Global History of Data

3.0 credits · Undergraduate

This introductory course provides students with a critical understanding of diverse data practices across cultures and histories, incorporating critical multidisciplinary perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS), to Critical Data Studies, History, Media Studies, and Information Science. It focuses on how different societies have collected, processed, understood, and tooled information through various sensory, linguistic, and representational modes. Highlighting elements that embody resistance, refusal, and alternative epistemologies, this course aims to help students better understand the limits of data-centric ways of knowing, and hence become more culturally sensible about data ethics, social justice, and epistemic diversity. (HIST-HTR)