2025-2026 Catalog

HIPS 18301. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization I: Ancient Science and Medicine. 100 Units.

This undergraduate course represents the first quarter of the Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization general education sequence. Taking these courses in sequence is recommended but not required. This quarter will focus on science and medicine in societies across the ancient world. Students will gain an introduction to methods of healing and knowing practiced in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America before 1500. Students will also acquire an understanding of the many questions that historical research raises for our own understanding of contemporary medicine and science, and some of the methods that historians use to bring the past to light. Topics include ancient surgery and pharmacology; the manifold meanings of "disease;" the function and recognition of "the body," of "mind," and of perception; how to acquire "good" and "true" knowledge; continuity and discontinuity of beliefs and practices over time and place; and exchange of ideas and materials across cultures, among other subjects.

Instructor(s): Michael Rossi     Terms Offered: Winter. Offered in Winter 2025
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 17311

HIPS 18401. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization II: History of Medicine 1500 to 1900. 100 Units.

This course examines the theory and practice of medicine between 1500 and 1900. Topics include traditional early modern medicine; novel understandings of anatomy, physiology, and disease from the Renaissance on; and new forms of medical practice, training, and knowledge-making that developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Instructor(s): M. Rossi     Terms Offered: Spring. Course is offered in Spring 2025.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 17411

HIPS 18402. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization II: The Scientific Revolution. 100 Units.

This course focuses on one of the most radical transformations in the history of Western thought: the so-called "Scientific Revolution." In addition to analyzing the origin and development of Copernicanism, Galilean mechanics, and Paracelsian alchemy-among other revolutionary ideas-we will examine several institutional and methodological innovations that profoundly altered how early modern Europeans investigated the natural world, including the advent of the experimental philosophy and the creation of scientific academies.

Instructor(s): Zachary Barr     Terms Offered: Winter. Offered Winter 2025
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 17412

HIPS 18504. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization III: Computation, Culture & Society. 100 Units.

In SCSIII: Computation, Culture & Society, we consider the rise of computation and computers from ancient, analog efforts through state calculations and steampunk computers of the 19th Century to the emergence of digital computers, programming languages, screens and personal devices, artificial intelligence and neural networks, the Internet and the web. Along the way, we explore how the fantasy and reality of computation historically reflected human and organizational capacities, designed as prosthetics to extend calculation and control. We further consider how computers and computational models have come to influence and transform 20th and 21st Century politics, economics, science, and society. Finally, we examine the influence of computers and AI on imagination, structuring the utopias and dystopias through which we view the future. Students will read original texts and commentary, manipulate analog and digital hardware, software, networks and AI, and contribute to Wikipedia on the history and the social and cultural implications of computing.

Instructor(s): J. Evans     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025 Quarter.
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20526, HIST 17514

HIPS 11300. Science Communication: Crafting a Science Think Piece. 100 Units.

Science think pieces are an important genre of public writing. Think pieces are longform journalism typically ranging between 2,000 and 5,000 words that appear in print and online publications. Readers of all kinds turn to science think pieces to understand critical issues in STEM fields and get a big picture perspective. Science think pieces provide deep context, informed perspective, and expert synthesis of the most recent data and findings. They have the power to shape public opinion and influence science policy. This course guides students through the process of conceiving, developing, pitching, writing, and potentially publishing an engaging and persuasive science think piece. Through reading-inspired group discussions and instructor-led writing projects, the course introduces students to current theories and best practices of science communication as well as everyday processes in science journalism and public-facing science writing. Students will finish the course with a polished science think piece ready for submission to potential venues for publication. No prior knowledge of science communication is required.

Instructor(s): Jordan Bimm     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): Three quarters of physical or biological (including neuroscience) sciences. Third- or fourth-year standing or consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): PHSC 28104, SCPD 11300

HIPS 11800. Introduction to the Field of Science Communication. 100 Units.

Communicating accurately and effectively about science to non-expert audiences is quickly becoming an essential skill for scientists and non-scientists alike. This course provides a foundation in science communication theory and practice that prepares students to communicate about their own research, or someone else's across a wide range of media formats and situations. Broadly scoped, this course covers the history of science communication, different approaches to engaging public audiences about science, theories of communication and science education, as well as practical training in science journalism and science writing. Each week we will focus our learning by investigating and analyzing a different historical case study from the perspective of science communication including breakthroughs, emergencies, debates, innovations, controversies, and everyday applications of research. Concepts and skills we will cover include the deficit model of science communication, communicating uncertainty and risk, engaging diverse stakeholders, addressing misconceptions, fact checking to ensure scientific accuracy, and communicating about major discoveries and everyday practice. No prior knowledge of science communication is required. All students wishing to minor in SCPD must take SCPD 11800 Introduction to the Field of Science Communication, which will cover foundational theories, practices, and cases in science communication.

Instructor(s): Jordan Bimm     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SCPD 11800

HIPS 15005. Engineered Environments in East Asia. 100 Units.

Environments in East Asia have drastically changed in the twentieth century. Seawalls and cities rose in coastal areas that were previously untouched along Japan's coast; cement-dams replaced dirt dikes that divided the Han river in the Korean Peninsula; and railroads expanded into far-off regions in China, redefining both cities and hinterlands. These are three archetypal examples of technically complex projects that this course will explore. These industrial and technological projects of a national, regional, or global scale connect past to present and pose questions to our future about climate change, public health crises, and energy anxieties. This class asks what engineered environments are and how they shape our everyday life. We will visit three types of archetypal megaprojects-the railway system, the transformation of ocean space, and the building of dams--in China, Japan, and Korea that have shaped and continue to shape the environments of East Asia, an economically vibrant, politically challenging, and ecologically diverse region, with a deep history and vibrant technological innovations even today. We will discuss the politics and science behind the building of each megaproject, the interconnected history among them, and more importantly, how each project generated its environment, shaped the relationship between human societies and nature, and influences our current understanding of the region.

Instructor(s): Y. Dong
Note(s): All the course materials are in English. In this course, we will engage with primary documents that are translated into English and other scholarship on specific sites, including newspaper reports, journal articles, and documentaries. Primary sources include literature, memoirs, and visual images. For students who do not have background knowledge on the political and social history of East Asia, this course also assigns readings from historical textbooks to help students place megaprojects in each’s historical context. There are no prerequisites for this course. There will be a component of short lectures in some meetings.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 15005

HIPS 18302. Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization I: Ancient Science. 100 Units.

This undergraduate course represents the first quarter of the Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilization general education sequence. Taking these courses in sequence is recommended but not required. This quarter will focus on aspects of ancient Greek and Roman intellectual history, their perceived continuities or discontinuities with modern definitions and practices of science, and how they were shaped by the cultures, politics, and aesthetics of their day. Topics surveyed include history-writing and ancient science, the cosmos, medicine and biology, meteorology, ethnography and physiognomics, arithmetic and geometry, mechanics, taxonomy, optics, astronomy, and mechanical computing.

Instructor(s): Daniel Kranzelbinder     Terms Offered: Autumn. Offered in Autumn 2024

HIPS 20107. Nature and Technology in the Capitalist Mode of Production. 100 Units.

The crisis of nature and technology is at the heart of the 21st century mode of production as unprecedented planetary scale ecological destruction, climate change, and exhaustion of fossil fuels undercut the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. At the same time, novel techno-natural fixes are being designed to contain the crises immanent to the life process of capital. However, these movements are far from seamless; new tensions, contradictions, and horizons of struggles emerge making a critical inquiry of these concepts urgent to Anthropological thinking. In this course, the students will be introduced to foundational approaches to these problems. The first half of the course will intensively engage with dialectical materialist frameworks to understand the interrelationship between nature, technology, and consciousness in the capitalist mode of production. From this engagement, we will derive critical concepts that will be used to engage with the pertinent questions of planetary scale appropriation of human, non-human and more-than-human life in emergent anthropological theory and ethnographic literature. In doing so, our goal is to reflect on a series of questions: What is the place of nature and technology in the capitalist mode of production? How and if they embody limits to the workings of capital? How does anthropology allow us to develop new political and theoretical horizons that emerge in the wake of these developments?

Instructor(s): Ashima Mittal
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 20107, ANTH 10107

HIPS 20205. Race in African History. 100 Units.

This course examines the category of race in African history from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. It references the legacies of earlier identity constructions in the creation of these categories, as well as analyzing its transnational and trans-imperial dimensions. The class combines intellectual, cultural, and social history to illuminate the actors, encounters, and debates animating this dynamic field of study-moving beyond assumptions of African societies as spaces of ethnic-and not racialized-identities to examine the construction of difference through transnational history of science, gender and sexuality studies, histories of slavery, Middle Eastern colonial projects, as well as the invention of the category of "native" in European colonial discourse. Are categories of differences primarily due to European colonialism, as many claim? Or are they embedded in a more complex configuration coming from settler colonial projects, national liberation struggles, and postcolonial nativist discourses? Students examine case studies from across the continent-from Ghana to Sudan to South Africa-paying close attention to experiences of Asian, Arab, and mixed-race peoples navigating colonial and postcolonial African states; while keeping an eye on how debates about difference, diaspora, and nationalism in North America and Europe inform discussions of race in Africa, and how Africans shape discourses of race in colonial metropoles and the United States.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who have not take African Civiliizations I, II, and III are asked to read African History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007) in preparation for this course.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 20205, RDIN 20205, GNSE 22225

HIPS 20223. Magic, Miracles, and Medicine: Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World. 100 Units.

This course examines the complex issues surrounding the body, disability, and medical care in antiquity. It will be guided by a variety of questions, such as what was the root cause of bodily infirmity and disease in antiquity? How did cultural views of sex, gender, and race influence perceptions of the body and what it meant to be able bodied? Such questions are significant when considering what kind of access to healthcare marginalized groups had. In order to explore these questions, we will examine ancient Mediterranean views of medical care through material remains (e.g., magical amulets and healing shrines) and textual evidence (e.g., Galen and Hippocrates). After considering this wider cultural context, we will examine treatments in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and early Christianity. We will also explore how Christian concepts of medical care evolved in light of accounts of Jesus as a divine healer. In addition to this ancient evidence, we will engage with modern disability studies and sociological analyses to better orient our readings. At the end of the course, students will be better acquainted with the complex relationship between religion and medicine and how that affects modern healthcare decisions.

