Feminist Science Studies

4.0 credits

This reading- and discussion-based seminar examines how science and technology are not only entwined with the social but produced through social engineering. Across units in technology, ecology, and anthropology, students will ponder questions such as the following: Can algorithms be altruistic? Can design be deadly? Can robots be racist? Can cells be sexist? Can tech contribute to tyranny? Can history be hacked? How do power, politics, and inequality get inside of science and technology? What are the limits and pitfalls of technological “fixes” to major societal challenges like healthcare, climate change, policing, and war? More importantly, in an atmosphere of increasing uncertainty, inequity, and political violence, how can we hotwire more humane means of problem-solving and inhabiting Spaceship Earth to imagine a future of human and non-human flourishing? What new possibilities arise when we work with knowledges rather than Knowledge, when we expand our understandings of expertise, when we actively trouble concepts like objectivity, science, tech, data, planet, population, and human?