Science, Technology and Society
Courses
SCTS 501 Introduction to Science, Technology and Society 3.0 Credits
This seminar introduces students to the study of science, technology, and society. Students will investigate different approaches to the study of STS, including methods of problem selection and research questions.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 502 Research Methods 3.0 Credits
This graduate seminar will provide an in-depth exploration of many of the research methods used by science and technology studies [STS] scholars. Participants will learn how to define a meaningful research question and to identify which methods will best answer that question. They will also learn how to design interview guides and conduct interviews, surveys, focus groups, fieldwork, content analysis, experiments and archival research. Strategies for analyzing data will also be addressed. A thorough understanding of research design and methodologies is crucial to the STS toolkit.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 503 Advanced Research Methods 3.0 Credits
This course focuses on a single social scientific research method. The course takes students through the inception of research ideas, research design, implementation and data-analysis in order to understand the limitations and possibilities of the research process according to methodology. The method focused on will vary according to instructor. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 504 Science, Technology & Society Theories 3.0 Credits
This course is designed to provide participants with a rigorous introduction to important social theories used in the study of science, technology and society. In this course, we will read work by classical and contemporary theorists, exploring a variety of explanations and critiques of contemporary social life. Wrestling with these ideas will allow students to experience the diversity and richness of social theory and to explore how theory allows us to see topics in new, unique ways.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 550 Special Topics in STS Lab 3.0 Credits
In this course, students, faculty and community members team up in a hands-on, immersive social science laboratory setting to address contemporary social issues. Course covers on a rotating basis a variety of topics related to science, technology and society.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS 561 Mobilities Lab 3.0 Credits
This course will address the large-scale transitions toward “sustainable” and “smart” technologies in transportation systems with an emphasis on how new information and communication technologies are transforming or disrupting the transport sector. Unlike other courses, it will do so through an innovative problem-based, hands-on, interdisciplinary “lab” experience in which students collaborate with others to work on “real-world” problems and solutions.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 562 Identity and Intersectionality Lab 3.0 Credits
The practices of modern science, technology and medicine are deeply raced and gendered. This class moves beyond studies of singular social categories to explore intersections among individuals’ identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, [dis]ability, age, etc.) through critical reading of primary and secondary sources undertaken in a social-science “laboratory” setting.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 563 Philadelphia in a Changing Climate Lab 3.0 Credits
In this Science, Technology and Society (STS) lab course, participants will learn and use STS approaches and tools to conduct interdisciplinary research on climate change in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a dynamic space for climate adaptation work in municipal, nonprofit, health, and educational sectors. Local initiatives are backed by robust climate science from leading experts, emerging data techniques, state-of-the-field intersectoral work, and community-based networks of climate science educators who engage Philadelphia’s public in multiple arenas. This course offers hands-on research experience in which participants will make use of a digital platform for research so that they can collaborate and share their research along the way.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 570 Environmental Policy 3.0 Credits
This interdisciplinary seminar investigates how interests and ideas interact in environmental policymaking. Students will explore how conceptual and political innovations play out across several environmental issues, including wildlife management, energy development, and the regulation of environmental risks.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 575 Digital Power and Resistance 3.0 Credits
This course examines how power and resistance operate in these times of ubiquitous connectivity. Digital infrastructure and technology do not merely connect but also transform the way we think about, experience, and inhabit the world we live in. This course will examine the historical forces, social processes and economic mechanisms that contribute to such a transformation. It will examine the values, rationalities, and norms inherent to the design of connected existence. It will scrutinize the effects of connectivity on social inclusion and exclusion, as well as on participation in public life. We will draw upon conceptual tools and empirical work from science and technology studies. A variety of teaching methods will be used, including lecturing, group discussions, and the projection of short films.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 580 Special Topics in Science, Technology and Society 3.0 Credits
This seminar will focus on graduate level topics in the area of science, technology and society selected by the professor. The exact content, readings, and grading will be determined by the professor on a course by course basis.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 584 Historiography of Science 3.0 Credits
This course is an introduction to the advanced study of the history of science and will explore major themes, debates, and theoretical approaches in the discipline.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 600 Contemporary Feminist Theory 3.0 Credits
This course surveys contemporary feminist theory with an emphasis on "new materialist" approaches to sex and sexual difference. An umbrella term, new materialism refers to a variety of recent attempts to re-imagine nature, sex, body, and matter. During the "linguistic turn" of the 20th century, many postmodern feminists retreated from these materials and their associated sciences; enamored of texts but allergic to bodies, postmodern feminists tended to embrace radical constructivism and reject scientific methods and knowledges. Today, new materialists return to biology, nature, sex, body, and matter in order to move beyond the logics of essentialism and somatophobia. This course will survey the results of this return with a special emphasis on understandings of sex and sexual difference.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 610 Material Culture 3.0 Credits
This course explores the relationship between human beings and material objects. Drawing from literature in anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, and science and technology studies, we will explore the cultural and social life of things: how they move across borders, accumulate and disperse, and lend our lives weight and meaning.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 612 Medical and Healthcare Ethics 3.0 Credits
This course will introduce students to a range of topics including the role of explanatory narratives and patient experience in healthcare, the ethics of the design and conduct of clinical trials, the evolution of diagnostic categories, and the problem of healthcare access both in the US and in a global context.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 614 Technology, Progress, and Determinism 3.0 Credits
In this course, students will examine multi-disciplinary approaches to the meaning of technology. Students will focus on two major themes in the history of technology: progress and technological determinism. Students will examine the historical context of contemporary technologies as well as criticism of technology and industrialization.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 615 The Biopolitics of Health 3.0 Credits
