How did ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean basin (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, Carthage) understand and represent their own and others’ identities and ethnic differences? How did notions and practices around race, citizenship, and immigration evolve from antiquity to the present? How have culture and politics informed artistic, literary, and museum representations of ethnic ‘others’ over time, along with the historical development of ethnography, biological science, and pseudo-sciences of race? What role did “Classics” (the study of Greco-Roman cultures) play in modern colonialism, racecraft, and inequality? And what role can it play in unmaking their legacies, through the ongoing Black Classicism movement, the practice of Critical Race Theory, and the development of more global and interconnective approaches to premodern cultures? RAP provides an opportunity for Hopkins undergraduates and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds to engage in project-based research toward building an open-access, grant-winning educational resource (OER) on “Race in Antiquity.” Participants learn, share, and practice advanced research methods; examine and discuss the history and modern implications of the teaching and study of their fields; test-drive and collaboratively edit OER pilot materials; and create new content based on their own research, for eventual digital publication.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Pandey, Nandini
• Room: Greenhouse 000
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, ARCH-RELATE

The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
• Room: Gilman 50; Gilman 377
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
• Room: Gilman 50; Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

The history of medicine and public health from the Enlightenment to the present, with emphasis on ideas, science, practices, practitioners, and institutions, and the relationship of these to the broad social context.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
• Room: Gilman 50; Maryland 217
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This class introduces students to the history of health and healing in African history. We will discuss the health challenges faced by people in Africa and the various approaches people have taken to understanding, preventing, relieving, and curing illness in different times and places as well as the connections between health, religion, environment, politics, and economics.

• Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
• Instructor: Cummiskey, Julia Ross
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Religion is often portrayed as being at odds with science. From Galileo’s treatment by the Roman Inquisition to contemporary Creationism museums, we are told that religious institutions do not support science. Likewise, religious people don’t make good scientists – or do they? Is religion really the thorn in the side of science that so many claim it is? In this class, we will discover the interwoven history between scientific practice and religion, beginning with the atomism and humoral theories of the Ancient Greeks and culminating in 21st century debates about stem cells and cloning. Many of the great scientific minds were also deeply religious – how did their beliefs shape their practice of science and approach to the natural world? Is religion truly antithetical to scientific practice? And if not, why do we so readily assume that it is?

• Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Allen, Meagan Selby
• Room: Gilman 75
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/27
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

The last 250 years have witnessed significant transformations in science. This course surveys many of these key developments, including the chemical revolution, evolutionary theory, the periodic table, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, genetics and biotechnology, and climate science. It highlights questions of discovery, professionalization, impact, and advocacy. How have scientists built upon prior discoveries, and what do we mean when we call something a “revolution”? What are the social, political, and environmental consequences of scientific research? How have scientists promoted their achievements and influenced policy at different times and places? The course will address these questions through readings, lectures, and discussion sections.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: McManus, Alison L
• Room: Hodson 213; Gilman 119
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/22
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, ENGY-SCIPOL

The last 250 years have witnessed significant transformations in science. This course surveys many of these key developments, including the chemical revolution, evolutionary theory, the periodic table, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, genetics and biotechnology, and climate science. It highlights questions of discovery, professionalization, impact, and advocacy. How have scientists built upon prior discoveries, and what do we mean when we call something a “revolution”? What are the social, political, and environmental consequences of scientific research? How have scientists promoted their achievements and influenced policy at different times and places? The course will address these questions through readings, lectures, and discussion sections.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: McManus, Alison L
• Room: Hodson 213; Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/22
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, ENGY-SCIPOL

What is “Science”? How do we do “science”? How have the boundaries of these definitions – what we consider to be science and the proper methods of gathering scientific information – changed over the centuries? Have scientists always held the same beliefs about what kinds of knowledge and evidence constitute “science”? In this class, we will examine how science was done in the period before the “Scientific Revolution”. We will learn about the ways in which Medieval scientists classified types of knowledge and what they considered to be acceptable means of determining truths about the world around them.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Allen, Meagan Selby
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/16
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This course offers a survey of knowledge traditions in understanding/intervening nature and modern scientific/technological enterprises in East Asia and how they originated and have evolved over time. Material, philosophical, and social contexts/impacts will be highlighted throughout. Topics range from subjects recognized as traditional medicine, astronomy, classification, genetics, fishery, and biotechnology to themes regarding science and technology’s relations with the state, politics, colonialism, postcolonialism, and the environment. Class activities include lectures, discussions, research seminars, and a final research project/presentation.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room: Gilman 186
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This course explores health and society in England, 1500 to 1800 including healing practices at all levels of society, concepts of health and illness, patient experiences, and patterns of disease. Recommended Course Background: At least one course in History or History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Fissell, Mary E
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 10/16
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

