Development Studies

First-Year Studies—Year

We live in the world of monopoly capitalism—a market economy dominated by big rent-seeking corporations with immense political and economic power domestically and internationally. What economic methods and theories are suited for understanding the historical development, current turbulence, and future tendencies of monopoly capitalism? We will engage in a series of critical conversations about various schools of economics and their logics of economic policy-making, in order to gain a well-rounded and holistic understanding of the business of global monopoly capitalism and its economic, social, and political ills. How did the financial market get so big? Why do artificial intelligence and manufacturing robots have to replace human work? How will global monopoly capitalism evolve socially, economically, and politically? And many other questions. Students will encounter not only the so-called “standard” economics and business thinking, but also a plurality of classical political economists such as Smith; Ricardo and Mill and their descendants; feminist economists; critical management scholars; the old and new institutionalists; the Marxian and Keynesian challengers; contemporary behavioral economists; and so on. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences. 

Faculty

• An Li

First-Year Studies—Year

The 2024 Presidential Election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and social wellbeing. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from difference schools of thought in economics as well as other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges we face, such as new gilded age style wealth concentration and power, economic insecurity, and the climate crisis? Why is the study of history a central methodological priority for many economists and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the relationship between political and corporate power and the “rule of law” with regard to market outcomes? What is Project 2025 and how can we understand its theoretical basis and implications? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid foundation to the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and understand the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.

Faculty

• Jamee Moudud

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

Modern capitalist institutions are dynamic, complex, and unstable economic, political, and cultural systems that are constantly evolving. In this course, students will learn a new behavioral approach to microeconomics and how it can be applied to understanding today’s economic, financial, political, and environmental challenges and crises. We will depart from traditional microeconomics, which revolves around finding and analyzing a theoretically perfectly efficient steady state, but treats all unexpected economic disturbances and turbulence as anomalies caused by external shocks. Instead, we will target real-world, complex, open-ended situations in which interactions among heterogeneous people and social groups create internal shocks that can destabilize economic, business, and financial systems and drive them towards different pathways, including post-capitalist possibilities.

Faculty

• An Li

Open, Small Lecture—Year

This course on business history will situate business in its social and political contexts. At the core of the course is the argument that the economy is embedded in the political society and is thus subject to historical change. The study of business cannot be separated from politics and political struggle, which determine how society is legally constructed in any given moment in history. Thus, what is of often called “private enterprise” sits on a contextually determined set of power relations which shape and are in turn shaped by current legal institutions. Challenging the idea, common to conventional discourse, that economies can be more or less regulated, this course will focus on the politics of business regulation, which in some contexts has produced socially progressive outcomes and in others regressive ones. Regulation is ubiquitous and subject to variation given changed circumstances due say to an economic crisis, new technologies, global competition, socio-political pressures etc. In this course, the nature and politics of business regulation will be studied in different national and historical contexts, involving countries in the Global South (e.g. Mauritius, Chile, Brazil, the Indian state of Kerala, South Africa etc.) and the Global North (e.g. United States, Sweden, Germany, etc.). It will address a wide range of topics that include: (a) slavery, cotton, banking, and property rights in early American industrialization; (b) legal struggles between corporations and society over constitutional rights (e.g. what brought about the landmark Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. FEC (2010)?); (c) corporations and colonialism (e.g. the British East India Company, the Virginia Company, etc.); (d) business regulation during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Period; (e) late industrialization and social well being; (f) using the United States and Sweden as case studies, the construction of welfare states and workers’ attempts to secure social and economic rights; and (g) the history of the relationship between business associations and anti-democratic politics, including the links between Silicon Valley technolibertarians and digital capitalism (i.e. artificial intelligence and crypto currencies). At a theoretical level, the study of business history will be grounded in debates in microeconomics, theories of business investment and pricing, and the relationship between law, politics, history, and economics. This course will be of interest to students who wish to understand contemporary social and political challenges in a theoretically and historically informed way.

Faculty

• Jamee Moudud

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

When Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936, he proposed a new, non-laissez-faire, realistic macroeconomic framework to stabilize the economy, control inflation, and promote full employment. However, since the 1970s, macroeconomics has experienced “decades of intellectual regress” and the current “post-real macroeconomics” says things that are “inconsistent with the facts.” In this course, we will depart from this “post-real macroeconomics.” We will learn a post-Keynesian approach that takes structural inequality, risk, uncertainty, and human irrationality seriously. We will learn how the post-Keynesian approach is better suited for understanding real economic tendencies and financial troubles under the current stage of monopoly capitalism, such as uncontrollable inflation, wage stagnation, financialization, economic polarization, growing indebtedness, and so on.

