Attendance:

The seminar will meet once a week for three hours with a short break. Since this is the forum in which ideas and analyses are exchanged, attendence is essential and mandatory.

Students must be in the seminar room on time and prepared. Tardiness and absences are unacceptable. If a student is late or absent without a verifiable university excuse even once, I will lower the student's final grade by a letter grade. In other words, an "A" will become a "B" and a "B" a "C" and so forth. There will be no deviation from this policy.

Seminar Format:

The seminar is a forum where the faculty member guides students through discussions of the assigned readings. Students will also actively guide the seminar through cogent, systematic, and critical analyses of the readings.

Participation: 50% of grade

In-class written excercises and discussions constitute the participation grade.

Students should expect weekly in-class written exercises, each graded on a ten-point scale.

The exercises will test mastery of the details of the work as well as its broad theories. Test and discussion questions will challenge students to interrogate the authors' choice and use of evidence and authors' interpretations of the evidence.

Final Paper: 50% of grade

You will submit a 10-15 page essay (exclusive of footnotes) on an issue of concern to the authors and to you. This is neither a research nor a historiographic paper. It will be an analytical essay that constructively critiques a subset of the assigned texts, including their theories, evidence, and interpretations. The essay will engage the ideas and interpretations presented in the works you have read. You will also incorporate ideas that were introduced in discussions in seminar. You will establish conceptual connections and assess them critically. You will insert yourself into your paper, taking a position on the centralizing issue and interrogate and defend it.

I expect you to engage complexity and apply creativity to write a paper that will transfix the reader and carry her not simply from one book to another but from one compelling idea to another. Your singular conclusion will neatly recapitulate the ideas you consider significant and will express you studied position on the concept or topic you have chosen. I will grade your paper on your success in achieving these goals.

Please clear your topic with me before you embark on writing. Make an appointment sometime after mid-semester.

The paper - hard copy only please - is due on Wednesday, 12 December 2007.

You must submit with the paper a plagiarism policy statement that indicates you understand plagiarism and the consequences thereof. The form is available on WebCT.

Students with Disabilities:

I will accommodate any student with any disability, whether or not he or she is registered with the Students with Disabilities office. Please meet with me privately and we will discuss classroom accommodations.

Week 01: Prologue: Technology and Culture. Film excerpt viewing and discussion.

Week 02: Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems, 1989. ISBN 0-262-52137-7 (pb).

Week 03: Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900, 2007. ISBN-13 978-0-19-532283-5 (hb).

Week 04: Eglash, Ron, et al. Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power, 2004. ISBN 0-8166-3427-0 (pb).

Week 05: Brown, Elspeth H. The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 2005. ISBN 0-8018-8099-8 (hb).

Week 06: Cogdell, Christina. Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s, 2004. ISBN 0-8122-3824-9 (hb).

Week 07: Film viewing and discussion.

Week 08: Clancey, Gregory. Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1880-1930,2006. ISBN 0-520-24607-1 (hb).

Week 09: Loviglio, Jason. Radio's Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy, 2005. ISBN 0-8166-4234-6 (pb).

Week 10: No Seminar. SHOT 50th Anniversary Annual Meeting, Washington, D. C.

Week 11: Bray, Francesca. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China, 1997. ISBN-10: 0520208617; ISBN-13: 978-0520208612.

Week 12: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stores in the Creation of an American Myth, 2001. ISBN 0-679-76644-8 (pb).

Week 13: Weitekamp, Margaret A. Right Stuff Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program, 2004. ISBN 0-8018-7994-9 (hb).

Week 14: Van Riper, A. Bowdoin. Imagining Flight: Aviation and Popular Culture, 2003. ISBN-13: 978-1-58544-300-x.

Week 15: HOLIDAY WEEK.

Week 16: Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, 2006. ISBN-10: 0226817415; ISBN-13: 978-0226817415.

Week 17: Epilogue: Technology as Culture. Quiz-review of the works.