The Earth we know today is very different from that which scientists debated little more than 100 years ago. While scientists today hold the Earth to be roughly 4.54 billion years old, at the turn of the 20th century there was little agreement about the Earth’s age, and geologists’ estimates did not exceed 100 million years. And while today scientists agree that the continents sit atop lithospheric plates that move and interact, giving rise to volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain ranges, and deep ocean trenches, the Earth of the 19th century was one that was slowly cooling and shrinking. In addition to getting older and less static, the Earth of the 20th century also yielded up some of its uniqueness, as it ceased to be the only planet under the purview of those fields that would collectively become known as the earth and planetary sciences. A Cold War program in planetary exploration of the Moon, Mercury, Mars and Venus extended inquiry into the other rocky bodies of the solar system and placed what was known about the Earth into a broader context. Finally, an environmental movement and the discovery of anthropogenic climate change showed the Earth to be more vulnerable and susceptible to human activities than previously imagined. This course examines our changing view of the Earth and the environment from the 19th century to the present, highlighting the interrelatedness of science, society, and culture. What does it mean when our understanding of the Earth changes?

• Days/Times: F 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Shindell, Matthew
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 10/18
• PosTag(s): ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, MSCH-HUM

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 13/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course is designed for students who will be conducting independent research in the history of science, medicine, or technology under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Prior discussion and approval of the intended work is required.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Comfort, Nathaniel
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/2
• PosTag(s): n/a

Proclamations of an AI revolution are ubiquitous, with utopian visions from technological enthusiasts and dystopian predictions from skeptics growing in number and pathos. In this class, we will challenge the current focus on the transformative potential of machine learning by examining it through the broader historical lens of automation, mechanization, cybernetics, and computerization. Course materials include foundational works in AI as well as science fiction, allowing us to explore the concept of technological imagination as a bridge between public science, cultural production, and the development of scientific and engineering research programs. Spanning from Ancient Greece to modern Europe, from Cold War-era U.S. and Soviet Union to contemporary China, this seminar raises critical questions about the meanings of “intelligence,” “rationality,” and “mind.”

• Days/Times: Th 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Tatarchenko, Ksenia
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 10/18
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, CES-TI

This course introduces basic computational techniques in the context of empirical humanistic scholarship. Topics covered include the command-line, basic Python programming, and experimental design. While illustrative examples are drawn from humanistic domains, the primary focus is on methods: those with specific domains in mind should be aware that such applied research is welcome and exciting, but will largely be their responsibility beyond the confines of the course. Students will come away with tangible understanding of how to cast simple humanistic questions as empirical hypotheses, ground and test these hypotheses computationally, and justify the choices made while doing so. No previous programming experience is required.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Lippincott, Tom; Sirin Ryan, Hale
• Room: Krieger 304
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This course introduces substantial machine learning methods of particular relevance to humanistic scholarship. Areas covered include standard models for classification, regression, and topic modeling, before turning to the array of open-source pretrained deep neural models, and the common mechanisms for employing them. Students are expected to have a level of programming experience equivalent to that gained from AS.360.304, Gateway Computing, AS.250.205, or Harvard’s CS50 for Python. Students will come away with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different machine learning models, the ability to discuss them in relation to human intelligence and to make informed decisions of when and how to employ them, and an array of related technical knowledge.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Backer, Samuel Ehrlich; Messner, Craig A
• Room: Maryland 114
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/10
• PosTag(s): COGS-COMPCG, MSCH-HUM

Museums across the globe are rewriting their infrastructure, energy use, waste management, and exhibitions and conservation policies and practices to respond to our ecological crises. Students will conduct field research and analyze data; investigate “next” practices, case studies, and the challenges particular to museums; and write a white paper; all with an eye towards contributing to the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative - an eco-challenge, sustainability planning, and suite of art exhibitions dedicated to environmental themes.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Joyce, Robin; Kingsley, Jennifer P
• Room: Gilman 35
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/10
• PosTag(s): PMUS-PRAC, ENVS-MAJOR, ENVS-MINOR, MSCH-HUM, ARCH-RELATE, ENGY-SCIPOL

Is the mind identical to the brain? Is the mind (or brain) a computer? Could a computer reason, have emotions, or be morally responsible? This course examines such questions philosophically and historically. Topics include: the history of AI research from 1940s to present; debates in cognitive science related to AI (computationalism, connectionism, and 4E cognition); and AI ethics.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:00PM - 4:45PM
• Instructor: Honenberger, Phillip
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/16
• PosTag(s): COGS-PHLMND, COGS-COMPCG

Is the mind identical to the brain? Is the mind (or brain) a computer? Could a computer reason, have emotions, or be morally responsible? This course examines such questions philosophically and historically. Topics include: the history of AI research from 1940s to present; debates in cognitive science related to AI (computationalism, connectionism, and 4E cognition); and AI ethics.

