Freshman Seminar 161 - HISTORIES OF THE FUTURE - Fall 2016 Syllabus 

What if history is not a neutral construction through which time unfolds? In this seminar we explore the ways in which the texture of history itself has changed covered the twentieth century, from the perspective of the history of science.

HIS 390 - Undergraduate Class: HSTM - METHODS & IDEAS - Spring 2023 Syllabus

In our contemporary world, science, technology, and medicine enjoy tremendous cultural and intellectual authority. This class introduces a set of analytical tools historians use to understand the origins and consequences of these ways of knowing, across space and time. We will discuss a variety of ideas and methods that describe the social, cultural, and intellectual conditions of possibility for creating knowledge about the natural world. In addition, the class materials invite students to reflect on the cultural and intellectual constraints that shape how societies determine which knowledge is worth pursuing and why.

HIS 392 - Undergraduate Class: HISTORY OF EVOLUTION - Spring 2017 Syllabus

Interweaving intellectual and cultural history, this course covers the history of evolutionary theory from Charles Darwin, and the scholars on whom he drew, to the late 20th century. Throughout this century and a half we explore how biologists invested in evolutionary theory the capacity to explain the diversity of life on this planet, our all too human nature, and perhaps, therefore, to help us solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. We will also discuss how and why critics have attacked evolution as amoral and socially dangerous, seeking to remove it from public schools and the lives of their children. In doing so, we investigate how scientists have negotiated the dynamic (and sometimes fraught) relationship between professional and public science.

HIS/ENV 394 - Undergraduate Class: HISTORY OF ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENTALISM, co-taught with Jack Klempay  - Spring 2022 Syllabus

From a scientific perspective, ecologists study the interactions between and among organisms and their environments. From an activist perspective, ecology is synonymous with the environmental movement, green politics, and conservation. This course explores this dynamic tension between science and political activism, between professional identity and personal conviction, as a historical phenomena that developed over the course of the twentieth century. Check out the SENSORY MAP OF CAMPUS we created with StoryMap! If you are in town, consider a long stroll through and around campus, exploring some of our favorite spots to sit and reflect, or small unexpected sights that caught our attention.

HIS 500 - INTRODUCTION TO THE PROFESSIONAL STUDY OF HISTORY

A colloquium to introduce the beginning graduate student to the great traditions in historical writing, a variety of techniques and analytical tools recently developed by historians, and the nature of history as a profession.

Fall 2021 Syllabus, co-taught with Professor Peter Wirzbicki

Fall 2020 Syllabus, co-taught with Professor Federico Marcon

HIS/HOS/GSS 519 - Graduate Seminar: GENDER & SCIENCE - Fall 2017 Syllabus 

The field of feminist science studies has expanded dramatically in recent decades. This seminar is designed to introduce a set of questions and analytical tools employed by historians interested in science and gender. As historians, we sometimes look to the past as a means of explaining the present. (In this case, everyone agrees on how to characterize the present—science as a social enterprise is fundamentally gendered, and gender, sex, and sexuality are concepts that have been profoundly shaped by science.) How did this come to be?

HOS/HIS 599/599A - Graduate Seminar: RECKONING WITH BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM - Fall 2018 Syllabus

This seminar explores the changing intellectual grounds on which debates about biological determinism were waged, from the 18th century to the present day. The readings alternate between weeks that focus on humans and weeks that focus on non-human actors to illustrate the variety and flexibility of biological narratives in the service of naturalizing some individual, social, and political behaviors (and casting others as “unnatural”). These readings will also allow us to interrogate questions of causality in historical writings about nature(s), including mosquito empires, global populations, and epigenetic landscapes.

HIS/HOS 599A - Graduate Seminar: Special Topics in the History of Science, Technology, & Medicine

ENVIRONMENTALISMS, Spring 2021 Syllabus

COLLECTING NATURES, Fall 2022 Syllabus

This seminar explores the changing intellectual grounds on which ideas about natural environments were forged, from the 18th century to the present day. The readings interweave accounts of how some places were deemed “natural” and came to be objects of scientific study and political concern together with attention to landscapes as places of refuge and a basis for social transformation. The aim of the seminar is to introduce a series of conceptual tools for analyzing these meanings, across a range of times and places—after all, the meanings cultures invest in ideas like natural, global, or “environmentalism” are far from stable or singular.

Check out the fantastic PODCASTS students produced as optional final projects in 2021!

• Niya Bates, Environmental Racism, Environmental Justice, and Preservation in Pine Grove

• Kate Carpenter, Who’s Been Picking My Food?

• Vince Femia, City Streets of Quartzite Memories: Archeology and Preservation at Piney Branch in Washington DC

• Alice Hong, Imagining Cold Warriors during the Cold War

• Michael Mandelkorn, Killing Sparrows to Grow

• Taneil Ruffin, Exploring the Environmental Dimensions of Black Political Thought in the Antebellum U.S.