebrate Paleontology describes the origin and development of vertebrate paleontology, with particular emphasis on how paleontologists have struggled to parlay the popular appeal of their science into power, if not respectability, in academic and scientific communities.
History of Science 523: Race, American Medicine and Public Health
(Crosslisted with AFROAMER and MED HIST)
3 cr.; E (Ethnic Studies requirement), S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 MW 1010 Medical Sciences Center; Prerequisites: junior or senior standing.
Instructor: Susan M. Lederer
The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), "is the problem of the color line." This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of "racial identity") have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession.
History of Science 532: The History of the (American) Body
(Crosslisted with GEN&WS and MED HIST)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced); 11:00-12:15 TR, B219 Van Vleck. Prerequisites: Women's Studies 103 or other women's studies course required; previous history (including Med Hist or Hist Sci) course preferred.
Instructor: Judith A. Houck
Do bodies have a history? What do bodies mean? Are we our bodies? Who decides the value of a body? What are the consequences of having the wrong body?
Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. Within a larger three-unit framework, this course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and "fitness?" How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems?
History of Science 553: International Health and Global Society
(crosslisted with Med Hist, Pop Health)
3 cr.; I (Intermediate), Z (Humanities or Social Science); 2:30-3:45 TR; 1190 Grainger. Prerequisites: junior or senior standing.
Instructor: Richard C. Keller
Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases - along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics - has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the "microbial unification of the world" as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
History of Science 555: Undergraduate Seminar in History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 9:55-11:50 F, 1323 Sterling. Prerequisites: open to History of Science majors only; initial preference to seniors.
Instructor: Lynn K. Nyhart
Topic: "Progress" in Science, Technology, and Medicine
This capstone seminar for majors in the history of science focuses on researching and writing history, not just reading what others have written about it. The main requirement will be to prepare and write a 15-20-page research paper using primary sources.
The theme for Spring 2010 is "progress" in science, technology, and medicine with our initial primary-source examples coming mainly (but not exclusively) from nineteenth- and twentieth- century exhibitions and fairs in Britain and America. We will also read secondary literature discussing historical claims about progress in science, medicine, and technology, which will provide models for research-based writing. And we will read arguments by historians and sociologists about how science, medicine, and technology progresses (or perhaps does not). Collectively, these primary and secondary sources will provide takeoff points for students' individual research papers.
History of Science 562: Byzantine Medicine and Pharmacy
(crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, Med Hist, and Medieval)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 2:30-3:45 TR, 2002 Rennebohm. Prerequisites: junior or senior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: John Scarborough
Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350-c. 1400 A.D.).
History of Science 615: The History of Evolutionary Thought
(meets with Zoology 400 sec. 003)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced); 1:00-3:00 M, 163 Noland; Prerequisites: junior standing or consent of instructor.
Instructors: Ronald Numbers and Karen Steudel
Topic: Biology and History of Human Evolution
This seminar-style class will explore the history of knowledge about human evolution, starting with early 19th-century views on the origin and antiquity of human races before moving on to Charles Darwin's work on human evolution, especially his Descent of Man (1871). It will then consider the discovery of the human fossil record, focusing on the nature of the specimens found and the scientific interpretation of their implications. The class will also explore the dissemination of information about these discoveries, as well as the religious and social controversies sparked by the claims of ape-like ancestors. Students will be required to read and discuss key primary and secondary sources associated with the history of human evolution and to write one or more papers.
History of Science 623: Studies in Early Modern Science
(crosslisted with History)
1 cr.; A (Advanced); 3:30-4:25 W, 1323 Sterling. Prerequisites: graduate standing; concurrent registration in History of Science 323 or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Florence Hsia
Advanced readings in the primary and secondary literature of the history of 16th and 17th-century science, with emphasis on current historiographic issues. Open only to graduate students. This course must be taken by graduate students concurrently with History of Science 323. One 60-minute meeting per week.
History of Science 639: Studies in Technology and Its Critics Since World War II
1 cr.; 4:35 W; 1323 Sterling. Prerequisites: graduate standing; concurrent registration in History of Science 339.
Instructor: Eric Schatzberg
This one-credit graduate discussion seminar is required for graduate students taking History of Science 339, and cannot be taken without concurrent enrollment in that course. The seminar will provide graduate students with advanced discussion and additional readings supplementing the themes in HS 339, as well as additional written work.
History of Science 668-001: Topics in History of Medicine. Topic: A History of Western Disability
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 2:30-3:45 MW, 1227 Engr. Hall. Prerequisites: junior standing.