• Days/Times: MWF 10:00AM - 11:30AM
• Instructor: Honenberger, Phillip
• Room:  
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 19/19
• PosTag(s): COGS-PHLMND, COGS-COMPCG

This course is designed for students who will be conducting independent research in the history of science, medicine, or technology under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Prior discussion and approval of the intended work is required.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Students completing an internship in the history of science, medicine, and technology may be eligible to earn academic credit by enrolling in this course. Please contact the instructor to determine whether your internship qualifies.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

This First-Year Seminar explores the scientific-technological, philosophical, social, and ethical dimensions of using animals for scientific research from the early nineteenth century to present. Why did scientists use animals and how did they choose “the right animal for the job”? How did philosophers define a “model organism”? What were the political economies formed within research communities sharing research animals? How did financial and material infrastructure take shape for large-scale, long-term maintenance of genetically standardized mice or zebrafish? How did the interpretations of animals reflect the social imaginaries of researchers and our society? And how did animals “speak” back? These are questions we are going to examine through reading scholarly publications, watching documentaries, visiting laboratories, and doing mini research projects together.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

Remember the moon landing? Of course you don't, but no one who watched it on television would have guessed that the last moon walk would be in 1972. Now some of us are ready to 'Occupy Mars'. This First-Year Seminar will explore the Space Age from the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957 to the International Space Station, including military and civilian programs, unmanned and manned missions, and new competitors in our current space race, such as China, India, and the European Space Agency. We will read contemporary and historical accounts (October Sky and The Right Stuff) and screen some classic space age feature films and documentaries. We will pay particular attention to Johns Hopkins University's contributions, notably the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes and the Applied Physics Laboratory's satellite program. We'll talk with experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute and APL, and tour the National Air and Space Museum collections with the curator of manned spaceflight. In groups, students will prepare future space mission proposals for NASA and SpaceX, and present them to a distinguished panel of Hopkins space scientists and engineers.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Leslie, Bill W
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course explores seven centuries of fruitful collaboration between physicians and artists, uncovering the shared discourses and therapeutic agendas that united the art of picture-making with the art of healing. Topics include understandings of the gendered body in ancient natural philosophy and Christian theology; astrological medicine; physiognomics and the visual diagnosis of mental and physical disease; medieval medical diagrams; the anatomical investigations of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; depictions of pain and suffering in the art of Matthias Grünewald, melancholy in the prints of Albrecht Dürer, and the cross-cultural history of the therapeutic artefact; the spectacularization of the body in Enlightenment science, and the ethics of medical specimen display today -- all bringing into view the dynamic intersections of the history of medicine and the history of art.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Merback, Mitchell
• Room: Gilman 119
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 6/24
• PosTag(s): HART-MED, HART-RENEM, MSCH-HUM

From embellished silver pens and abolitionist secretary desks to contemporary artists manipulating historical postcards and making fax collages, this course will explore the materiality, technologies, and aesthetics of written communications from the 18th century to the present. This research-centered course will engage directly with objects in the Baltimore Museum of Art collection, in preparation for an upcoming exhibition. Topics include the development of specific decorative arts and designs in conjunction with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century postal and bureaucratic history, letter-writing as a mode of resistance, strategic illegibility and asemic writing as a form of critical artistic practice, and the importance of mail art as conceptual and institutional critique. Includes hands-on work in the museum and class visits with BMA curator Dr. Leslie Cozzi.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Brown, Rebecca Mary
• Room: Gilman 177
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 1/5
• PosTag(s): HART-MODERN, MSCH-HUM

Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Ragab, Ahmed
• Room: Hackerman B 17; Krieger 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 0/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 10:00AM - 10:50AM
• Instructor: Ragab, Ahmed; Staff
• Room: Hackerman B 17; Gilman 119
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 1/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Course provides an introduction to health and healing in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Topics include religion and medicine; medicine in the Islamicate world; women and healing; patients and practitioners.

