"Both jaws, like enormous shears, bit the craft completely in twain." From Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, considered in this class as "an epic of technological fatality." (Illustration by A. Burnham Shute, from the 1892 edition published by Harper.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Leo Marx
Prof. Rosalind Williams
MIT Course Number
STS.464
As Taught In
Spring 2008
Level
Graduate
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
Our linked subjects are (1) the historical process by which the meaning of technology has been constructed, and (2) the concurrent transformation of the environment. To explain the emergence of technology as a pivotal word (and concept) in contemporary public discourse, we will examine responses — chiefly political and literary — to the development of the mechanic arts, and to the linked social, cultural, and ecological transformation of 19th- and 20th-century American society, culture, and landscape.
Note: In the interests of freshness and topicality we regard the STS.464 syllabus as sufficiently flexible to permit some — mostly minor — variations from year to year. One example of a different STS.464 syllabus can be found in STS.464 Cultural History of Technology, Spring 2005.