Faculty

• An Li

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

How do we understand humans and their relationship to nature—and how do these understandings shape the ways we design our societies, relate to each other and the natural world, and imagine our world into the future? This lecture course will introduce political theory through environmental questions, focusing on two central themes. First: how does introducing a concern for “the Earth” or “ecology” deepen, and often complicate, our understanding of key political concepts like justice, freedom, democracy, and power? Second: how do the perspectives and methods of political theory relate to those of other disciplines—ecology, climate science, history, anthropology—which approach similar questions in very different ways? We will begin by examining what political theory is and exploring how different understandings of human nature and the natural world have shaped political thinking across traditions. We will then explore how environmental concerns reshape core political questions about governance, collective action, and social change—and how we might imagine and practice political futures within planetary limits.

Faculty

• Ben Mylius

Sophomore and Above, Small Lecture—Spring

What is technology, and how does it shape our relationship with nature—especially amid environmental crisis? These questions might sound abstract, but they are central to how we understand the causes of environmental issues and the kinds of responses we think are possible. Some environmental thinkers see technology as the source of all our ecological and social problems; others see it as the solution to them. In order to evaluate these positions, let alone identify our own, we need to understand what different thinkers mean by technology, how deep down its mediation goes, and why it is so often framed as either the cause of our problems or a silver bullet fix. In this course, we will approach these questions by broadening what counts as technology. We start with familiar examples: things like solar, or artificial intelligence (AI). But then we ask what happens to our thinking as we expand the category. How does our view of “environmental problems” change if we imagine agriculture as a form of technology? Or writing? Or even language itself? Drawing on work from environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and philosophy, we will explore perspectives that see technology as fundamental to human existence, perspectives that see it as alienating or destructive, and perspectives that see it as enabling care and attention. Our goal will be, working together, to understand how different ways of thinking about technology open or foreclose different responses to environmental crisis. Lectures will introduce conceptual frameworks through readings, discussion, and collaborative exercises. Group conferences will provide opportunities for students to examine specific technologies, building practical skills in technological analysis and developing their own perspectives. Some of our topics may include: philosophy of technology; perception and mediation; writing and symbolic thought; AI and computational systems; technologies; Indigenous technological traditions; separation and embeddedness.

Faculty

• Ben Mylius

Open, Seminar—Fall

How do states develop their power? To what extent can people influence that power? Who are “the people”? This course will use the history of modern Mexico to consider broad questions of state formation and democracy. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 was a defining moment for the 20th century, but its legacy has been difficult to classify. From a decentralized peasant movement focused on agrarian reform to a centralizing nationalist project focused on state-building, the revolution was a mix of left- and right-wing tendencies. Mexico served as a refuge for figures like Leon Trotsky, Fidel Castro, and the Sandinistas, even as it became a hub for Latin American anticommunism in the Cold War. It fostered movements for indigenous rights, regional autonomy, gender, and LGBTQ rights but also saw the violent repression of student protests in 1968. This course will examine longstanding tensions between radicalism and conservatism in Mexican History, tracing their interplay with Catholicism, Marxism, and the Latin American Cold War, with special attention to Mexico–United States relations. Looking beyond simplistic narratives of Mexico’s “Institutional” Revolution, we will cover a range of topics, including the modernizing Porfirian period, the rural campaign of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, the nationalist presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, anticommunism and the Cold War, student protests in 1968, rock music and counterculture in the 1970s, tourism and the creation of Cancún, the Zapatista movement in the 1990s, and post-NAFTA tensions around drug traffic in the neoliberal 21st century. The course will develop skills in historical methodology, using innovative or relevant historical scholarship and many types of primary sources, including, testimonies, music, visual arts, poetry, novels, and film. We will use the tools of history to construct competing narratives of revolution and nation in Mexico.

Faculty

• Jesse Horst

Open, Lecture—Fall

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error. You’ve heard these terms and other statistical phrases bantered about before, and you’ve seen them interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this lecture course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course, and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis, and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Calculator and spreadsheet software will be used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with these technologies is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This lecture is recommended for anybody wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences.