Instructor(s): Richard Zaleski     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CCTS 21021, JWSC 20923, RLST 20223, HIST 25305, KNOW 20223, HLTH 20223

HIPS 20401. Philosophy of Mind. 100 Units.

This is a survey of some of the central questions in the philosophy of mind. These questions include: What is consciousness? How can mental states represent things in the world? How do our minds relate to our bodies? Do we have free will? Can we blame someone for the beliefs or desires she has? What are the emotions? To help us with these questions, we will focus on 20th-century analytic work (by Putnam, Nagel, Searle, Jackson, Dennett, Chalmers, Block, Dretske, and others), but we will also read important historical texts on the nature of the mind by Aristotle, Descartes, and Hume.

Instructor(s): B. Callard     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 23501

HIPS 20506. Cities, Space, Power: Introduction to urban social science. 100 Units.

This lecture course provides a broad, multidisciplinary introduction to the study of urbanization in the social sciences. The course surveys a broad range of research traditions from across the social sciences, as well as the work of urban planners, architects, and environmental scientists. Topics include: theoretical conceptualizations of the city and urbanization; methods of urban studies; the politics of urban knowledges; the historical geographies of capitalist urbanization; political strategies to shape and reshape the built and unbuilt environment; cities and planetary ecological transformation; post-1970s patterns and pathways of urban restructuring; and struggles for the right to the city.

Instructor(s): N. Brenner     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Mandatory for students to attend a Friday discussion section
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 30506, PLSC 20506, CEGU 20506, PPHA 30506, MAPS 30506, ARCH 20506, SOCI 20506, SOCI 30506, CCCT 30506, ENST 20506, CHST 20506, PLSC 30506, CHSS 30506

HIPS 20574. How to Think Sociologically. 100 Units.

This course tackles the "big problem" of low sociological literacy. When faced with the problems of the world, people usually resort to economic, biological, or ideological explanations. They cite self-interest, genetically encoded drives, or some pre-given understanding of how the world works. The price of such simple frameworks is an impoverished view of the world, a lack of understanding and empathy, and a predisposition to orthodoxy or ideology. In this sense, low sociological literacy is a big problem in the world today. This course was developed in the belief that the capacity to think sociologically-that is, to understand people as socially embedded, or shaped by the situations in which they find themselves-can enrich our understanding of the world immeasurably. It can give us analytical purchase on a number of social problems, including poverty; social inequality; racial, class, and gender discrimination; urban segregation; populism and political polarization; and organizational wrongdoing (we'll discuss each of these topics in class). A sociological perspective can also transform how we engage with the world, promoting an ethics of understanding and empathy--as opposed to the ethics apparently prevalent today: judging people and insisting they change.

Instructor(s): T. Huttenlocher     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Priority registration for Sociology 3rd year majors
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 30574, SOCI 30574, SOCI 20574

HIPS 20576. Social Theory for the Digital Age. 100 Units.

Society rearranges itself, though we don't always know where it is heading. When the postmodern moment had arrived in the 1980s it perplexed social theorists, hence its characterization as simply a "post"-stage of modernity. Digitization is one answer to the question of direction of change in the last decades. In this class, we take the ongoing transformations that we attribute to digital media as a starting point to ask what challenges they provide to social theory that may force us to reconsider some of our most basic concepts and premises. We will understand the term digital age broadly to refer to the rise of algorithms, sensors, (big) data, machine learning, and computational methods, all developments that swirl in and around the Artificial Intelligence scene and intersect with and replace purely human relations. The class gives particular attention to concepts such as action and interaction, embodiment, social situations, subjectivity and autonomy, as wells as society as communication.

Instructor(s): K. Knorr     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 30576, ANTH 30576, SOCI 30576, SOCI 20576, ANTH 20576

HIPS 20608. Remaking the Prairie: The Cultural Politics of Ecological Restoration. 100 Units.

This course uses the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie as a case study to understand the environmental and cultural challenges of ecological restoration. In essence, we will look at the Midewin as an environmental humanities problem, asking the questions: What does it mean to restore a landscape or an ecosystem? What values or biases are in place in ecological restoration and how do we overcome them? The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, managed by the US Forest Service, is a restored prairie on the former site of the WII era Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. Throughout the September Term, we will visit the site several times to meet with Forest Service employees, participate in environmental restoration work, collect data for ecological studies, and learn more about the complicated history of the prairie and efforts to restore it. Analysis of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and ecological restoration more broadly will be done from an interdisciplinary lens that takes seriously the sometimes-competing stakes of indigeneity, agriculture, settler colonialism, ecology, history, militarism, and recreation, among others.

Instructor(s): Jessica Landau     Terms Offered: Summer
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 20806, CEGU 20806, ENST 20806

HIPS 20700. Introduction to Logic. 100 Units.

An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

Instructor(s): 200/300: Ginger Schultheis (Autumn 2025); 200: Gregory Brown (Spring 2026)     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Note(s): Students may count either PHIL 20100 or PHIL 20012, but not both, toward the credits required for graduation.
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 33500, PHIL 30000, PHIL 20100

HIPS 20962. Nature's Authority. 100 Units.

From ancient times to the present, nature's authority has been invoked by revolutionaries and reactionaries alike to justify social, political, and economic arrangements made by humans. Despite much trenchant philosophical criticism, nature seems to an irresistible resource in very human debates about power, work, sex, money, and much else. This seminar asks why this tradition has been so persistent and pervasive and where nature's authority comes from. Readings will emphasize primary sources, from Aristotle to contemporary environmentalists. This course will meet two times per week for 3 hours, during the 1st five weeks of the quarter, March 28 - April 27.

Terms Offered: Spring. Course will be taught Spring 2022
Note(s): Instructor consent required. Primarily aimed at graduate students, but also open to well-qualified undergraduates.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 45005, CHSS 30962, SCTH 30962

HIPS 21000. Introduction To Ethics. 100 Units.

An exploration of some of the central questions in metaethics, moral theory, and applied ethics. These questions include the following: are there objective moral truths, as there are (as it seems) objective scientific truths? If so, how can we come to know these truths? Should we make the world as good as we can, or are there moral constraints on what we can do that are not a function of the consequences of our actions? Is the best life a maximally moral life? What distribution of goods in a society satisfies the demands of justice? Can beliefs and desires be immoral, or only actions? What is "moral luck"? What is courage? (A)

Instructor(s): Candace Vogler     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 23107, PHIL 21000

HIPS 21406. Britain 1760-1880: The Origins of Fossil Capitalism. 100 Units.

Britain rose to global dominance after 1760 by pioneering the first fossil-fuel economy. This course explores the profound impact of coal and steam on every aspect of British society, from politics and religion to industrial capitalism and the pursuit of empire. Such historical investigation also serves a second purpose by helping us see our own fossil-fuel economy with fresh eyes through direct comparison with Victorian energy use. How much does the modern world owe to the fossil capitalism of the Victorians? Assignments include short essays that introduces students to primary sources (texts, artifacts, and images) and a longer paper that examines in greater depth a specific aspect of the age of steam.

Instructor(s): F. Albritton Jonsson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 31406, CEGU 21406, CHSS 31406, CEGU 31406, HIST 21406

HIPS 21407. The Vocation of a Scientist. 100 Units.

Max Weber wrote that to be a scientist one needed a "strange intoxication" with scientific work and a "passionate devotion" to research as a calling. And yet, such passion seemed to conflict with the ideal of value-neutral inquiry. This class considers the vocation of science since the turn of the twentieth century. What political, economic, and cultural forces have shaped scientific professions in the United States? How are scientists represented in public culture? How was American science experienced during the colonization of the Philippines? By exploring these questions, this class will examine the values and norms that make science into a meaningful vocation.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 21407, ANTH 22129

HIPS 21408. History of Medicine. 100 Units.

This course surveys the history of medicine from the medieval period to the present. How did medicine emerge as a defined body of knowledge? To what extent do diseases and disorders have an independent existence, and to what extent are they cultural constructs? How have social mores-particularly those related to religion, class, nationality, race, and gender-influenced the ways in which health was and is understood and maintained, and illness treated? What does it mean to practice medicine ethically, and how has that changed over time? Topics include the emergence and evolution of the medical profession, the history of medical research and method, the interpretation and treatment of the unhealthy and healthy alike, eugenics, euthanasia, the quest for immortality, and the changing relationship between technology and disease.

Equivalent Course(s): CCTS 21408, HIST 25314, KNOW 21408

HIPS 21409. History of Extraterrestrial Life. 100 Units.

In 2014, the Vatican Radio made a splash when it reported that the pontiff, Pope Francis, condoned the baptism of extraterrestrials-if they so desired it. "Who are we to close doors?" he asked rhetorically. It was both a metaphor for spiritual inclusion and an accurate representation of the modern Vatican's position on the possibilities of modern astrobiology and the search for extrasolar planets, fields whose rapid growth over the past two decades make serious consideration of extraterrestrial life seem like a uniquely modern phenomena. Its history, however, is in fact many centuries old. In this course we will examine the development of beliefs concerning life in the universe from the sixteenth century to the present. How did historical actors understand the nature, abilities, and location of extraterrestrial life, and its relationship to man and god? We will analyze connections between these beliefs and contemporary political, social, scientific, and religious developments. These include the role of the plurality of worlds in the debates over heliocentrism, its impact and application in the context of deism and social and political freethought, its literary and artistic depictions and use as a tool of satire and social commentary, its influence on natural philosophy, its decline and the subsequent rise of alien conspiracists and their critics, and how and why conceptions of the extraplanetary other took a dark and sinister turn toward the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 24917, ECEV 31409, KNOW 21409

HIPS 21410. Politics of Technoscience in Africa. 100 Units.

Euro-American discourse has often portrayed Africa as either a place without science and technology or as the home of deep and ancient wisdom. European imperialists used the alleged absence of science and technology as a justification for colonialism while pharmaceutical companies sought out African knowledge about healing plants. In addition to their practical applications, science and technology carry significant symbolic weight in discussions about Africa. In this class, we examine the politics of scientific and technical knowledge in Africa with a focus on colonialism and its aftermath. How have different people produced and used knowledge about the environment, medicine, and technology? What kinds of knowledge count as indigenous and who gets credit for innovation? How have independent African governments dealt with the imperial legacies of science? From the interpretation of archaeological ruins to the design of new medical technologies, this class will examine science and technology as political practice in Africa.