• Days/Times: MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, F 9:00AM - 9:50AM
• Instructor: Ragab, Ahmed
• Room: Hackerman B 17; Gilman 119
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 3/20
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

How can we think about the interconnections between racism, theories of race and the practice of medicine? Living at a moment when racial disparities in health outcomes in the United States are still very stark, this course will provide a historically grounded approach to thinking about the roles that race and racism have played in healthcare, the production of health disparities as well as the role of medicine in the development of racist thought. While much of this course will focus geographically within the United States, this class will also explore global histories of medicine, encountering questions of race and medicine in Africa, the South Pacific and Asia. In addition to the analysis of primary source documents and historical texts, students will also be introduced to theoretical approaches to the study of race and racism from W.E.B. Dubois, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon and others.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: White, Alexandre Ilani Rein
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, CES-RI, MSCH-HUM

How did the Western understanding of nature change between 1500 and 1720? We'll study the period through the works of astronomers and astrologers, naturalists and magi, natural philosophers and experimentalists, doctors and alchemists & many others.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Allen, Meagan Selby
• Room: Krieger 180; Krieger 306
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

How did the Western understanding of nature change between 1500 and 1720? We'll study the period through the works of astronomers and astrologers, naturalists and magi, natural philosophers and experimentalists, doctors and alchemists & many others.

• Days/Times: MW 11:00AM - 11:50AM, F 11:00AM - 11:50AM
• Instructor: Allen, Meagan Selby
• Room: Krieger 180; Hodson 301
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 7/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

This class will cover the history alchemy from its Greco-Egyptian and Arabic roots, through its popularization in the European Middle Ages, to its zenith in the Early Modern period. Using both primary and secondary sources, students will see how alchemy, rather than being a mystical quest or nothing more than the desire to turn lead into gold, was in fact a complex system of belief about the natural world and the generation of materials, both organic and inorganic. Reading works by historical alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Paul of Taranto, Paracelsus, and others, students will understand how alchemy was incorporated into numerous intellectual and practical disciplines, including metallurgy, medical theory, pharmacology, natural philosophy, and even theology. At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to answer: what role did the translation movements and cross-cultural exchanges play in the development of European alchemy? In what ways were (al)chemical theories different than modern chemistry? And in what ways are they the same? How do technology and culture drive changes in scientific theories? All majors are welcome, although students may find that a high-school level understanding of general chemistry will be helpful.

• Days/Times: W 4:00PM - 6:30PM
• Instructor: Allen, Meagan Selby
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 4/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

This is a reading seminar on foundational scientific writings and historical literature related to history of our understanding of the biological cell and molecules. From the idea of spontaneous generation to Schleiden and Schwann’s cell theory, from the “organizer” concept in embryology, to the comparative studies of Hox genes, from tissue culture to genomics, students explore how different tools, methods, and styles of reasoning became employed in creating and evaluating empirical observations, and how religious believes, metaphors, ideologies, state funding, and infrastructure became pivotal in organizing data and producing knowledge. The final project can be a historiographical essay, or a research paper related to the topic.

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 6/12
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 14/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

For History of Science, Medicine, and Technology majors preparing a senior honors thesis.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Portuondo, Maria M
• Room:  
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 20/20
• PosTag(s): n/a

How did the computer become an omnipresent machine? This overview course aims to familiarize students with the evolution of the computer as a pivotal technological advancement of the twentieth century and to foster critical thinking about the widespread notion of computerization, which is often associated with profound changes, as reflected in terms like "Personal Computer Revolution," "the Age of Big Data," and the more recent "AI Revolution." Throughout the course, we will emphasize both the universal aspirations and the localized boundaries that have shaped patterns of technological dissemination and the circulation of knowledge—from the dawn of digital computing, rooted in the computational needs of the United States and Britain during World War II, to the modern-day manifestations of the so-called "digital divides." To achieve this objective, we will explore classical narratives centered on American history as well as emerging transnational and cultural studies in computing. This exploration will be enriched by extensive engagement with primary source documents.

• Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
• Instructor: Tatarchenko, Ksenia
• Room: Krieger 307
• Status: Canceled
• Seats Available: 18/18
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, CES-TI

This course explores how medicine, science, and technology intersect with war and conflict, shaping both the battlefield and society at large. It examines the medicine-science-war nexus by investigating the ways in which war and conflict have spurred scientific innovation and medical breakthroughs and, inversely, how scientific and medical innovations have enabled new forms of warcraft. From the development of antibiotics and prosthetics to the ethical dilemmas of weapons research and the use of artificial intelligence in combat, students will examine these entanglements and the profound moral and ethical questions they raise. Relying on case studies from historical and contemporary conflicts, historical documents, films, and literature, the course will investigate topics such as the technological frontiers of war, military funding of scientific research, post-conflict legacies of wartime technologies, and the long-term health outcomes of political and military conflict. Through a critical examination of these themes, students will gain a better understanding of the complex relationship between war and advancements in medicine, science, and technology and will be prompted to analyze the ethical, social, and political implications of the entanglements between war, science, and medicine.