Faculty

• Daniel King

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

Rarely is a quantity of interest—tomorrow’s temperature, unemployment rates across Europe, the cost of a spring break flight to Fort Lauderdale—a simple function of just one primary variable. Reality, for better or worse, is multivariable. This course will introduce an array of topics and tools used in the mathematical analysis of multivariable functions. The intertwined theories of vectors, matrices, and differential equations and their applications will be the central themes of exploration. Specific topics to be covered will include the algebra and geometry of vectors in two, three, and higher dimensions; dot and cross products and their applications; equations of lines and planes in higher dimensions; solutions to systems of linear equations using Gaussian elimination; theory and applications of determinants, inverses and eigenvectors; volumes of three-dimensional solids via integration; spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems; and methods of visualizing and constructing solutions to differential equations of various types. Conference work will involve an investigation of some mathematically-themed subject of the student’s choosing.

Faculty

• Melvin Irizarry-Gelpi

Open, Seminar—Fall

What does Silicon Valley take for granted that the great philosophers long ago called into question? What is technology—is it a form of knowledge, a relationship to nature, or something more fundamental to what it means to be human? How did the ancient Greek understanding of techne become the modern drive to master and remake the world? To approach these questions, this seminar will trace the philosophy of technology from its origins in ancient Greek thought through its radical transformations in modern times. We will ask, in the end, what the history of philosophy can tell us about where Silicon Valley's unexamined opinions lead. Texts will be drawn from major moments in the philosophy of technology, from Plato and Aristotle on the nature of craft and human artifice, through Bacon, Descartes, and Rousseau on the Enlightenment transformation of nature into a resource to be mastered, through Marx, Heidegger, and Arendt on the social and existential stakes of modern technology, to the manifestos of contemporary tech thinkers who, knowingly or not, are replaying arguments as old as philosophy itself.

Faculty

• Alexander Montag

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course will be an investigation of the many ways we find our orientation in the world and the many ways we find ourselves disoriented. Aristotle outlines how habits shape the way that we navigate our lives. Hegel theorizes that commitments to roles and practices separate us from nonhuman animals. Wittgenstein remarks that our lives are grounded in certainties that we cannot fully defend. However we achieve this orientation, the sense we have of the world is a certain kind of accomplishment that we effect, individually and collectively. And yet, this orientation is not impermeable. From time to time, we undergo experiences that shatter our sense of who we are and what we take the world, others, or ourselves to be. This course will investigate the meaning of such experiences of disorientation. Often, they are accompanied by uncertainty, anxiety, and an inability to articulate what exactly has gone wrong. We will track this phenomenon across various areas of our lives: disturbances to what we think we know (epistemology), ruptures in our assessment of what is good or the right thing to do (ethics), and interruptions prompted by works of art (aesthetics). We will draw on a variety of sources to make sense of these moments of disorientation and their significance. Philosophical readings will include Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Plumwood, and Diamond, amongst others. We will also read literary works such as Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and Sartre’s Nausea.

Faculty

• Scott Shushan

Open, Small Lecture—Year

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this course, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature. 

Faculty

• David Peritz

Intermediate, Seminar—Spring

Surveying the post-Holocaust world of late capitalism, Theodor W. Adorno writes that “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” We find ourselves in a world replete with strife, burdened with a disconcerting future, and so the possibility of living a good life seems not just illusive but altogether impossible. And yet, from this dire prognosis, Adorno offers a critical assessment of modern life in all of its minutiae that hints at the possibility of redemption. His analysis is boundless, ranging from a vehement takedown of astrology to a psychoanalytic reading of fascist propaganda, from reflections on the fiction of Franz Kafka to questioning our capacity to shut a door quietly. Adorno suggests that describing the ills of modern life—what he variously identifies as capitalism, fascism, consumerism, or, more pervasively, the hallowing of meaningful experience that resolves itself in loneliness and alienation—might offer the possibility to transform those stifling conditions. The seminar will begin with his diagnosis of our social reality, proceed to theorize about the metaphysical underpinnings of this reality, and conclude by considering the capacity of art to redeem our physical existence. Underlying the entirety of our investigation of Adorno’s work will be the imperative to overcome what he calls the “barbarity” of our time. Readings will be drawn from Adorno’s main works, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Minima Moralia (1951), Negative Dialectics (1966), and Aesthetic Theory (1970), as well as various essays. Our ambition will be not only to understand Adorno’s assessment of the stultifying conditions of his time but also to consider how he supplies us with tools, methods, and arguments for addressing the challenges facing our own. 