Equivalent Course(s): CRES 21410, KNOW 21410, ANTH 22165

HIPS 21411. Sex, Race, and Empire. 100 Units.

This course surveys how science, race, and gender interacted in the early modern Atlantic world from 1500-1800. We will critically examine how new modes of scientific inquiry brought Africans, Americans, and Europeans into contact and conflict. Along the way, we will ask how, why, and with consequences imperial science created new knowledge claims about human inequality, especially racial and sexual difference. We will draw primarily on British, Iberian, and French imperial agendas in order to track the experiences of men and women from all corners of the Atlantic world, including indigenous peoples, enslaved black Africans, free people of color, and white Europeans. Through a variety of primary and secondary sources, we will uncover European aspirations to curate, control, and exploit the natural world and the agency of subjugated peoples in responding to and resisting these designs. Topics covered include natural history collecting and classification; the invention of racial theory; slavery and maroons; women, gender, and reproduction; consumption; and violence, resistance, and revolution.

Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 21411, HIST 25315, CRES 21411, GNSE 21411

HIPS 21413. Sex and Enlightenment Science. 100 Units.

What do a lifelike wax woman, a birthing dummy, and a hermaphrodite have in common? This interdisciplinary course seeks answers to this question by exploring how eighteenth-century scientific and medical ideas, technologies, and practices interacted with and influenced contemporary notions of sex, sexuality, and gender. In our course, the terms "sex," "Enlightenment," and "science" will be problematized in their historic contexts using a variety of primary and secondary sources. Through these texts, as well as images and objects, we will see how emerging scientific theories about sex, sexuality, and gender contributed to new understandings of the human, especially female, body. We will also see how the liberating potential of Enlightenment thought gave way to sexual and racial theories that insisted on fundamental human difference. Topics to be covered include theories of generation, childbirth, homosexuality, monstrosities, race and procreation, and hermaphrodites and questions about the "sex" of the enlightened scientist and the gendering of scientific practices.

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 21413, KNOW 21413, CHSS 31413, HIST 22218

HIPS 21414. What is Technology? 100 Units.

In the nineteenth century, the word "technology" referred to the science of the useful and industrial arts. While the term is today synonymous with machinery and other material tools, this contemporary usage dates only to the 1930s. A word once used to describe a specialist mode of writing about applied knowledge has come to refer to tools and their use.

Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 21414

HIPS 21419. Indigenous Knowledge and the Foundations of Modern Social Theory. 100 Units.

Indigenous people are often seen as "objects" of social theory; this course considers their role as subjects of social theory-makers of modern knowledge who made foundational contributions to basic ideas about humanity. We will take up three case studies, each of which highlights an indigenous people who unleashed a cascade of fresh thinking: the Australian Aborigines who influenced the ideas of Émile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud; the Native peoples of the Northwest Coast of America who stimulated Franz Boas to reconstruct the concept of culture; and the indigenous peoples of the Trobriand Islands who shaped Bronisław Malinowski's ideas about gifts, hospitality, and reciprocity. As we will see, much of what we call social theory turns out to rely on a vast archive of nonstate knowledge generated by indigenous intellectuals.

Instructor(s): Isaiah Lorado Wilner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 21419, KNOW 21419

HIPS 21700. Science Communication: Explorations of Mars. 100 Units.

Mars seems to be on everyone's mind. Is there life there? Will humans ever set foot on the surface? Should we try to establish a settlement? How did we become obsessed with the Red Planet in the first place? This course will prepare you to communicate effectively about space science and join conversations about Mars happening across society. Through readings, activities, and discussions focused on history, science, and culture we will build an understanding of important figures, events, ideas, and trends required to communicate about Mars. A major focus will be learning how Mars has factored into different social and cultural movements here on Earth, including theological debates, military conquest, scientific exploration, and commercial settlement. We combine this foundation with theories and practices from science communication, including how to engage non-expert audiences, explain complex terms and concepts, convey uncertainty and ambiguity, and counter misinformation and conspiracy theories. The course moves from the earliest visual observations of Mars to present-day robotic missions on the planet's surface, and also considers plans for future human exploration and habitation. Students can expect a deepened understanding of our important cosmic neighbor and how to think, write, and speak about it. No prior knowledge of Mars is required.

Instructor(s): Jordan Bimm     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 26070, SCPD 11700

HIPS 22000. Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. 100 Units.

This class will be a survey of major themes in contemporary philosophy of science. Topics will include inductivism, Popper's deductivism, Kuhn's conception of science, and Bayesianism. Towards the end of the course as a case study we will look at the debate about whether the existence of multiple universes should be considered a genuine scientific hypothesis. (B)

Instructor(s): Kevin Davey     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25109, PHIL 22000

HIPS 22001. Introduction to Science Studies. 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of science, medicine, and technology. During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists raised original, interesting, and consequential questions about the sciences. Often their work drew on and responded to each other, and, taken together, their various approaches came to constitute a field, "science studies." The course furnishes an initial guide to this field. Students will not only encounter some of its principal concepts, approaches and findings, but will also get a chance to apply science-studies perspectives themselves by performing a fieldwork project. Among the topics we may examine are: the sociology of scientific knowledge and its applications; actor-network theories of science; constructivism and the history of science; and efforts to apply science studies approaches beyond the sciences themselves.

Instructor(s): Michael Paul Rossi     Terms Offered: Winter. Offered in Winter 2024
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 32000, KNOW 31408, SOCI 40137, HLTH 22001, ANTH 32305, HIST 44906

HIPS 22207. The Social History of Alcohol in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.

This course will examine the multifaceted role that beer, wine, cider, and spirits played in European society and will challenge students to consider how a seemingly familiar commodity was a key component in shaping early modern social relations. It will focus on several major themes that have guided historical inquiry and show how hard drink intersects with and entangles these histories. Major themes will include alcohol and gender relations; state legality and taxation; moral policing; environmental projects and crises; labor and technology; and colonialism. Using both primary and secondary sources will push students to look below the surface to see how drink alternately challenged or reinforced social hierarchies, much as it continues to do in the present time.

Instructor(s): C. Rydell
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 22207, HLTH 22207

HIPS 22210. Disease, Health, and the Environment in Global Context. 100 Units.

Recent concerns about infectious diseases and the environmental determinants of health have attracted renewed attention to previous accounts of disease, many of which have significantly shaped human political, social, economic, and environmental history. Former examples include: respiratory diseases and sexually transmitted infections among Indigenous communities during the age of European exploration and colonial settlement; nutritional deficiencies resulting from the forced relocation and labor of enslaved Africans throughout the Atlantic World; "filth" diseases and urban sanitary reform during the Bacteriological Revolution; zoonotic diseases and pest control campaigns during imperial expansion projects across the Caribbean; and cancers borne of industrial pollutants in the modern era. Through readings, in-class discussions, and written assignments that culminate in a final project, students in this course will explore how natural and human-induced environmental changes have altered our past experiences with disease and future prospects for health. First, we will examine how early writers understood the relationship between geography, environment, hereditary constitution, race, gender, and human health. We will then analyze the symbiotic relationship among pathogens, human hosts, and their physical environments. Finally, we will explore how social factors and human interventions have influenced the distribution of infectious diseases and environmental health risks.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts towards the CEGU/ENST 4th year Capstone requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 22100, HIST 25033, HLTH 22100, CEGU 22100, GLST 22101, CEGU 32100

HIPS 22305. Who deserves what? Analyzing inequalities in institutional decision-making. 100 Units.

A key element of societal structuring is producing and reproducing ways to identify ourselves and categorize each other. Ways of differentiating often carry with them implicit or explicit moral assessments - is this difference good or bad, valuable or not? Government institutions and other systems of social organization make decisions and allocate resources based on markers of difference. Therefore, inequalities based on morally loaded categories become embedded in systems that decide who is deserving of earning a diagnosis, health care, a legal status or other resources. This course looks at the ways people become labeled (desirably or not), how these labels impact institutional or systemic decision-making, and how moral assessments are present in justifications of such decisions. Over the quarter we will introduce and apply the analytic of deservingness and investigate decision-making processes (e.g., diagnosis, legal claims, insurance coverage) in various geographic locations and settings with a focus on medical, legal, and bureaucratic institutions. We will explore themes of objectivity, evaluation, expert intervention, inequality, systemic violence and moral justification. Primary course questions include: How do institutions and governments make decisions? How are their decisions justified? What role do experts and expert knowledge play in decision-making? As an analytic tool, what does deservingness make visible about decision-making processes and their impacts?

Instructor(s): A. Prior     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Undergrad distribution: C
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 22305, HLTH 22305, CHDV 22305

HIPS 22310. The Commons: Environment and Economy in Early Modern Europe. 100 Units.

Drawing on case studies from Europe and the Atlantic world, this course will track changes in land use and property rights over the early modern period (ca. 1500-1800), inviting students to reflect on the relationship between natural environments (woodlands, waterways, pasture) and histories of state formation, economic growth, rebellion, and colonialism. Organizing concepts and debates will include the tragedy of the commons, moral economies, sustainability and scarcity, the "organic economy" of the old regime, primitive accumulation, and economic takeoff. Readings will encompass classic works in agrarian, environmental, and social history (i.e., Marc Bloch, E. P. Thompson, Silvia Federici, James Scott, Carolyn Merchant) as well as primary documents and contemporary texts (i.e., More, Bacon, Smith, Paine, Babeuf). We will also reflect on how these histories bear on debates about land use and natural resources in the present day.

Instructor(s): O. Cussen     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENST 22310, HIST 22310

HIPS 22708. Planetary Britain, 1600-1900. 100 Units.

What were the causes behind Britain's Industrial Revolution? In the vast scholarship on this problem, one particularly heated debate has focused on the imperial origins of industrialization. How much did colonial resources and markets contribute to economic growth and technological innovation in the metropole? The second part of the course will consider the global effects of British industrialization. To what extent can we trace anthropogenic climate change and other planetary crises back to the environmental transformation wrought by the British Empire? Topics include ecological imperialism, metabolic rift, the sugar revolution, the slave trade, naval construction and forestry, the East India Company, free trade and agriculture, energy use and climate change.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 32708, KNOW 22708, KNOW 32808, HIST 22708, CHSS 32708, ENST 22708

HIPS 22800. Experiencing Madness: Empathic Methods in Cultural Psychiatry. 100 Units.

