COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course offers an introduction to the field of science studies. Beginning with Thomas Kuhn's critique of classical logical empirical views of science, we examine post-Kuhnian accounts of knowledge production, which treat technology and scientific knowledge as socially constructed. We will examine the issues of relativism, realism, and rationality and the debate concerning internalist versus externalist causal accounts of knowledge spawned by the Edinburgh School's Strong Programme for the sociology of knowledge. We then take up historical, contextual studies of science emphasizing the role of practice and technique in the production of knowledge. We next examine the semiotic turn in science studies, exploring recent efforts to draw upon feminist theory, rhetoric, and media studies in framing cultural studies of science and technology. Our final topic is the recent discussion of posthumanism. We consider the challenge to constructivism and cultural studies posed by prospects for the merger of information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, which some critics argue portends the end of humanity.
Jan 6 Introduction and Overview
Jan 13

Critique of the Classical View of Science
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Second edition with Postscript.
Jan 20 The Strong Programme for the Sociology of Knowledge
David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976, pp.1-48; 67-73. 
Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 
Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 13-46.
Jan 27 Social Construction and Actor Networks
Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. 
Michel Callon, "Some Elements of the Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay," in Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 67-83.
Feb 3 Science as Practice
Harry Collins, "The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks," Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 95-109. 
Peter Galison, "Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief"; Science Studies Reader, pp. 137-160. 
Tim Lenoir, "Practice, Reason, Context," Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 22-44. 
Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 1-33, 179-252. 
Feb 10

Science as Culture
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Chapter 2, Chapter 6. 
Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.
Joseph Rouse, "What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge?" Configurations, Vol. 1 (1993): 57-94.

Feb 17

Gender, Science, Criticism
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 149-181. 
Donna Haraway, "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies," Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, pp. 203-230. 
Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750, New York: Zone Books, 1998, pp. 13-20; pp. 173-214; pp. 215-253.
Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 162-206.

Feb 24 The Semiotic Turn and Materialities of Communication  
Jacques Derrida, "Différance," Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 3-28. 
Jacques Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context," Margins of Philosophy, pp. 307-330. 
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience," in Alan Sheridan, ed., Écrits A Selection. New York: 1977, pp. 1-7. 
Jacques Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud," Écrits, pp. 146-178.
Mar 2 Agents and Realism: The Ghost Returns
Donna Haraway, "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others," in Lawrence Grosberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies. New York and London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 295-337. 
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993. 
Tim Lenoir, "Was That Last Turn A Right Turn?" in Science Studies Reader, pp. 290-301. 
Karen Barad, "Agential Realism: Feminist Interventions in Understanding Scientific Practice," in Science Studies Reader, pp. 1-11.
Mar 9

Posthumanism
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, Chapters 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987, Ch. 1, pp. 3-25, Ch. 6, pp. 149-166.
Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, Bloomington, University of Indana Press, 1992, Chapter 1, Chapter 2.
Tim Lenoir, "Embracing the Posthuman," in Tim Lenoir, ed., Makeover: Writing the Body into the Posthuman Technoscape. Configurations, Vol 10, 2003, pp. 203-220; "Part Two: Corporeal Axiomatics," Configurations,Vol 10, 2003, pp. 373-385.
Bruno Latour, "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 40 (Winter, 2004): 225-248.