Faculty

• Scott Shushan

Open, Small Lecture—Year

Many of us are struck by the growing irrationality of contemporary democratic politics to the point where we despair of our capacity to address problems like global climate change or pandemics that could pose existential threats to our species, to fashion constructive foreign policy as wars rage, or to face a whole range of urgent but more mundane policy issues. In this course, we will seek to understand disturbing trends like populism, polarization, disinformation, and self-injuring or -defeating politics, as well as the resurfacing of nativism, xenophobia, and racism in contemporary politics—in part on their own terms but also by asking whether they are deeply rooted in human nature, at least on our current best understandings of ourselves. More specifically, democracy seems to rely on at least a minimum degree of rationality, learning, openness to argument and difference, and self-control on the part of the citizens whose votes and opinions guide government policy. But is this reliance foolhardy in light of what recent history, psychology, evolutionary theory, philosophy, and cognitive science teach? Do aspects of our current social and technological circumstances make us less able to manifest these qualities of character today than our Enlightenment progenitors hoped in the era of democratic revolutions—the era from which many of the ideas and institutions that continue to inform our politics today emerged? In this course, we will survey aspects of the political history of recent centuries, as well as our own historical moment, to ask if they should temper confidence in the power of reason in politics. We will also examine recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy that conclude that it is hard to sustain a model of human behavior that places reason and rationality in the driver’s seat. What alternative accounts of human nature are emerging from recent research? And what are their political implications, especially for democratic societies? By bringing together political science, history, and theory with cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, we should be able to occupy the intersection of distinct but equally relevant disciplines to ask whether the Enlightenment’s faith in democracy was misplaced. Or, instead, are there reasons to believe that democracy can maintain its claim to legitimacy, even after reason has been demoted in our understandings of human nature? To address this final question, we will also examine proposals for 21st-century democratic reforms that either seek to adjust downward the expectations on the capacity of citizens to engage in deliberative politics or to refashion political institutions to better summon the better angels of our nature. 

Faculty

• David Peritz

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Spring

The events of September 11, 2001 unleashed a bitter and contentious debate regarding not just how states and societies might best respond to the threat of violence but also, fundamentally, what qualifies as terrorism. Just nine days later, and without resolving any of these difficult issues, the United States announced its response: The Global War on Terrorism. Two and a half decades later, we are no closer to consensus concerning these politically and emotionally charged debates. Americans are also belatedly beginning to realize that the greatest threat of terror attacks in the United States originates from domestic rather than foreign actors, often white nationalists. This course will investigate the use of violence by state and non-state actors to assert their authority and to inspire fear. The modern state, as it was formed in Western Europe, was born of war. In Charles Tilly’s often-quoted phrase: “War makes states, and states make war.” The ability to control violence within a territory has long been a key part of the definition of a functioning state. The presence of armed groups on a state’s territory, which the state does not or cannot effectively control, is therefore a direct challenge to a state’s authority and has the potential to undermine its recognition as an international actor. This course will discuss the evolution of the terminology of terror and terrorism from the French Revolution to the present and consider frameworks to distinguish forms of violence and different types of violent actors. We will explore acts of state terror and their consequences and consider the use of the term ”terrorism” in the popular press, in political rhetoric, and in policymaking by states and international organizations. We will consider a range of nonstate actors that have employed violence—including South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and white nationalists in the United States—and explore the impact their use of violence has had for their popular support, for local and transnational communities and their ability to achieve their goals. Finally, we will consider new means of terror from drone warfare to cyber warfare. As part of our discussion of United States foreign policy. We will conduct a Model Diplomacy simulation in which students will assume the roles of members of the United States National Security Council (NSC).

Faculty

• Elke Zuern

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

What drives behavior in groups? When do people rebel or follow the rules? What makes us want to help or harm others? And, importantly, how do we find the answers to big questions like these? In this course, students will learn how to apply the scientific method to questions about human social behavior using various research methodologies in the field of social psychology. Assigned readings will focus on research methods and ethics, and students will also complete a literature review on their research topic of choice as part of their conference work. By the end of the course, students will be able to (a) generate feasible, falsifiable research questions, (b) identify appropriate research methods to answer a variety of questions, (c) write a research proposal, (d) create suitable data analysis plans and implement them in R, and (e) communicate research findings in academic and casual settings. Conference work will culminate in an APA-style paper (a research proposal or paper using secondary data) which can be used as a writing sample to demonstrate students’ research and writing abilities.

