[PRELIMINARY - Latour to be added]

This syllabus is organized into five sections that are tied to the reaction papers (as outlined in the requirements). I expect students to have made the required readings and looked at the online notes for each set of readings by the date of [the chat] (the date listed below). The reaction papers on the same section are due three days after [the chat] in order to help you incorporate the discussion.

[where to look for these sources]

     
 

I - Introduction: Tools that are made by and make humanity
  Technology: possibility and determination?
   
  Human (dis-)abilities: expansions through tools and institutions
6/2  
 

II - Food production: tools and social structure
  Hoes, plows and familial strategies
   
  • Goody, Jack Production and Reproduction New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 (Chapters 1-5) 
  Irrigation: Power and social structure
6/9  
  • Wittfogel, Karl Oriental Despotism. Yale U. Press 1957 pp. 11-100
   

III - Play with the constraints of literacy
  The power of the printed word
   
  • Ong, Walter Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York: Methuen. 1982
  Possibilities in print: play and control
6/16  
  • Conklin , Harold "Bamboo literacy on Mindoro" Pacific Discovery 2: 4-11. 1949
  • Kuipers, Joel, and Ray McDermott "Insular Southeast Asian scripts." in The world's writing systems. Edited by P. Daniels and W. Bright, 474-484. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995
   

IV - Human production: technology as imagination

  Industrialization I: The imagination of machines
   
  • Marx, Leo The machine in the garden. Oxford University Press.
  Industrialization II: The experience of machines
6/23  
  • Wallace, F.A.C. Rockdale Knopf 1978. pp. 73-239
   

V - Technological productions: the body in the machine
  Living with the bomb
   
  • Gusterson, Hugh Nuclear rites: A weapons laboratory at the end of the cold war. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1996
  The body and the machine
6/30  
  • Rapp, Rayna Testing women, testing the fetus: The social impact of amniocenthesis in America. New York: Routledge, 1999 (Chapters 1,2,5,6,9)
     

 

 

"The College will make reasonable accommodations for persons
with documented disabilities. Students are encouraged to contact the Office
of Access and Services for Individuals with Disabilities for information
about registration (166 Thorndike Hall). Services are available only to
students who are registered and submit appropriate documentation. As your
instructor, I am happy to discuss specific needs with you as well."