This course provides students with an introduction to the phenomenological approach in cultural psychiatry, focusing on the problem of "how to represent mental illness" as a thematic anchor. Students will examine the theoretical and methodological groundings of cultural psychiatry, examining how scholars working in the phenomenological tradition have tried to describe the lived experiences of various forms of "psychopathology" or "madness." By the end of the course, students will have learned how to describe and analyze the social dimension of a mental health experience, using a phenomenologically-grounded anthropological approach, and by adopting a technical vocabulary for understanding the lived experiences of mental illness (for instance, phenomena, life-world, being-in-the-world, intentionality, epoché, embodiment, madness, psychopathology, melancholia/depression, schizophrenia, etc). In addition, given the ongoing problematic of "how to represent mental illness," students will also have the opportunity to think through the different ways of presenting their analysis, both in the form of weekly blog entries and during a final-week mock-workshop, where they will showcase their work in a creative medium appropriate to that analysis.

Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 35135, CHSS 32800, MAPS 32800, CHDV 32822, ANTH 24355

HIPS 22820. Reading Darwin's Origin of Species. 100 Units.

In this course, we will read carefully each chapter of Darwin's Origin and discuss it in detail-especially the logic and rhetoric of his arguments and special features. Each student will takes us through a chapter of the 1st edition, noting any changes introduced in subsequent editions, and, then, a general discussion will ensue guided by the instructor.

Instructor(s): R. Richards     Terms Offered: Autumn. Offered in Autumn 2024.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35211, CHSS 32820, HIST 25211

HIPS 23107. Biodiversity: Past and Present. 100 Units.

Biodiversity is the foundation of all life, essential to human flourishing and economic growth. This course offers a historical approach to biodiversity, including environmental, economic, and intellectual perspectives. How has biodiversity shaped societies over time? How have humans learned to value or ignore biodiversity? Why is a sixth mass extinction increasingly likely?

Instructor(s): Fredrik Albritton Jonsson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 23107, HIST 25034

HIPS 23570. Power and Responsibility in the Anthropocene. 100 Units.

Humanity's immense impact on Earth's systems has led some scientists to claim that we have entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Humans' influence on Earth's landscape, climate system, and biodiversity inspires many to ask, in turn, What should be done about humankind's planetary powers? Some scholars and religious leaders claim that people should take responsibility and influence Earth's systems for good ends, while others argue that we should radically scale down such power. Still others suggest that the Anthropocene requires us to entirely revise our ideas of power and responsibility and even develop new religious sensibilities. Through discussions and focused writing assignments, students in this class will explore and evaluate these and additional responses to the Anthropocene, paying specific attention to how Anthropocene ethical thought wrestles with the place of religion on a changing planet. The course culminates in an extended examination of how Anthropocene discourse conceals racial antagonisms and contemporary decolonial struggles.

Instructor(s): Colin Weaver     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CEGU 23507, RLST 23507, RDIN 23507, GLST 23507, ANTH 23507

HIPS 23810. Big Data and AI: Global Histories, Ethics, and Justice. 100 Units.

Algorithms, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence have become deeply ingrained in our daily lives, shaping how we interact with the world-from ChatGPT to Spotify's Smart Shuffle. These computational, statistical, and data-driven technologies have enabled remarkable breakthroughs in science and medicine and have fueled visions of an optimized, data-driven future. But alongside these advances come significant challenges. These technologies often reflect and amplify societal biases embedded in the vast datasets they are trained on, resulting in phenomena such as algorithmic bias, cognitive bias, exclusion bias, and sample bias. Moreover, are these technologies truly revolutionary? If they are built upon historical systems of thought and prejudice, how "new" are the modes of computation and data science they claim to represent? This course critically examines our current algorithmic and AI moment through the lenses of history, ethics, and justice. We will explore the global historical roots of data technologies, their ethical implications, and their impact on equity and social justice. No prior knowledge of AI, big data, or history is required. The class is discussion-based, and students are encouraged to share their own experiences with data technologies to enrich our conversations.

Instructor(s): Clever, Iris     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025.
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 33810

HIPS 23820. Reading William James's Principles of Psychology. 100 Units.

In this course we will read carefully the chapters of the Principles and discuss the various features of each chapter, especially the logic and rhetoric of James's arguments.

Instructor(s): R. Richards     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 33820, HIST 25212, HIST 35212

HIPS 23900. Biological and Cultural Evolution. 100 Units.

This course draws on readings in and case studies of language evolution, biological evolution, cognitive development and scaffolding, processes of socialization and formation of groups and institutions, and the history and philosophy of science and technology. We seek primarily to elaborate theory to understand and model processes of cultural evolution, while exploring analogies, differences, and relations to biological evolution. This has been a highly contentious area, and we examine why. We seek to evaluate what such a theory could reasonably cover and what it cannot.

Instructor(s): W. Wimsatt, S. Mufwene     Terms Offered: Not offered in 2025-2026
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing or consent of instructor required; core background in evolution and genetics strongly recommended.
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 23930, PHIL 32500, BPRO 23900, CHDV 33930, ANTH 28615, NCDV 27400, ANTH 38615, CHSS 37900, PHIL 22500, LING 11100, LING 39286

HIPS 24100. Is It Ethical to Have Children in the Climate Crisis? 100 Units.

Climate change is not just an urgent environmental crisis for scientists, engineers, and policy makers: it is a moral problem that also informs individual and intimate aspects of human life, including choices about reproduction and parenting. For example, a 2018 survey published in the New York Times found that young adults in the U.S. are having fewer children than they would otherwise prefer, in part due to concerns about climate change and overpopulation. In this course, we examine the moral dimensions of having and raising children in an era shaped by climate change, looking closely at two main questions: 1) Is it ethical to have children in light of the world that the next generation will inherit, which may include more extreme weather events, unvoluntary human migrations, diminished access to resources, and heightened insecurity? 2) Is it ethical to have children in the context of the affluent West, where consumptive human populations disproportionately contribute to the effects of climate change that impact the world's most vulnerable? We will examine various points of view on these questions, engaging material from the disciplines of environmental studies and ethics, science and technology studies, and religious and philosophical ethics. Responses from feminist, queer, Indigenous, Black, and religiously diverse authors (and intersections therein) will shape our course readings and discussions.

Instructor(s): Kristi Del Vecchio     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 24000, HLTH 24000, CCTS 21023, CEGU 24000, GNSE 23154, ENST 24000

HIPS 24103. Bioethics. 100 Units.

This is a lecture and discussion class that will explore how a variety of philosophic and religious thinkers approach the issues and problems of modern dilemmas in medicine and science in a field called bioethics. We will consider a general argument for your consideration: that the arguments and the practices from faith traditions and from philosophy offer significant contributions that underlie policies and practices in bioethics. We will use a case-based method to study how different traditions describe and defend differences in moral choices in contemporary bioethics. This class is based on the understanding that case narratives serve as another core text for the discipline of bioethics and that complex ethical issues are best considered by a careful examination of the competing theories as work themselves out in specific cases. We will examine both classic cases that have shaped our understanding of the field of bioethics and cases that are newly emerging, including the case of research done at our University. Through these cases, we will ask how religious traditions both collide and cohere over such topics as embryo research, health care reform, terminal illness, issues in epidemics and public health, and our central research question, synthetic biology research. This class will also explore how the discipline of bioethics has emerged to reflect upon such dilemmas, with particular attention to the role that theology and philosophy have played in such reflection.

Instructor(s): Laurie Zoloth
Note(s): Graduate students will meet in a separate section. This course meets the CS or LMCS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RETH 30600, SIGN 26069, HLTH 24103, RLST 24103

HIPS 24240. Buddhism and Science: A Critical Introduction. 100 Units.

Buddhism is the only religion able to cope with modern scientific needs." This quotation, often erroneously attributed to Albert Einstein, prompts the question: Why are such statements about Buddhism so easily taken nowadays as credible and plausible? Currently, it seems no other religion is held as compatible with science as Buddhism: From the recent 'mindfulness' craze in psychology and medicine, to the 'Emptiness' of quantum physics, Buddhism is uniquely hailed as a 'rational religion' whose insights anticipated modern science by millennia. Some even suggest it is not a 'religion' at all, but rather a sort of 'mind-science.' This course functions as both an introduction to Buddhism and a critical survey of its modern scientific reception. As we explore Buddhism's relationship to contemporary scientific theories in psychology and physics, we will be guided by questions such as: What methodological principles distinguish the practices of religion and science? What are the different ways they can be brought into relation? Why is Buddhism, in particular, singled out as uniquely scientific? What modern historical factors, like colonialism and secularization, contribute to this contemporary meme? Why does it matter whether Buddhism is compatible with science or not? What, exactly, is at stake in this relationship? And for whom? No prior study of Buddhism or the philosophy of science is expected.

Instructor(s): Jesse Berger     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts as a Cognitive Science extra-disciplinary course.
Equivalent Course(s): CCTS 21018, RLST 24240, KNOW 24240

HIPS 24352. Health, Value, Politics. 100 Units.

TBD

Instructor(s): Kaushik Sunder Rajan     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 24352, HLTH 24352

HIPS 24706. Science in the South: Decolonizing the Study of Knowledge in Latin America & the Caribbean. 100 Units.

This seminar will bridge anthropologies and histories of science, technology, and medicine to Latin American decolonial thought. Throughout Latin America, techno-scientific objects and practices, with their presumed origin in the Euro-Atlantic North, are often complexly entangled with neo-imperial projects of development and modernization that elongate social forms of colonization into the present. Technoscience and its objects, however, can also generate new creative, political, and life-enhancing potentials beyond or despite their colonial resonances, or even provide tools to ongoing struggles for decolonization. Together, seminar participants will explore what a decolonial approach to the study of science, technology, and medicine in the Global South, particularly in Latin America, has been and could become and how decolonial theory can inflect our own disciplinary, conceptual, and political commitments as anthropologists of technoscience.

Instructor(s): S. Graeter     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 24706, ANTH 23026

HIPS 24803. History of Sexuality and Sin. 100 Units.