Faculty

• Julia Smith

Sophomore and Above, Lecture—Spring

All of us today live in a technology-rich environment, which is not only different from the one in which we grew up but also is still changing and evolving rapidly. The course will examine the use and design of an array of educational technologies (computer programs, multimedia software, television, video games, websites, and so on) from the perspective of basic research and theory in the human cognitive system, developmental psychology, and social development areas. The course aims to provide a framework for reasoning about the most developmentally appropriate uses of technologies for children and young adults at different ages. Some of the significant questions that we will focus on include: How are their developmental experiences affected by these technologies? What are the advantages and disadvantages for children using technology, especially for learning? In this course, we will try to touch upon these issues by reading classic literature, researching articles, playing games, watching programs, using apps, and discussing our experiences. Projects and assignments will include weekly class discussions on peer-reviewed journal articles and media artifact critiques written by individual students and through group project work.

Faculty

• Jamie Krenn

Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Year

Much of our lives are spent dealing with organizations in one fashion or another. They are a staple of our everyday lives, whether directly or indirectly: we rarely escape them. They include government and nongovernmental structures, ranging from government bureaucracies to schools, hospitals, religious spaces, and less formal entities such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Because of their ubiquitousness—and the assumption that bureaucracies exemplify “modernity” and “value-free” systems—the study of organizations has been a key subfield not only within sociology, but also within the fields of public and business administration. This course is designed to address the veracity of the claims made on behalf of bureaucracies, as well as critiques directed at organizational theory and behavior. Our overarching objective is to examine the manner in which organizations have been conceptualized, as well as the processes and practices through which they operate and change, and their implications for those who are “subjected” to them. Starting with Max Weber, a seminal figure in the field, we will examine underlying assumptions regarding “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” the rule of law, bureaucratic activism and inertia, the relation between organizations and their larger political and economic milieu, as well as ongoing organizational struggles. In addition to Weber, we will read other classics such as Sloan Wilson’s novel, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, and William Whyte’s The Organization Man. These and more contemporary critiques of organizations—both written and visual—will enable us to go beyond simplistic and normative understandings of bureaucracies and classic sociological theories and texts to rethink historical and contemporary organizations—in order to analyze the functioning of power at an everyday and structural level, and its attendant outcomes. For conference, working in small groups, participants will undertake primary research on a specific aspect of organizational practice at Sarah Lawrence College. Possible topics include an examination of space and design, changes in the student body and/or curricular design, the shift from same sex to co-education at the College, workers’ struggles at the College, outsourcing of certain college offices/tasks, attendant processes of decision making, student and/or faculty governance and organization, the College board and donors, community partnerships and/or the relationship between the school and its environs. To facilitate research in the College archives, we will rely on and work with our College Archivist who will provide us with her knowledge and expertise. Other than historical research based on the College Archives, interviews with present and past faculty, administrators, donors, alums or some combination of these sources could also be drawn upon for conference work. Finally, students will be expected to tie their analyses to larger questions such as the political economy of education, institutional structures, social movements, and struggles for change.

Faculty

• Shahnaz Rouse

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

What does the future of health and medicine look like, and who gets to imagine it? This course will introduce students to the social study of science, medicine, and technology by exploring how medical knowledge is produced across hospitals, laboratories, activist movements, community clinics, art spaces, and imagined futures. We will examine both medical utopias and dystopias, moments when science promises care and progress, as well as moments when it produces harm or exclusion. A key focus of the course will be how knowledge is produced not only by experts, but also by communities. We will examine alternative and grassroots health movements (from the Black Panthers and ACT UP to disability activism and feminist texts like Our Bodies, Ourselves) alongside mainstream medical institutions and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, longevity drugs, and GLP-1s. We will take seriously how medical knowledge is built and used in real-world settings, and how scientific authority influences everyday decisions about bodies, care, and risk. Students will develop practical skills in analysis, research, and writing while learning how to think across disciplines in ways that are useful for pre-med, clinical work, public-facing careers, and future study. Students will learn introductory field methods and research skills through conference work that investigates how scientific and medical knowledge circulates across different spaces, from social media and emerging reproductive technologies to protest art, public health campaigns, and community-based expertise. The course will culminate in a collaborative research project modeled on a mini academic conference, where students will present original work on how science and medicine operate in everyday life. By the end of the course, students will understand science and medicine not as neutral fields, but as social forces that can both heal and harm.

Faculty

• Carlo Sariego