Overview
The use of technologies raises complex and provocative questions about the relationships between humans, animals, the built environment and the natural world. This course engages these issues by introducing students to key theorists, critics and cultural historians of technology. The goal of this course is for students to utilize these perspectives as a means to initiate and/or develop a critical analysis of technologies in their specific cultural, political and historical contexts. Learning Outcomes
This course is designed as part of the curriculum for Cultural Studies majors/minors and also serves as a class for select non-majors interested in the intersections of technology and culture. The following learning outcomes have been established to fulfill these purposes:
- To examine the cultural histories of specific technologies, central themes in the history of technology (e.g. modernity), and some of the key theoretical paradigms and schools of thought that inform technological analysis and critique (e.g. empiricism, marxism, environmentalism, feminism, social construction of technology).
- To understand and critique different theoretical approaches to the study of technology, and to specifically transcend the dominant assumptions of technological discourse, particularly the accepted wisdom that technologies are the driving force of social change. We often hear this line of reasoning--often called technological determinism--when people say things like: "automobiles created the suburbs," or "technology will set us free."
- To learn how to do a cultural studies analysis of technology that is contextual, political, historical, and takes seriously the dialectical relationships between structural forces and individual identity/subjectivity.
- To examine some of the broader philosophical questions pertaining to humans’ collective relationship to technology, such as: Where do bodies end and technologies begin? What is technological progress? What is the role of machines in our society and/or what role should they play? How do technologies impact our perception of the natural world or get shaped by the natural world itself (i.e. the environment)? What kind of world do we want to live in, and how does technology fit into that vision?