Since Foucault's groundbreaking work on the History of Sexuality, we have become attuned to the effects of power and the political implications of the science of sexuality. While Foucault's text has offered a critical avenue to examine the secular state's administrations of sexuality, it begins with Christianity's techniques of power based on the confession of one's sex. The Christian formulation of the relationship between 'sex' and 'sin' is essential to understanding the techniques of power that connect sexuality, legality, criminality, normality, and transgression in modern secular contexts. In this class, we will begin with the critical questions of the History of Sexuality, then turn to primary texts in order to examine the way 'sex' and 'sin' became conceptually connected in Christianity, and finally interrogate the effects of this relation for medieval and modern politics. Over the course of these readings, we will trace the relation between the concepts and their effects to discern the histories of sexuality that lie at the root of contemporary debates on freedom, power, resistance, and desire. No prerequisites.

Instructor(s): Maureen Kelly     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 23152, RLST 24803, FNDL 24806, MDVL 24803

HIPS 24921. Darwinism and Literature. 100 Units.

In this course we will explore the notion that literary fiction can contribute to the generation of new knowledge of the human mind, human behavior, and human societies. Some novelists in the late 19th and early 20th century provided fictional portrayals of human nature that were grounded into Darwinian theory. These novelists operated within the conceptual framework of the complementarity of science and literature advanced by Goethe and the other romantics. At a time when novels became highly introspective and psychological, these writers used their literary craftsmanship to explore and illustrate universals aspects of human nature. In this course we read the work of several novelists such as George Eliot, HG Wells, Joseph Conrad, Jack London, Yuvgeny Zamyatin, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Italo Svevo, and Elias Canetti, and discuss how these authors anticipated the discoveries made decades later by cognitive, social, and evolutionary psychology.

Instructor(s): D. Maestripieri     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Distribution requirements: Undergraduate: A; Graduate: 1
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 27861, HIST 24921, KNOW 31418, HIST 34921, KNOW 21418, CHDV 37861, CHSS 34921

HIPS 25011. Debating Science: Legitimacy, Authority, and Knowledge. 100 Units.

How can we tell what counts as science? That is, how does science make itself legible as science? Are the social sciences "as scientific" as the natural sciences? By concerning itself with practices of legitimation, this course introduces students to the social study of science and linguistic anthropological theory. Students will consider the sociopolitical dimensions of scientific activity through a theoretical lens which takes language use as a form of social action. They will consider concepts such as reliability, reproducibility, and objectivity. Case studies will likely include climate change skepticism, education research, and neurodiversity. Students will end the quarter by writing and presenting on a current or historical topic of "scientific" debate, that is, debate on the scientific status of a field or claim.C

Instructor(s): Lily Ye     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 25011

HIPS 25014. Introduction to Environmental History. 100 Units.

How have humans interacted with the environment over time? This course introduces students to the methods and topics of environmental history by way of classic and recent works in the field: Crosby, Cronon, Worster, Russell, and McNeill, etc. Major topics of investigation include preservationism, ecological imperialism, evolutionary history, forest conservation, organic and industrial agriculture, labor history, the commons and land reform, energy consumption, and climate change. Our scope covers the whole period from 1492 with case studies from European, American, and British imperial history.

Instructor(s): F. Albritton Jonsson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25014, CEGU 25014, CHSS 35014, HIST 35014, ENST 25014

HIPS 25121. The Brazil-Argentina Nuclear Cooperation Agreement and Thermoelectric Transition in Brazil. 100 Units.

In this course we present a history of Brazil-Argentina nuclear cooperation and how Brazil is planning the transition of its electric matrix from predominantly hydraulic towards a mix with increased share of nuclear power. Proliferation risks are a main concern of international community when nuclear programs expansion is considered. The Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, created in 1991, has been fundamental in assuring the international community (via the International Atomic Energy Agency) that the nuclear materials and facilities of both countries are being used for peaceful purposes. Domestically, the debate has been environmental in nature, and concerns topics ranging from mining to power generation, and from radioactive materials disposal to radiation effects in living organisms and major accidents. These diplomatic, environmental, social and political issues are in turn dependent on technical details of the thermoelectric generating process, and this nexus of issues provides the topics for the course.

Instructor(s): Ramos, Alexandre     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Tinker Visiting Professor Autumn 2018
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 25121, LACS 35121, CHSS 35121

HIPS 25206. Digital Culture: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, and the Web. 100 Units.

In contrast to print culture and electronic culture, yet embedded in them, contemporary digital culture engages us in human-computer systems empowered as media for mobile communication in the global network society. In our conjoined online and offline environments, we inhabit human-computer hybrids in which (for instance) we learn, imagine, communicate, pay attention, and experience affect. How can we understand and critique our theories, concepts, practices, and technologies of intelligence and information in relation to the capacities of these digital machines with which we co-evolve? For exploring this question, our case studies include comparing artificial and natural intelligences, as well as examining algorithms and their socio-political impacts, in current web functionalities such as search (Google) and social media (Facebook,Twitter).

Instructor(s): Browning, Margot     Terms Offered: Course was not offered in 2019-20
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 25206, HUMA 25206

HIPS 25207. Mindfulness: Experience and Media. 100 Units.

How do we experience media (of all kinds) with (or without) awareness? Methods of mindfulness offer principles and practices of awareness focusing on mind, body, and embodied mind. Mindfulness (a flexible, moment-to-moment, non-judging awareness) is an individual experience and at the same time, practices of mindfulness can be a mode of public health intervention. Mindfulness involves social epistemologies of how we know (or don't know) collectively, as we interact with immediate sensory experience as well as with mediated communication technologies generating various sorts of virtual realities (from books to VR). In addition to readings and discussions, this course teaches embodied practices of attention and awareness through the curriculum of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Instructor(s): M. Browning     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HUMA 25207, MADD 14207, TAPS 20507, HLTH 25207

HIPS 25221. Feminism and the Politics of Abortion. 100 Units.

This course surveys feminist politics on abortion both historically and in the contemporary moment, with particular attention to abortion activism just before the Roe decision until the post-Dobbs present. We will draw on investigative journalism, academic research, and activist literature/movements to conceptualize both the feminist politics of abortion and resistance to government restrictions on access to reproductive healthcare. The course emphasizes the multifaceted ways feminists (both in the US and elsewhere) have conceptualized abortion and reproductive politics as well as frameworks of care, solidarity, and resistance. The course takes special interest in the ever-evolving post-Dobbs landscape by incorporating both current events and histories of the anti-abortion movement of the United States.

Instructor(s): Rhiannon Auriemma     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12137, PLSC 12137

HIPS 25222. Philosophies of Life Before and After DNA. 100 Units.

What is life? Most of us learn in high-school biology that life is some combination of growth, reproduction, and animation, and that it always contains DNA. Yet upon reflection, this definition is unsatisfying. This quarter we will explore some of the philosophical implications of modern biology by reading some of the best twentieth-century thinkers on the subject. The authors we will read have distinct theories about the nature of life, but they share the belief that understanding organic life, not simply spiritual or intellectual life, but the material basis of existence, is a fundamental task for thought. What makes these texts so exciting is that they were written during a time when biology itself was undergoing a series of profound revolutions, most notably (for us), the molecular turn and the discovery of the structure of DNA. As a result of these discoveries, ultimately some thinkers came to wonder, does life exist at all? After taking this course you will have a grounding in the core philosophical problems that are raised by modern biology about the concept of life. You will gain an understanding of the ways that science, far from simply providing answers, continually furnishes us with new questions about the nature of existence, many of which may be outside the scope of science itself. This course emphasizes close reading and careful analysis of texts. You will be asked "think with" the text before you begin to critique it.

Instructor(s): Gabel, Isabel     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 39625, CHSS 35222

HIPS 25270. Infrastructure Histories. 100 Units.

Dams, sewers, container ships, water pipes, power lines, air conditioning, and garbage dumps: the critical infrastructures that enable modern life are so often invisible, except when they fail. This course explores the historical role of infrastructure as a set of planet-spanning systems of resource extraction and crucial conduits of social and political power. Looking at cases from apartheid South Africa and the Suez Canal to Mumbai and Chicago itself, we will consider the relationship of infrastructure with capitalism, settler colonialism, and postcolonial development. We will see how forms of citizenship and exclusion have been shaped and negotiated via wires, leaky pipes, and improvised repairs, and we will consider perhaps the biggest question of all: In this age of ecological crisis, do energy-guzzling infrastructural systems have a strange form of more-than-human agency all of their own?

Instructor(s): L. Chatterjee     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 35270, ENST 25027, ARCH 25027, HIST 25027, HIST 35027

HIPS 25309. History of Perception. 100 Units.

Knowing time. Feeling space. Smelling. Seeing. Touching. Tasting. Hearing. Are these universal aspects of human consciousness, or particular experiences contingent upon time, place, and culture? How do we come to know about our own perceptions and those of others? This course examines these and related questions through detailed readings of primary sources, engagement in secondary scholarship in the history and anthropology of sensation, and through close work with participants' own sensations and perceptions of the world around them.

Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 34308, HIST 25309, CHSS 35309, ANTH 24308, KNOW 21404, HIST 35309, KNOW 31404

HIPS 25505. The Scientific Image. 100 Units.

This course explores the broad field of scientific image-making, focusing in particular on problems of formalism, abstraction, and realism. What makes a "good" scientific image? What kind of work do scientific images do? What philosophical, ideological, and political constraints underwrite attempts to render the complexity of events and entities in the world in stylized visual vocabularies? And how might we approach the work of aesthetics and style in image-making? We will examine these questions through a survey of several contemporary scholarly frameworks used for thinking about problems of representation in scientific practice, and will attend to such image-making practices as graphing, diagramming, modeling, doodling, illustrating, sculpting, and photographing, among other methods.

Instructor(s): M. Rossi     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 35205, HIST 35205, HIST 25205

HIPS 25525. Environmental Histories of the Global South. 100 Units.

Drawing on cases from Africa, Latin America, and especially Asia, this course explores key themes in the modern environmental history of the world beyond the rich industrialized North. Our investigations will focus on the ecological impacts of colonialism, war, and development, and how environmental management has helped to construct modern states and capitalist practices in turn. Ranging from the malarial plantations of the Caribbean to the forests of southeast Asia, we will analyze not-so-natural disasters like floods and chemical spills as well as the slow violence of deforestation and droughts. Combining primary sources with classic scholarship, we will encounter pioneering green activists like the original "tree huggers" of the Himalayas and environmental advocates for brutal population control. The course will conclude by examining the emergence of a newly assertive Global South in international climate negotiations, and its implications for the environmental history of our planet at large. The course is open to all, but may be of particular interest to students who have taken "Introduction to Environmental History."

