Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Terms offered: Spring 2025
This course engages students with fundamental questions of justice in relation to data and computing in American society. Data collection, visualization, and analysis have been entangled in the struggle for racial and social justice because they can make injustice visible, imaginable, and thus actionable. Data has also been used to oppress minoritized communities and institutionalize, rationalize, and naturalize systems of racial violence. The course examines key sites of justice involving data (such as citizenship, policing, prisons, environment, and health). Along with critical social science tools, students gain introductory experience and do collaborative and creative projects with data science using real-world data.
Data and Justice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course provides an overview of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a way to study how our knowledge and technology shape and are shaped by social, political, historical, economic, and other factors. We will learn key concepts of the field (e.g., how technologies are understood and used differently in different communities) and apply them to a wide range of topics, including geography, history, environmental and information science, and others. Questions this course will address include: how are scientific facts constructed? How are values embedded in technical systems?

Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 8 Week Session, Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Spring 2020
This course teaches you to use the tools of applied historical thinking and Science, Technology, and Society (STS) to recognize, analyze, and shape the human contexts and ethics of data. It addresses key topics such as doing ethical data science amid shifting definitions of human subjects, consent, and privacy; the changing relationship between data, democracy, and law; the role of data analytics in how corporations and governments provide public goods such as health and security to citizens; sensors, machine learning and artificial intelligence and changing landscapes of labor, industry, and city life. It prepares you to engage as a knowledgeable and responsible citizen and professional in the varied arenas of our datafied world.
Human Contexts and Ethics of Data - DATA/History/STS: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
This course provides a strong foundation for graduate work in STS, a multidisciplinary field with a signature capacity to rethink the relationship among science, technology, and political and social life. From climate change to population genomics, access to medicines and the impact of new media, the problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic.
Topics in Science and Technology Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course teaches you to use approaches from the across the humanities and interpretive social sciences and tools of Science,
Technology, and Society (STS) to recognize, analyze, and shape the human contexts, social implications, and ethics of data and data technologies, including data analytics, algorithmic decision systems, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI).
Human Contexts and Ethics of Data: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work.
Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar: Read More [+]