• Days/Times: T 11:30AM - 2:00PM
• Instructor: Bayoumi, Soha Hassan
• Room:  
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 13/18
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, CES-LE, CES-TI, INST-GLOBAL

What is the relationship between the histories of music and scientific development? How is making music a kind of laboratory research? Musical instruments and aesthetics have always emerged in dialogue with developments in science, technology, and medicine. The first stethoscope borrowed from the design of flutes and challenged physicians to grapple with new concepts like "sound," "signal," and "noise." The automation of industrial machinery was influenced by earlier musical automata--technology that sought to mechanically synchronize, sequence and loop musical phrases. Concepts like logarithms, combinatorics, resonance and sympathetic vibration, melancholy and mania, etc., relied on the contributions of musicians, music theorists, and instrument-makers. This seminar looks at points of contact between music and histories of science, technology, and medicine through both scholarly and creative lenses. The course integrates creative and experimental music making with reading and short writing assignments. Familiarity with music notation and some basic musical skills will be helpful but are not strictly necessary. Limit 15 students.

• Days/Times: W 4:30PM - 7:00PM
• Instructor: Ludwig, Loren
• Room: Shriver Hall 104
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

At the dawn of the twelfth century, armies marched from Latin Europe, heading for Jerusalem. They attacked and invaded large territories in Asia Minor and the Middle East and created Latin polities that ruled over the Levant for about two centuries. During this period, new societies' political and social orders took shape representing the connections, exchanges, and wounds of conflict. The Crusading project extended well beyond the Middle East: European Christian armies sought to convert Northern Europe, eradicate old polytheistic religions there, and reestablish Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. By the sixteenth century, a new wave of Crusades extended to include the wars against the Ottoman Empire, the colonial expansion in Africa, Asia, and the “New World.” At the same time, the colonial expansion involved the emergence of new chattel transatlantic slavery with the atrocities and destruction that it wrecked for centuries to come. Diseases, famines, and other natural disasters marched alongside the marching armies. Famines accompanied the first and second crusades in the twelfth century. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Black Death had spread throughout the world, claiming one-third of the world’s population. Similarly, leprosy and syphilis spread alongside the armies moving across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. This seminar investigates the place of science, medicine, and technology in medieval and early modern war, conflict, and slavery. Starting from the Crusades of the twelfth century to the colonial wars and slavery of the seventeenth century, the course will investigate how conflicts develop, the technologies involved in their pursuit—from military technology to navigation to architecture—how conflicts affect medicine and medical knowledge—from military medicine and surgery to the development of hospitals to epidemics—and how conflict, war, and enslavement impacted the movement of people, goods, and ideas.

• Days/Times: W 2:30PM - 5:00PM
• Instructor: Bayoumi, Soha Hassan; Labruto, Nicole; Ragab, Ahmed
• Room: 555 Penn 632
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 16/18
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, CES-LE, CES-PD, CES-RI

How is the so-called “AI Revolution” altering the landscape of work? This course takes up this question through the lens of underemployment, migratory labor, and diasporic communities. We will read a variety of key works on migration and imagined communities, precarity and alienation, labor, automation, and empire—as well as texts produced in the margins of globalization. In conversation with these texts, we will investigate the dynamics of diasporic communities, migration, and solidarity vis-a-vis the future of work in a global society increasingly automated by AI models such as DeepSeek, ChatGPT, and Qwen 2.5, and the entities that own them. Through a variety of writing assignments and presentations, students engage issues such as race, class, gender, the border, citizenship, and community as they exist for diasporic and migratory workers. This course explores themes relevant to students of Critical Diaspora Studies, as well as the history of science and technology, political science and political economy, international studies, literature, film, and sociology. Readings may include works by Ruha Benjamin, Audre Lorde, Harry Braverman, Benedict Anderson, David Harvey, Edward Said, Mary L. Gray, Octavia Butler, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

• Days/Times: TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Todarello, Josh
• Room: Gilman 186
• Status: Closed
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): CES-BM, CES-LC, CES-RI, CES-TI, CDS-MB, CDS-SSMC