Instructor(s): L. Chatterjee
Note(s): Assignments: in-class presentation and a long paper.
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 35025, HIST 25025, SALC 25025, CHSS 35525, ENST 25025, CEGU 25025, HIST 35024

HIPS 25610. Occult powers: divinatory and magical sciences in the Indian and Islamicate worlds. 100 Units.

This course offers a historical survey of occult sciences and practices in regions spanning from the Arab world to South Asia and focuses on the medieval and early modern periods. Far from being marginal, practices pertaining to what is now seen as the supernatural realm, such as magic and divination, were classified as sciences by reputable scholars, were sponsored by rulers, and had their specific written corpus and techniques. The practice of the occult also involved vernacular disciplines practiced by healers and fortune tellers for any client seeking help or advice. This course will look at a vast range of written and visual sources on subjects ranging from astrology, alchemy and magical cures, subjugation of planets and spirits, yogic superpowers, bibliomancy (book divination), oneiromancy (dream divination), physiognomy, letterism, charm making. It will look at the dynamics of cultural transfers as occult sciences were borrowed and adapted from the Greek to the Arab world and back to Latin Europe, and from Sanskrit to Persian in the Indian subcontinent.

Instructor(s): Jean Arzoumanov     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28883, SALC 25600, SALC 35600

HIPS 25808. Lab, Field, and Clinic: History and Anthropology of Medicine and the Life Sciences. 100 Units.

In this course we will examine the ways in which different groups of people-in different times and places-have understood the nature of life and living things, bodies and bodily processes, and health and disease, among other notions. We will address these issues principally, though not exclusively, through the lens of the changing sets of methods and practices commonly recognizable as science and medicine. We will also pay close attention to the methods through which scholars in history and anthropology have written about these topics, and how current scientific and medical practices affect historical and anthropological studies of science and medicine.

Instructor(s): M. Rossi
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25308, ANTH 24307, HLTH 25308, KNOW 30202, CHSS 35308, ANTH 34307, KNOW 25308, HIST 35308

HIPS 26000. History of Philosophy II: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. 100 Units.

A study of conceptions of the relation of the human intellect to reality in medieval and early modern Europe. Figures studied include Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Descartes, Elisabeth of the Palatinate, Conway, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant.

Instructor(s): Thomas Pendlebury     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Completion of the general education requirement in humanities required; PHIL 25000 recommended.
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 26000, MDVL 26000

HIPS 26021. Sense & Sensibility & Science. 100 Units.

In Sense & Sensibility & Science, you will learn how to better incorporate into your thinking and decision making the problem-solving techniques of science at its best. Many insights and conceptual tools from scientific thinking are of great utility for solving problems in your own day-to-day life. Yet, as individuals, as groups, as whole societies we fail to take full advantage of these methods. The focus in this course is on the errors humans tend to make, and the approaches scientific methodology has developed (and continues to develop) to minimize those errors. The course includes a discussion of the nature of science, what makes science such an effective way of knowing, how both non-scientific thinking and scientific thinking can go awry, and how we can reason more clearly and successfully as individuals, as members of groups, and as citizens of a democracy. This course is cross-listed with the McKeon Center in the UChicago College. This undergraduate course is simultaneously taught at UC Berkeley, Harvard and UChicago in spring. UChicago's spring 2024 course premiere built on a decade of experience developing and teaching the popular course at Berkeley and Harvard's adoption of its own version in 2021.

Instructor(s): Reid Hastie, Julia Koschinsky, and guest lecturers     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third or fourth-year standing.
Equivalent Course(s): DIGS 26021, SCPD 26021, KNOW 26021, PBPL 26021, SOSC 26021, BPRO 26021

HIPS 26043. The Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence. 100 Units.

With the emergence of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney, the production of computer-generated content has become accessible to a wide range of users and use cases. Knowledge institutions are particularly challenged to find adequate responses to changing notions of authorship as the mainstreaming of 'artificial' texts, audio-visual artifacts, and code is transforming our paradigms of communication in real-time. This course offers a survey of scholarship from the nascent field of critical AI studies to investigate the impact of AI, machine learning, and big data on knowledge production, representation, and consumption. In addition to theoretical discussions, we will conduct research-creation experiments aimed at documenting and evaluating emerging methods of AI-augmented content creation across text, image, and sound. Prospective students should demonstrate a substantial interest in media art and design and its connections to digital humanities, critical theory, and pedagogy. Experience with artistic and/or engineering practice is a plus. Please submit a 300 word max statement of interest to uhl@uchicago.edu by12/22 in order to be considered for enrollment.

Instructor(s): Andre Uhl     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 36043, CHSS 36043, KNOW 26043, CMST 36043, MACS 36043, ANTH 36043, CMST 26043, MADD 12043, ANTH 26043

HIPS 26078. Normal People. 100 Units.

Worrying about what's normal and what's not is an endemic feature of both our popular and scientific cultures. Is my intelligence above average? What about my height? Should I be feeling this way? Is there a pill for that? People seem to have always been concerned with fitting in, but the way of describing the general run of practices and conditions as "normal" is a rather recent phenomenon; testament to the vast influence of the modern human sciences on how we understand ourselves and others. This seminar will offer a broad historical overview of the ways that group behaviors and individual traits - bodily, moral, intellectual - were methodically described and measured in the past 200 years. We will become acquainted with the work of sociologists and anthropologists, psychiatrists and psychologists, polling experts and child development specialists, and ask about the kinds of people their efforts brought into being, from sexual perverts to the chronically depressed. The course will focus on the scientific theories and techniques used to distinguish the normal from the pathological, together with the new social institutions that translated this knowledge into forms of control. We will read Émile Durkheim on suicide rates and Cesare Lombroso on born criminals; learn about IQ tests and developmental milestones; and consider whether, with the advent of personalized medicine and self-data, we have indeed reached the "end of average."

Instructor(s): Tal Arbel     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): IRHU 36078, HLTH 26078, CHDV 36078, KNOW 36078, SOCI 40255, HIST 25213, IRHU 20009, HIST 35213, CHSS 36078

HIPS 26080. Technologies of the Body. 100 Units.

From models and measures to imaging technologies and genomic sequencing, technologies have profoundly shaped how we know and understand human bodies, health, and disease. Drawing on foundational and contemporary science and technology studies scholarship, this class will interrogate technologies of the body: how they are made, the ways in which they have changed understandings of the human condition, their impact on individual and collective identities, and the interests and values built into their very design. Course readings will examine how technologies render bodies knowable and also construct them in particular ways. We will also focus on how technologies incorporate, and reinforce, ideas about human difference. Students will conduct an independent, quarter-long research project analyzing a biomedical technology of their choice. By the end of this course, students will be able to identify and explain the social, political and economic factors that shape the design and production of biomedical technologies, as well as the impact of these technologies on biomedicine and the social world more broadly. This course provides students with an opportunity to conduct a quarter-long research project, using a biomedical technology as a case study. Students will be introduced to foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in science and technology studies, and will use this scholarship to conduct their independent research.

Instructor(s): Melanie Jeske     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 26080, GNSE 36080, CHSS 36080, SOCI 30345, KNOW 36080

HIPS 26230. Death Panels: Exploring dying and death through comics. 100 Units.

What do comics add to the discourse on dying and death? What insights do comics provide about the experience of dying, death, caregiving, grieving, and memorialization? Can comics help us better understand our own wishes about the end of life? This is an interactive course designed to introduce students to the field of graphic medicine and explore how comics can be used as a mode of scholarly investigation into issues related to dying, death, and the end of life. The framework for this course intends to balance readings and discussion with creative drawing and comics-making assignments. The work will provoke personal inquiry and self-reflection and promote understanding of a range of topics relating to the end of life, including examining how we die, defining death, euthanasia, rituals around dying and death, and grieving. The readings will primarily be drawn from a wide variety of graphic memoirs and comics, but will be supplemented with materials from a variety of multimedia sources including the biomedical literature, philosophy, cinema, podcasts, and the visual arts. Guest participants in the course may include a funeral director, chaplain, hospice and palliative care specialists, cartoonists, and authors. The course will be taught by a nurse cartoonist and a physician, both of whom are active in the graphic medicine community and scholars of the health humanities.

Instructor(s): Brian Callendar     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 36230, ENGL 36230, ARTV 20018, HLTH 26230, ENGL 26230

HIPS 26304. Religion and Abortion in American Culture. 100 Units.

In American public discourse, it is common to hear abortion referred to as a "religious issue." But is abortion a religious issue? If so, in what ways, to whom, and why? In this course we will answer these questions by tracing the relationship between religion and abortion in American history. We will examine the kinds of claims religious groups have made about abortion; how religion has shaped the development of medical, legal, economic, and cultural perspectives on the topic; how debates over abortion have led to the rise of a certain kind of religious politics in the United States; and how issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and the body are implicated in this conversation. Although the course will cover a range of time periods, religious traditions, and types of data (abortion records from Puritan New England, enslaved people's use of herbal medicine to induce miscarriage, and Jewish considerations of the personhood of the fetus, among others), we will give particular attention to the significance of Christianity in legal and political debates about abortion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There are no prerequisites for this course and no background in Religious Studies is required. However, this course may be particularly well-suited to students interested in thinking about how certain themes or areas of study-medicine and medical sciences, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, political science-converge with religion and Religious Studies.

Instructor(s): Emily D. Crews     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 26304, CCTS 21015, HLTH 26304, SSAD 26304, SOCI 20564, HMRT 26304, HIST 28008, RLST 26304, GNSE 12115, PBPL 25304, ANTH 26304

HIPS 26306. Religion, Medicine, and Human Flourishing on the South Side of Chicago. 100 Units.

Modern medicine historically promotes health as central to the good life. The contemporary turn in the medical and social sciences to the more capacious concept of human flourishing, however, presses these disciplines into conversation with longer traditions of inquiry on the nature of the good life for individuals and within community. How might philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions reveal the powers and limits of contemporary views of human flourishing? How does the on-the-ground experience of those pushing to advance human flourishing on the south side of Chicago challenge these categories? Sponsored by the Program on Medicine and Religion, Chicago Studies, InterFaith America, the Hyde Park Institute, the Lumen Christi Institute, and the Chicago Collective on Faith & Flourishing, this course is an innovative experiential course open to undergraduates in the College. This course seeks to expose students to traditional and contemporary perspectives of health and human flourishing, while offering opportunities to engage local faith-based non-profit organizations that seek to promote human flourishing among underserved communities in the South Side of Chicago. Note: Instructor's prior consent required for course enrollment to ensure students fully appreciate the dimensions of field education and experiential learning expected from this course.

Instructor(s): John Yoon, MD; Michael Le Chevallier, PhD     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CCTS 32000, HMRT 26306, CHST 26306, RLST 26306, HLTH 26306

HIPS 26311. Aspirations of Justice. 100 Units.

This class thinks through questions of what justice means, what justice promises, what justice betrays, and what possibilities for politics are opened by aspirations of justice at moments of radical rupture. It does so through a focus on critical conceptual terms that also become the frameworks for praxis and institutionalization after war/violence/trauma/revolution/colonialism/slavery/casteism: terms such as transition, transformation, restoration, reconstruction, and repair. The readings will be comparative but grounded out of South Africa's experience of transition from apartheid, a process that remains frictioned, fractured and far from finished. At the core of the class are two concerns. First: how does one think about non-retributive forms of justice, and what aporias of forgiveness lie at their core? Second, how do these imaginaries and forms of justice get constituted and instituted, out of different histories of foundational violence, different transitional processes, at different moments in time? How, in the process, do histories themselves get rewritten through a process of rewriting wrongs?

Instructor(s): Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Equivalent Course(s): AASR 36311, CRES 22311, CCCT 36311, ANTH 36311, CHSS 36311, RDIN 22311

HIPS 26313. Judaism, Medicine, and the Body. 100 Units.

For centuries the "Jewish doctor" has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one's health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism - its texts, history, laws, and traditions - intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.

Instructor(s): Ranana Dine     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): JWSC 26313, HLTH 26313, CCTS 21022, RLST 26313, GNSE 26313, KNOW 26313

HIPS 26316. Medical Innnovation and Religious Reform in Early Modernity. 100 Units.

Through a survey of innovative medical authorities and religious reformers, students will investigate the co-constitution of two bodies of knowledge at a historical moment (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) when questions of authority and epistemology are in considerable flux. This period has long been implicated in the "conflict thesis"-a hugely influential argument that portrays the centuries-long relationship between religion and science/medicine as an inherently adversarial one. This course shall scrutinize that argument through a discussion of seemingly contradictory examples where reformers that touted the all-encompassing reach of divine providence also promoted intricate public health infrastructures; where the Vatican increasingly relied on university-trained physicians to validate saints and their miracles; where theologians were viewed as authorities on Galen and responsible for medical breakthroughs; and where medicine and metaphysics were considered complementary pursuits. Ultimately, students will unveil a portrait not of conflict, but of a symbiotic relationship between religion and medicine. The goal of our course will then be to query why religious reformers were not only unthreatened by but also actively esteemed the medical arts as a valuable ally.

Instructor(s): Mark M. Lambert     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 26316, HIST 24924, CCTS 21013, RLST 26316

HIPS 26380. Indigenous Politics in Latin America. 100 Units.

This course examines the history of Indigenous policies and politics in Latin America from the first encounters with European empires through the 21st Century. Course readings and discussions will consider several key historical moments across the region: European encounters/colonization; the rise of liberalism and capitalist expansion in the 19th century; 20th-century integration policies; and pan-Indigenous and transnational social movements in recent decades. Students will engage with primary and secondary texts that offer interpretations and perspectives both within and across imperial and national boundaries.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 36380, HIST 26318, ANTH 23077, LACS 36380, RDIN 26380, GLST 26380, CRES 26380, LACS 26380

HIPS 26382. Development and Environment in Latin America. 100 Units.

Description: This course will consider the relationship between development and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will consider the social, political, and economic effects of natural resource extraction, the quest to improve places and peoples, and attendant ecological transformations, from the onset of European colonialism in the fifteenth century, to state- and private-led improvement policies in the twentieth. Some questions we will consider are: How have policies affected the sustainability of land use in the last five centuries? In what ways has the modern impetus for development, beginning in the nineteenth century and reaching its current intensity in the mid-twentieth, shifted ideas and practices of sustainability in both environmental and social terms? And, more broadly, to what extent does the notion of development help us explain the historical relationship between humans and the environment?

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26382, GLST 26382, LACS 36382, HIST 26317, ENST 26382, GEOG 26382, CEGU 26382, HIST 36317, ANTH 23094

HIPS 26390. Science and Society in Latin America. 100 Units.

How have ideas about and practices of science shaped life and society in Latin America? This course explores the interconnected social and political realities of scientific theory and practice in modern Latin America. Taking a historical approach, it will focus on the scientific management of social and political life, including the construction of categories such as sex and race; the production, consumption, and policing of drugs; and public health. In this discussion-based course, students will develop their own research project that historicizes a contemporary question related to scientific knowledge and/or practice in the region.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26390, HIST 26390

HIPS 27004. Babylon and the Origins of Knowledge. 100 Units.

In 1946 the famed economist John Maynard Keynes declared that Isaac Newton "was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians." We find throughout history, in the writings of Galileo, Jorge Luis Borges, Ibn Khaldun, Herodotus, and the Hebrew Bible, a city of Babylon full of contradictions. At once sinful and reverential, a site of magic and science, rational and irrational, Babylon seemed destined to resound in the historical imagination as the birthplace of knowledge itself. But how does the myth compare to history? How did the Babylonians themselves envisage their own knowledge? And is it reasonable to draw, as Keynes did, a line that begins with Babylon and ends with Newton? In this course we will take a cross comparative approach, investigating the history of the ancient city and its continuity in the scientific imagination.

Instructor(s): E. Escobar     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 27004, NEHC 20215, HIST 25617

HIPS 27005. Secrecy and Science. 100 Units.

This course traces the relationship between openness, secrecy, and the construction of scientific knowledge. Our sources span several millennia of intellectual history, from cuneiform tablets containing glassmaking recipes and the "secrets of the gods," to Medieval alchemical recipes, and to the first museums of natural history. We will investigate how and why science shifted from a subject intended for the elite few, to a more democratic ideal that embraced public demonstration. The role of patronage in the development of scientific knowledge, and the complex interaction between science and religion will be central to our discussions. Writing assignments will respond to thematic questions based on the readings.

Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 27005, HIST 24918, RLST 27550

HIPS 27010. Counterhistories of Mathematics and Astronomy. 100 Units.

Mathematics and astronomy are often taught as packaged universal truths, independent of time and context. Their history is assumed to be one of revelations and discoveries, beginning with the Greeks and reaching final maturity in modern Europe. This narrative has been roundly critiqued for decades, but the work of rewriting these histories has only just begun. This course is designed to familiarize students with a growing literature on the history of mathematics and astronomy in regions which now make up the global south. It is structured as a loosely chronological patchwork of counterexamples to colonial histories of mathematics and astronomy. Thematic questions include: How were mathematical and astronomical knowledge conjoined? How were they embedded in political contexts, cultural practices, and forms of labor? How did European scientific modernity compose itself out of the knowledges of others? Where necessary, we will engage with older historiographies of mathematics and astronomy, but for the most part we will move beyond them. No mathematics more advanced than highschool geometry and algebra will be assumed. However, those with more mathematical preparation may find the course especially useful.

Instructor(s): Prashant Kumar     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ASTR 29000, KNOW 39000, ASTR 39000, SALC 39000, CHSS 39001, HIST 35305

HIPS 27107. Frankenstein: Making Monsters in Science and Religion. 100 Units.

And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper," writes Mary Shelley of Frankenstein. In framing her 1818 novel as itself a monster with agency, she raises questions about why and how we continue to create and regard our creations as monstrous. Why has the creation of artificial life fascinated us from ancient times to modern A.I.? How do we recognize and identify monsters, and what role do we have in their creation? Are creators responsible for their creations, or alienated from them? This class combines close reading of Frankenstein with religious and scientific texts on monsters, the creation of artificial life, and our moral responsibilities to our creations. We will discuss what narratives about the monstrous tell us about our values, how the "human" is contrasted with its opposites, and why the story of Frankenstein-as well as its predecessors and imitators-remains so hauntingly compelling.

Instructor(s): Alex Matthews     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 27107, RLST 27107

HIPS 27301. Medical Anthropology. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the central concepts and methods of medical anthropology. Drawing on a number of classic and contemporary texts, we will consider both the specificity of local medical cultures and the processes which increasingly link these systems of knowledge and practice. We will study the social and political economic shaping of illness and suffering and will examine medical and healing systems-including biomedicine-as social institutions and as sources of epistemological authority. Topics covered will include the problem of belief; local theories of disease causation and healing efficacy; the placebo effect and contextual healing; theories of embodiment; medicalization; structural violence; modernity and the distribution of risk; the meanings and effects of new medical technologies; and global health.

Instructor(s): E. Raikhel     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Undergraduates must have completed or currently be enrolled in a SOSC sequence.  Graduate option is only open to Master's students. Grad students must enroll in the graduate discussion section only.
Note(s): CHDV Distribution: C, D; 3, 4
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 40330, CHDV 23204, CHDV 43204, HLTH 23204, ANTH 24330, KNOW 43204

HIPS 27515. Scientific and Humanistic Contributions to Knowledge Formation. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore whether the sciences and the humanities can make complementary contributions to the formation of knowledge, thus leading to the integration and unification of human knowledge. In the first part of the course we will take a historical approach to the issue; we will discuss how art and science were considered complementary for much of the 18th and 19th century (for example, in the views and work of Wolfgang Goethe), how they became separate ('the two cultures') in the middle of the 20th century with the compartmentalization of academic disciplines, and how some attempts have recently been made at a reunification under the concept of 'consilience'. In the second part of the course, we will focus on conceptual issues such as the cognitive value of literature, the role of ideas in knowledge formation in science and literature, the role of creativity in scientific and literary production, and how scientific and philosophical ideas have been incorporated into literary fiction in the genre known as 'the novel of ideas'. As an example of the latter, we will read the novel 'One, No One, and 100,000' (1926) by Luigi Pirandello and discuss how this author elaborated and articulated a view of the human persona (including issues of identity and personality) from French philosophers and psychologists such as Henri Bergson and Alfred Binet.

