Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to the social contexts and historical effects of major developments in technology such as industrialization and steam power; the construction of large techno-social systems like gas lighting and electrical grids; networks of scientific and enviro-technical experts; war industries; and cultures of "the bomb" during the nuclear age. Students with credit for HIST 363 cannot take HIST 111 for further credit. Breadth-Hum/Social Sci/Science.

COURSE DETAILS:

Histories of Technology: Industrial Dreams/Dystopian Nightmares

This course examines the history of technology in the modern era, especially from the late-eighteenth century forward [i.e. from the age of industrial manufacturing].  The course does not trace a linear story of successive technical inventions.  Instead we focus on how societies dealt with rapid technological change and the political, social and cultural turbulence that came with it.  To do this, we venture into the mental landscapes and historical contexts of utopian thinkers, technologists, and industrial planners who believed they could fix human, social, and ecological problems by developing society with technology (or by thinking of society as a machine to be engineered with systems).  We also pay close attention to movements in politics and culture that presented a critical view of technology, exploring nightmarish dystopian visions of technological development careening toward catastrophe.  We will encounter several exemplary dystopian primary texts [and films] and will approach these as cultural historians do, rooting them in their contexts and interpreting such visions of the future for what they reveal about past experiences of machine modernity.

While many of the early course readings focus on Britain and Europe, the further we go in the course the more global the problems become, culminating in the final weeks in discussions of “cyberspace” and cyborgs, war industries, information empires, biotechnology, food security, and environmental disasters.  Along the way we will ask: What does it mean to be modern and to always live with technical abilities to build and to destroy?  How have social structure and ideology steered the development and use of technology?  Finally, as a class we will collaboratively research and report on the social and political history of an array of specific 19th - 21st century technologies of students’ choosing.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: