Students wrote three papers for the course; instructions for all three papers are included below. Also featured are examples of the preferred bibliographic format to be used for the bibliography for each of the papers.
Due in Week #6.
For this paper, you should write about a technological instrumentalization of biology, either another example of something we discussed in this thematic unit (reproduction, race, radiation, GM food) or something we did not read about (e.g. cloning, bioterrorism). You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Marx, Malinowski, Martin, Rapp, Haraway) to analyze your case. Provide a bibliography.
Due in Week #10.
For this paper, you should write about some aspect of computer and information technology, either another example of something we discussed in this thematic unit (computers and politics, artificial life, electronic music) or something we did not read about (e.g. cell phones, computer games). You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Forsythe, Helmreich, Rose) to analyze your case. Provide a bibliography.
Due in Week #13.
For this paper, imagine a future technology and the technological infrastructure and social forms that might accompany it. You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Hughes, Edwards, Deleuze and Guattari, Latour, Lock) to think through your ideas. In other words, write a theoretically informed science fiction essay/story. Provide a bibliograpy. Be prepared to deliver a five-ish minute presentation to the class about your paper.
Below are examples of how you should format your bibliography for each paper:
Hugh Gusterson. 1996. "Nuclear Weapons Testing: Scientific Experiment as Political Ritual." In Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge . Laura Nader, ed. New York: Routledge, 131-147.
Massey, Adrianne. 2001. "Crops, Genes, and Evolution." Gastronomica, Summer 20-29.
Chan, Anita. 2003. "Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru." Anthropological Quarterly 77(3): 531-545. Online: muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly/toc/anq77.3.html
Rubinstein, M. 1931. "Relations of Science, Technology, and Economics Under Capitalism, and in the Soviet Union." In Science at the Crossroads: Papers Presented to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in London from June 29th to July 3rd, 1931 by the delegates of the U.S.S.R. Nikolai Bukharin et al, eds. London: Frank Cass and Company, second edition, 1971.