Instructor(s): D. Maestripieri     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Part of Study Abroad program in Paris. Satisfies CHD graduate distribution (1)
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 47015, KNOW 28015, SCTH 47015, CHDV 27015, CHSS 47015, CHDV 47015

HIPS 27520. Indigenous Religions, Health, and Healing. 100 Units.

This course introduces students to the dynamic, often-contested understandings of health, healing, and religion among the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Our task will be threefold: first, to examine the drastic effects of settler colonialism upon the social determinants of health for Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean, Mexico, United States, and Hawaii. Second, we shall attempt to understand healing practices as they are steeped in and curated by Indigenous traditions and religious beliefs. Our goal is to counteract centuries-old stereotypical images of Native peoples and challenge our preconceived notions of wellness, selfhood, and the boundaries of medicine. Third, we will reflect upon contemporary Indigenous approaches to health and healing with particular attention to the postcolonial hybridity of these practices. Throughout the course we will attend to a generative diversity of epistemologies, anthropologies, and religious worldviews with the ultimate goal that a renewed understanding of Indigenous healing traditions will augment our own approaches to global/public health and the study of religion.

Instructor(s): Mark M. Lambert     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CHST 27501, HLTH 27501, CCTS 21016, CRES 21501, KNOW 27501, RLST 27501

HIPS 27706. Research in Archives: Human Bodies in History. 100 Units.

How have we come to know and experience our bodies? This undergraduate seminar develops humanities research skills necessary to study the body in history. Spanning early modern cultural practices to modern medicine, science, and technology, this course explores how ideas and practices concerning the body have changed over time and how the body itself is shaped by culture and society. A major focus will be learning how to conduct different forms of historical research to produce cutting-edge humanities scholarship about the human body. Readings will introduce key themes and recent scholarship including work on disability, reproduction, race, gender, ethics, extreme environments, and identity. This dynamic research group will grapple with issues at the heart of our corporeal existence by combining perspectives from the history of science, medicine, and technology, cultural history, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS).

Instructor(s): J. Bimm and I. Clever     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course partially fulfills the research seminar requirement for the IRHUM major.
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 26076, HIST 25513, GNSE 27006, IRHU 27006

HIPS 27901. Religion, Science, Naturalism: Is There a Problem? 100 Units.

The idea that "religion" and "science" are basically at odds with one another - that they involve, indeed, essentially different kinds of rationality - is surely foremost among the ideas that arguably distinguish modernity. This class will consider some of the various ways in which that conclusion has been resisted by some twentieth- and twenty-first-century thinkers, drawing on a range of philosophical and religious perspectives - those, for example, of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who would complicate our understanding of what it means to "believe" anything); the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (whose method precisely distinguished existential questions from scientific ones); and the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet (who thinks it imperative that the limits of scientific understanding be acknowledged in light of a Buddhist critique). Particular attention will be given to early writings from American pragmatist philosopher-scientists (William James, C. S. Peirce, and John Dewey), who argued that it is a mistake in the first place to think religion necessarily concerns anything "supernatural"; religion, for these thinkers, can therefore be understood as wholly consistent with naturalism.

Instructor(s): Daniel A. Arnold     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28901, SIGN 26072, KNOW 28901

HIPS 28101. Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. 100 Units.

An introduction to psychoanalytic thinking and its philosophical significance. A question that will concern us throughout the course is: What do we need to know about the workings of the human psyche-in particular, the Freudian unconscious-to understand what it would be for a human to live well? Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Freud, Bion, Betty Joseph, Paul Gray, Lacan, Lear, Loewald, Edna O'Shaughnessy, and others.

Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 38209, FNDL 28210, SCTH 37501, PHIL 28210

HIPS 28309. Natural Science in Aristotle and His Predecessors. 100 Units.

'Unlike art, science destroys its past,' is how Thomas Kuhn (1969) once partly distinguished the sciences from the arts. The scientific heroes of old get removed by progress and new breakthroughs. In this class, we examine Aristotle's relationship to his predecessors in the first book of his foundational treatise on natural science, the Physics. We ask how Aristotle takes himself to make progress over his predecessors and how the answer to that question shapes our understanding of Aristotle's project in 'physics.' To answer these questions, we will develop a rich and complex understanding of Aristotle's conception of natural scientific inquiry and of the epistemological and methodological assumptions that drive his engagement with his predecessors. In doing so, we will be taking a critical look at the long-standing assumption by readers of Aristotle that his engagement with his predecessors in Physics I uniformly belongs to the dialectical stage of inquiry.

Instructor(s): D. Kranzelbinder     Terms Offered: Winter. Winter 2025
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 38309

HIPS 28319. Ephron course: Imagining Nature among the Greeks. 100 Units.

The goal of this course is to gain an understanding of the historical roots of the concept of nature (Greek physis), while being attentive to the diversity of ancient Greek thought about nature even in its early history. In the texts we will read, numerous notions of "nature" can be discerned: for instance, nature as the physical form of an individual, nature as an underlying reality of someone or something, nature as an autonomous thing distinct from human art and from the supernatural, nature as the all-encompassing natural order, or nature as the natural environment. The conceptual and ideological work done by these conceptions also varies wildly. Furthermore, the images associated with the concepts are similarly diverse, ranging from human bodies to magical plants and cosmic spheres, and with a comparable repertory of conceptual and ideological purposes. Yet discussions of the concept of nature typically deal almost exclusively in abstractions: this is true, for instance, of the standard study of physis written over a century ago as a U of C dissertation, which we will read in excerpt. Throughout this class, we will consider not only the explicit and abstract conceptualization of nature, but also a number of related images-especially in the form of metaphors, analogies and personifications-that ultimately fed into the literary and philosophical depictions of nature in the long traditions that have followed.

Instructor(s): L. Wash     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 28319

HIPS 28882. Magic and Divination in the Islamic World. 100 Units.

From weather forecasts to stock market speculations, our modern world is saturated with predictions for the future. In spite of this, other divinatory methods such as astrology are often portrayed as superstitious, irrational, or unreligious. This course will introduce students to the unexpected interaction of science, magic, and religion through the exploration of divination in the Islamic world. We will ask how divination can be a part of religious practice and how methods of future-telling are said to "work" from the perspective of the philosophers and scientists who practiced them. We will also explore the arguments against divination and identify and understand religious and/or scientific objections to the practice. All readings will be in English translation.

Instructor(s): Alex Matthews     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 28882, NEHC 28882, CCTS 21020, MDVL 28882, KNOW 28882

HIPS 29650. Tutorial - PIG HISTORY: East Meats West. 100 Units.

If we are what we eat, we're mostly Chinese pigs. Pigs make up the largest part of the global meat market pound for pound, and China produces and consumes about half of the world's pigs, most of which are produced with methods and technology owned by US/UK based agribusinesses. Not only does the Chinese appetite for pigs sustain the global pork industry, it also curated most of the genetic material from which today's industrial pig is formed. Pigs in China were penned as early as six to seven thousand years ago, becoming temperamentally and biologically adjusted to living in captivity, unlike their half-wild European brethren, who were loosely kept under inverse conditions of relative land abundance and labor scarcity. Crossing lean, large, and fast-growing European pigs with fat, docile, and early maturing Chinese ones enabled pigs to make it onto industrializing meat markets in the 19th century. The rest, as they say, is history. Beginning with prehistoric pigs and their multiple sites of domestication, tracing their role in industrializing Britain, colonizing the Americas, feeding soldiers and export markets, and the rise of global agribusiness, this class invites an exploration of modernity from a pig perspective.

Instructor(s): Niu Teo     Terms Offered: Autumn. Offered in Autumn 2024
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29915

HIPS 29651. Tutorial - Feminist Science and Technology Studies. 100 Units.

Feminist science and technology studies (STS) is a rich body of literature that grapples with essential questions about the gendered and political nature of scientific knowledge. This course engages deeply with a range of literature that explores different possibilities for studying the co-construction of race and gender in and through science. We will discuss, among other topics, feminist epistemologies of science, racializing technologies, uses of DNA science, analyses of reproduction, various approaches to new materialisms, and speculative thinking about how science can be practiced differently. In this course, we take an expansive view of the field of feminist STS to consider what does, or does not, cohere about feminist STS as a field of study. We will read work from a wide range of scholars, from foundational scholars such as Donna Haraway and Londa Schiebinger to critiques of the field from Katherine McKittrick and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and others in between.

Instructor(s): Abigail Taylor-Roth     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 12138

HIPS 29652. Tutorial - Colonial Technoscience and Environmental Know-How. 100 Units.

This course explores the relationship between modern technoscience, environmental thought, and the modalities of power that shape them. Industrial orders of war and empire have long forged core concepts of life, land, and earth. If the First World War unveiled the 'Noöspher'" as the cosmic milieu of the planet, radioactive traces of the nuclear age rendered inter-species relations surveyable and ecology "a more exact science", and petrochemical capital sponsored the hypothesis of "Gaia" to redescribe the earth itself. But what is at stake when the entire colony functions as an experimental reservoir for technoscientific efforts to remodel what 'world ecology' is and can be? What are the imaginative trials and material conditions required for the refinement of industrial technoscience in the colony? How is the environment known and subsumed in the process? And what does it entail to apprehend the world as a (settler)-colony? We will read and work together to interrogate some of the motivating concerns and imaginaries that entangle the production of "technoscience" with "colony-making", and "environment making". By engaging ethnography, history, critical social theory, alongside films and media, we will also consider what would an anti-colonial response do or say?

Instructor(s): Hadeel Badarni     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2025

HIPS 29700. Readings and Research in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine. 100 Units.

Reading and Research for HIPS seniors working on their senior thesis.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form.

HIPS 29800. Junior Seminar: My Favorite Readings in the History and Philosophy of Science. 100 Units.

This course introduces some of the most important and influential accounts of science to have been produced in modern times. It provides an opportunity to discover how philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have grappled with the scientific enterprise, and to assess critically how successful their efforts have been. Authors likely include Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Robert Merton, Steven Shapin, and Bruno Latour.

Instructor(s): Isabel Gabel     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25503

HIPS 29810. Bachelor's Thesis Workshop. 100 Units.

Thesis writing workshop for HIPS seniors.

Instructor(s): Isabel Gabel     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

HIPS 29900. Bachelor's Thesis. 100 Units.

This is a research course for independent study related to thesis preparation.

Terms Offered: Autumn,Winter,Spring
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form.