science, technology, medicine and society

Coordinators:

Barbara Ley, Journalism and Mass Communication
Paul Brodwin, Anthropology

Fall 2007

The group will meet from 1-2:30 every third Friday of the month, except for December, when the meeting will be on the second Friday. Meetings will be in the Center Conference Room, Curtin Hall 939, unless noted differently. We will post more details as they become available.

Speakers for Fall 2007:

September 21: Tracey Heatherington

October 19: Paul Brodwin Note: this meeting will take place in Sabin Hall 176 (3413 N. Downer Ave, half a bloc north of Curtin Hall, on the west side of the street)

November 16: Noelle Chesney

December 14: Barbara Ley
Cancelled: the group will reconvene during the Spring 2008 semester. Please check back for updates in January!

Resources: Syllabi, Links, Member Research

Course Syllabi

Here is a list of UWM courses about science, technology and society as well as the critical study of health care and medicine: the themes of this workshop. Please consult individual professors for information about scheduling and enrollment.

Digital Cultures

Health and the Media

Medical Anthropology

Nature, Knowledge, and Technoscience in Anthropological Perspective

Psychological Anthropology

The Social Organization of Science and Technology

Sociology of the Body

Sociology of Sex

Topics in Historical Demography

Links

GIS Day activities

Member Research

Click here for Member Research sketches

This workshop brings together UWM faculty and staff who specialize in Science, Technology and Society (STS), in critical studies of health and medicine, and the overlap between these two fields.

Science, Technology and Society is broadly interdisciplinary, comprising historical, philosophical, and social scientific approaches. STS queries the production of scientific knowledge, the political stakes raised by scientific truth claims, and the cultural meanings and social impact of emerging technologies (biotechnologies and cyber-technologies, for example). STS scholars study the networks of knowledge and power by which scientific authority is created and challenged. They study how communities are formed around particular scientific representations and practices.

Critical studies of health and medicine are equally interdisciplinary, but focus specifically on the social context, discourse and ideology of medicine and other health professions. This field studies how expert authority about health is established, and how it changes cultural notions of selfhood, the body, and subjectivity. It examines the "objects of medicine" (disease categories, treatments, specialties, etc.) in their full social and historical context. It asks how the border between normal and pathological is policed, and how health and sickness affect personal identity and collective action.

We read and discuss members' works in progress and key texts in the fields. The workshop provides a forum for collaborative grant writing, especially about the social impact of medical and other technological innovation, which is a priority at several funding agencies. Finally, the workshop will potentially spark plans for mini-conferences and colloquia with invited speakers from the Madison and Chicago areas.

Exemplary authors and issues: Bruno Latour, Paul Rabinow and Donna Haraway; co-production of science and society; public understanding of science; ideology of genetics; biotechnology and reproduction; globalization of health, medicine, and pharmaceuticals; history of disease; bioethics and society; environment and health; life sciences and modernity; biopower; normalization of bodies.

Center for 21st Century Studies

Daniel J. Sherman, Director