Curriculum Requirements
The purpose of the curriculum requirement is development of
working familiarity with contrasting approaches to the study
of technology
and society. The curriculum requirement itself has two components:
participation
in
a Technology and Society Colloquium and completion of a set
of graduate courses chosen from
a stratified menu.
STEP 3. Gateway Technology and
Society Colloquium Requirement
An important part of the Emphasis experience is interacting
directly with the cohort of other students in the program
and developing
an intellectual community beyond the student's own
discipline. Toward this goal, students must complete a 1-unit
gateway course entitled "Technology and Society Colloquium." This
course will meet one to two hours per week, and will
be taught by a member of the Technology & Society
Emphasis faculty. This gateway course will likely be
taught twice a year.
Requirements for the course will include reading and
discussing introductory works from several disciplines.
Students will
interact with guest faculty over the course of the quarter,
and each student
will be responsible for participating. The course
will focus on interaction across disciplines and on exploring
differences in
conceptualization and approaches to knowledge-production
across disciplines.
STEP 4. Graduate Course Requirement
The course requirement has two
sub-goals: exposure to differing methodological and epistemological
approaches to the study of technology
and society, and exposure to a range of substantive subject
areas, independent of method and epistemology.
The main methodological and epistemological divide we aim to
bridge is that between the humanities and social sciences.
While clear boundaries
can not in all cases be identified, often the social sciences
tend toward more positivistic approaches to theorizing and
the organization
of evidence, while the humanities tend away from such approaches.
It is important that students seeking a multi-disciplinary
understanding of technology and society be exposed to inquiry
from both ends of
this and other spectrums that often separate the social
sciences and humanities. Therefore the first consideration
in our curriculum
requirement is that the menu of courses be constructed
in such a way as to encourage study of both the humanities
and the social sciences.
The main substantive concerns for the emphasis involve
breadth with respect to several topics.
Much of the disparate
literature
on technology
and society falls into one or more of two large categories:
1) study of cultures, meanings, and other human constructs;
2) study
of human
behavior, organizations, and social structures. The first
of these topics tends to be emphasized by scholars working
in
humanistic traditions,
though this is not exclusively the case, while the second
tends to appear chiefly but not exclusively in the social
sciences.
The second
consideration in the curriculum is that the students’ course
work be organized around substantive breadth in these areas.
Therefore the curriculum is organized to accomplish both
these methodological-epistemological goals and substantive
goals.
The course requirement is completion of four 4-unit courses with a grade of
B or better, with two courses in each of the following two areas:
*Currently Approved List of Emphasis Courses (1/2007).
Area 1: Culture and History
HIST 201HS (Course title varies, approved for technology titles
with McCray
or Osborne)
ENG 236 (Course title varies, approved for technology titles with
Liu, Raley, and Warner)
ANTH 255 Anthropology of Mass Media and Popular Culture (M. Yang)
Area 2: Society and Behavior
COMM 222B Global Organizational Communication (C. Stohl)
COMM 222C Technology and Organization
SOC 224 Collective Behavior and Social Movement (Earl)
SOC 294 Internet and Social Science Research (Earl)
COMM 213 Mass Communication and the Individual (Metzger)
POLS 596 Information Technology and Politics (Bimber, when lead
as a
seminar, contact Emphasis
Director about directed readings)
No more than one course taken in the student's home department
can be used toward fulfilling the Emphasis course requirement.
*New courses may be added to
the list by consent of the Technology and Society Faculty. Students
may also petition for the acceptance of another graduate
course in substitution for
one on the approved list. Petitions
are approved
by the Steering Committee of the Technology and Society Faculty.
STEP 5. Dissertation Requirement
The purpose of the dissertation requirement is integration
of students’ course
work into their own research. For completion of the Emphasis, a student's
dissertation must have relevance to at least one of the two
Emphasis areas.
In addition, the student’s
dissertation committee should include at least one member from a
department other than that of the student’s own, typically
from the list of faculty offering Emphasis-approved courses
under the two areas.
In cases
where students
wish to include a faculty member not offering an Emphasis-approved
course, written permission is required from the faculty advisory
committee.
