Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Work of the Course

Required readings and ancillary (recommended but not required) readings are listed in the syllabus.

Students are required to complete a weekly writing assignment. This is a brief (750-1500 word) paper examining the significance of an aspect of each week's assigned reading in illuminating the ultimate emergence of the concept of "technology" — and its environmental impact.

For their final paper and oral report, students will be asked to assess the validity of McKibben's argument in The End of Nature in the light of the historical record as revealed by our readings and discussions.

Books Recommended for Purchase

Buy at Amazon DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. ISBN: 9780140283303.

Buy at Amazon Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York, NY: Vintage, 1989. ISBN: 9780679721031.

Buy at Amazon Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1998. ISBN: 9780140436679.

Buy at Amazon Jewett, Sarah Orne. Country of the Pointed Firs. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. ISBN: 9781593082628.

Buy at Amazon Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. 2nd Norton Critical Edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2001. ISBN: 9780393972832.

Buy at Amazon McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York, NY: Random House, 2006. ISBN: 9780812976083.

Buy at Amazon Smith, Merritt Roe, and Gregory Clancey, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Technology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780669354720.

Schedule

LEC # TOPICS
1

What is technology?

The history of technology — the concept, the word

Aims of the course

In-class reading: excerpt from Don DeLillo, White Noise, pp. 124-129

Discussion: What do we mean by technology?

2 Technology in America today
3 The enlightenment
4 Industrialization: A trans-atlantic debate
5 Technological dynamism
6 An epic of technological fatality (I)
7 An epic of technological fatality (II)
8 An epic of technological fatality (III)
9 The lost America
10 Ecological crisis (I)
11 Ecological crisis (II)
12

Student presentations

Final paper and oral reports