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 400
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 5/19
• PosTag(s): COGS-PHLMND, COGS-COMPCG

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: Open
• Seats Available: 12/12
• 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: Open
• Seats Available: 12/12
• 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: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/24
• 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: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/5
• 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; Staff
• Room: Hodson 213
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 7/20
• 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: Hodson 213
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 7/20
• 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: Hodson 213
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 9/20
• 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: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• 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
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/20
• 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
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 16/20
• 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; Staff
• Room: Gilman 300
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• 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: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

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

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Jiang, Lijing
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• 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: Open
• 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: Open
• 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: Open
• Seats Available: 14/18
• 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: 555 Penn 170A
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 14/18
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM, CES-LE, CES-TI

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:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 11/15
• 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: Approval Required
• 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: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): CES-BM, CES-LC, CES-RI, CES-TI, CDS-MB, CDS-SSMC