This course explores theories of biopolitics and its application to ethical debates in health and medicine. Biopolitics is a powerful lens for examining how modern societies shape and define life itself.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 620 Medicine, Technology and Science 3.0 Credits
This graduate seminar focuses on the social dimensions of medicine, health and illness. Students will explore how definitions and experiences of health and illness are shaped by technology use, cultural contexts, institutional practices, health care policies, and inequalities. Students will examine social trends in medical technology and science as well as how illness categories are created, negotiated, and resisted. Participants in this course will gain the ability to assess the changing role of science and technology in medicine as well as think critically about the social dimensions of the experience of health and illness.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 639 Politics of Life 3.0 Credits
In this course students will explore the sociological implications of advancements that have been made in genetic engineering, biotechnologies and other areas of biomedical research. Starting with earlier examples of "power over life" from the 18th and 19th centuries, we will explore themes, dilemmas and complications embedded in the scientific control over life. Topics to be explored include biopower and biocapital, eugenics, race and class, stewardship and bioengineering, new reproductive technologies and reproductive choice, among much, much more. Consideration to feminist, queer and critical race theories will frame much of our discussion in class. This is a reading and discussion-intense course.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 640 STS Perspectives on Risk and Disaster 3.0 Credits
This course introduces students to critical debates and methods of analysis in science, technology, and society (STS) through the consideration of the modern history of global risk and disaster.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 641 Risk and Disaster Policy 3.0 Credits
This course introduces students to critical debates and methods of analysis in science, technology, and society(STS) through the consideration of public policy formation around global risk and disaster concerns.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 643 Contemporary Stem Workforces:Organizations of Labor in Lab, Shop and Clinic 3.0 Credits
In response to a growing national concern with STEM workforce development, this class critically analyzes scientific and technical labor and management practices in factories, laboratories, and clinics, and the social implications of STEM training and education. US and global cases are explored through the study of primary documents, artifacts, and the spaces of STEM work.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 645 War and Technoscience 3.0 Credits
Students will examine technology in the context of warfare and military institutions. Students will study major questions in the history of military technology, including the Revolution in Military Affairs, arms races and technological determinism. Students will also examine the technological relationships between military institutions and the broader societies in which they are embedded.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 650 Global Subjects of Biocapital 3.0 Credits
Students explore issues related to capitalism based on biotechologies, the life sciences, medicine, agriculture and other related industries globally. Students consider specific cases of human trafficking, the global trade in human organs, global agribusiness and biotech, global clinical trials and medical tourism. The experiences of workers, farmers, research participants, and donors will be a central focal point. This is an intensive reading, writing and discussion course.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 651 Transnational Science, Technology & Capitalism 3.0 Credits
This course will explore the importance of considering the “transnational” in understanding the historical role of science and technology in the making of capitalism and the modern world.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 660 Theoretical and Sociological Aspects of Measurement 3.0 Credits
This course familiarizes students with theoretical and sociological issues related to measurement by focusing on topics at the crossroads of the history and philosophy of science and technology such as the notion of theory, the nature and epistemology of experiments, and related themes of instrumentation, measurement and coordination.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 665 Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Science 3.0 Credits
This course studies advanced topics in the philosophy of science such as confirmation theory and theory choice, rationality and objectivity, scientific realism, laws of nature, scientific models and representation, explanation, reduction, computer simulations and climate change.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 697 Internship in Science, Technology and Society 0.5-3.0 Credits
Internships provide opportunities for students to clarify career interests; synthesize prior academic knowledge with direct experience; and sharpen critical thinking, analytical, and observational skills. Learning from and networking with professionals in the field is enhanced. This course requires formulation and investigation of a research problem and a written paper.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
SCTS 798 Master's Research 0.5-9.0 Credits
Through this graduate course, students will engage in independent study intended to help them formulate a research question, collect and analyze data, and present their research effectively. Students will be encouraged to improve their skills in reading and analyzing the literature and collecting and analyzing their own data. This course will require students to use the knowledge of science, technology and society that they have acquired throughout their training.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS I599 Independent Study in Science, Technology and Society 0.0-12.0 Credits
Self-directed within the area of study requiring intermittent consultation with a designated instructor.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS I699 Independent Study in Science, Technology and Society 0.0-12.0 Credits
Self-directed within the area of study requiring intermittent consultation with a designated instructor.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS I799 Independent Study in Science, Technology and Society 0.5-3.0 Credits
Self-directed within the area of study requiring intermittent consultation with a designated instructor.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 3 times for 12 credits
SCTS I899 Independent Study in Science, Technology and Society 0.0-12.0 Credits
Self-directed within the area of study requiring intermittent consultation with a designated instructor.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS I999 Independent Study in Science, Technology and Society 0.0-12.0 Credits
Self-directed within the area of study requiring intermittent consultation with a designated instructor.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS T580 Special Topics in Science, Technology and Society 0.0-12.0 Credits
Topics decided upon by faculty will vary within the area of study.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS T680 Special Topics in Science Technology and Society 0.0-9.0 Credits
Topics decided upon by faculty will vary within the area of study.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS T780 Special Topics in Science Technology and Society 3.0 Credits
Course covers on a rotating basis a variety of topics related to science, technology and society, including(though not limited to) environmental issues, the social dimensions of health and medicine, and the ethical, cultural and political dimensions of new technologies and scientific practices. May be repeated for credit when topics vary.Course content will vary so syllabus will be designed based on topic related to science, technology and society.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS T880 Special Topics in Science Technology and Society 0.0-9.0 Credits
Topics decided upon by faculty will vary within the area of study.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
SCTS T980 Special Topics in Science Technology and Society 0.0-9.0 Credits
Topics decided upon by faculty will vary within the area of study.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