Instructor: Walton Schalick
Disability is a word which surrounds us. From debates about end-of-life issues to Social Security from test-taking 'allowances' to Not-Dead-Yet, from Medicaid cutbacks to Terry Schiavo, disability is in the media, on our lips and in our ears. What is disability? How has disability changed over time and in different cultures? Where does such an idea come from? What social, cultural, and political assumptions is it based upon? Examining a wide range of historical arguments about the nature and purpose of disability, from pre-history to Plato, to medieval theologians, to more contemporary works, we will approach the history of disability in Western thought and social practice in terms of its relation to arguments about the role of human development and the formulation of personhood, citizenship, and social well being. The readings will include a thick mixture of primary sources in translation and secondary sources, both classic and newly published. We will encounter a variety of techniques and tools used by historians and other scholars as we course through the sessions. The emphasis of our discussions will be the characteristics of disability in a variety of centuries and cultures as well as lacunae in our understanding and debates in the literature.
History of Science 668-002: Topics in History of Medicine. Topic: Medical Technologies in Historical Perspective
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; A (Advanced); 1:00-2:15 TR, 10 Ag. Hall. Prerequisites: junior standing.
Instructor: Dayle Delancey
From imaging devices to pharmaceuticals, medical technologies are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, U.S. history reveals that neither the emergence of high profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly 'modern day' phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies - e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, hospital design, x rays, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, virtual medicine, etc. - have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources illuminating key medical technologies in the 18th to 21st century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies shape medicine? Why have physicians and the pubic embraced some medical technologies and not others? What non medical technologies have influenced the development of medical technologies? How has the historiography of medical technology shaped the histories of medicine and science as academic disciplines? Has medical technology ever been 'value free'?
History of Science 681, 682: Senior Honors Thesis
Open to honors majors in hist sci, cons inst required.
History of Science 691, 692: Senior Thesis
Open to hist sci majors, cons inst required.
History of Science 698: Directed Study
Jr st. Graded on a Cr/N basis; requires cons inst.
History of Science 699; Directed Study
Jr st. Graded on a lettered basis; requires cons inst.
History of Science 919-001: Seminar
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; 1:15-3:15 W, B113 Van Vleck. Prerequisites: graduate standing and consent of instructor.
Instructors: Sara Guyer and Richard C. Keller
Topic: Biopolitics
According to Foucault, in the late-eighteenth century, governments began recognize populations, health, sanitation, sexuality, race, etc. as their domain and to marshal power through the management of human bodies. More recently, the emergence of stem cells, health care, hunger, and human rights, as major political issues, reflects the ongoing centrality of biological life for politics. This course will examine this convergence through a rigorous consideration of the theory of biopolitics and its cross-disciplinary application. We will focus on work in philosophy and literature, but also anthropology, sociology, and history. Topics may include: Biological Citizenship; Biopoetics; Hunger, Food, and Obesity; Biomedicine and subjectivity; etc. Authors: Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Roberto Esposito, Barbara Johnson, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Philippe Bourgois, Achille Mbembe, Nikolas Rose, Paul Rabinow, among others. Over the course of the semester we also will welcome several guest lecturers into the seminar.
History of Science 919-002: Seminar
(crosslisted with Med Hist)
3 cr.; 4:00-6:30 M, 240 Van Hise. Prerequisites: graduate standing and consent of instructor.
Instructor: Diane Paul
Topic: History & Historiography of Eugenics
In the last two decades of the 19th century through at least the first three of this, the view that society should foster the breeding of those who possessed favorable traits and prevent or discourage the breeding of those who did not seemed common sense to most middle-class North Americans and Europeans. This course on the history and historiography of eugenics explores the following questions: Why did the concept of selective human breeding take hold in the late19th century? How crucial to this development was Francis Galtons effort to demonstrate the hereditary character of mental and moral traits, the new popularity of animal breeding, and publication of Charles Darwins evolutionary theory? How did Galton's work relate to earlier popular doctrines, such as phrenology and physiognomy, which stressed the importance of heredity and its implications for reproduction? Why did eugenics become increasingly popular after the turn of the twentieth century? What role did geneticists, religious leaders, and other groups play in its success? How was eugenics inflected by race and gender? What concrete forms did it take in various countries? How was eugenics linked to public health, and to the feminist, conservation and other social movements? Who opposed it, and for what reasons? How did both advances in genetics and revelations of Nazi atrocities affect its reputation? What lessons have scholars and popular writers drawn from its history, and why are they so fiercely contested? Throughout the seminar, we will be attentive to trends in the scholarly interpretation of eugenics and to current debates over how best to make sense of its fraught history.
History of Science 921: Seminar
3 cr.; 9:00-11:30 M, 210 Psychology; Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
Instructor: Thomas H. Broman
Topic: European Travel & Cultural Contact 1500-1800
History of Science 925: Seminar: Research and Thesis
1-3 cr.; 12:05 W, 1406 Med Sci; Prerequisites: History of Science major; grad standing.
Instructor: Judith A. Houck
Preparation of Masters paper for second year History of Science graduate students.
History of Science 950: History of Science Colloquium
0-1 cr.; 4:00-5:30 T, 1313 Sterling. Prerequisites: graduate standing, History of Science major.
Instructor: Richard Staley
Intended for graduate majors in the history of science, this requires regular attendance at History of Science colloquia, averaging 4 or 5 per semester. May be taken for 1 credit or 0 credits. Required of first and second semester graduate students in History of Science.