This REPRESENTATIVE schedule is posted to this website in accordance with state law and institutional mandates.

ORIENTATION & INTRODUCTION (27 & 28 Aug)

27 Aug (Tue):           Welcome and Introduction to the Course

28 Aug (Thu):           “What is Technology? What is the History of Technology”

Smil, “Introduction: Why Do We Need This Book?,” 1–12

Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: Kranzberg’s Laws,” Technology and Culture 27: 3 (July 1986), 544–560

UNIT 1: FOOD (3 & 5 Sep)

Smil, Chapter 2, “Understanding Food Production: Eating Fossil Fuels,” 44–75

William Boyd, “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production,” Technology and Culture 42:2 (October 2001), 631-664 

Susanne E. Freidberg, “The Triumph of the Egg,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50:2 (April 2008), 400-423

UNIT 2: COMMUNICATION (10 & 12 Sep)

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, “Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report,” The Journal of Modern History 40:1 (March, 1968), 1-56 [skim]

Susan J. Douglas, “The Turn Within: The Irony of Technology in a Globalized World,” American Quarterly 58: 3 (September 2006), 619–638

UNIT3: PRODUCTION (17 & 19 Sep)

Smil, Chapter 3, “Understanding Our Material World: The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization,” 76–102

Steven M. Beaudoin, “Current Debates in the Study of the Industrial Revolution,” OAH Magazine of History 15: 1 (Fall, 2000), 7-13

17 Sep (Tue):             Content Quiz #1

UNIT 4: ENERGY (26 & 28 Sep)

Smil, Chapter 1 “Understanding Energy: Fuels and Electricity,” 13–43

Brian C. Black, “Oil for Living: Petroleum and American Conspicuous Consumption,” The Journal of American History 99:1 (June 2012), 40-50

Mark P. Mills, “Making Technological Miracles,” The New Atlantis 52 (Spring 2017), 37–55

REVIEW/EXAM

1 Oct (Tue):              Review/Discussion

3 Oct (Thu):             Exam #1

UNIT 5: CONSUMERISM (8 & 10 Oct)

Robert Friedel, “American Bottles: The Road to No Return,” Environmental History 19: 3 (July 2014), 505­–527

David E. Nye, “Technology and the Production of Difference,” American Quarterly 58:3 (September 2006), 597-618

UNIT 6: ENGINEERING (19 Oct)

The Brooklyn Bridge (2003) BBC documentary film (55m)

Carl W. Condit, “Sullivan’s Skyscrapers as the Expression of Nineteenth-Century Technology,” Technology and Culture 1:1 (Winter, 1959), 78–93 

 17 Oct: Class does not meet

UNIT 7: PLANNING (22 & 24 Oct)

John C. Scott, “Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams,” Chapter 6 in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale UP, 1998)

Paul Josephson, “‘Projects of the Century’ in Soviet History: Large-Scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev,” Technology and Culture 36:3 (July 1995), 519–559 

22 Oct (Tue): Content Quiz #2

UNIT 8: HOME (29 & 31 Oct)

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” Technology and Culture 17:1 (January 1976), 1-23

Jane Busch, “Cooking Competition: Technology on the Domestic Market in the 1930s,” Technology and Culture 24:2 (April 1983), 222-245

REVIEW/EXAM

5 Nov (Tue):             Review/Discussion

7 Nov (Thu):             Exam #2

UNIT 9: TRANSPORTATION (12 & 14 Nov)

Joseph Interrante, “The Road to Autopia: The Automobile and the Spatial Transformation of American Culture,” in Lewis and Goldstein, eds. The Automobile and American Culture, 89-104

Folke Kihlstedt, “The Automobile and the Transformation of the American House, 1910–1935,” in Lewis and Goldstein, eds. The Automobile and American Culture, 160-175.

UNIT 10: MEDICINE (19 & 21 Nov)

Carl Elliot, “Tuskegee Truth Teller,” American Scholar (Winter 2018) 

Spengler [David P. Goldman], “How America Made Its Children Crazy,” Asia Times, 31 January 2012 

Devorah Goldman, “Disarming Frontline Doctors,” The New Atlantis 63 (Winter 2021), 138-154

THANKSGIVING BREAK (26 & 28 Nov)  

UNIT 11: 4IR (3 & 5 Dec)

Smil, Chapters 4 & 7, “Understanding Globalization: Engines, Microchips, and Beyond,” 103–131 and “Understanding the Future: Between Apocalypse and Singularity,” 205- 229

Virginia Bacay Watson, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Discontents:

Governance, Big Tech, and the Digitization of Geopolitics” in Alexander L. Vuvin, ed., Hindsight, Insight, Foresight: Thinking about Security in the Indo-Pacific (1 September 2020)

 3 Dec (Tue): Content Quiz #3

[TBD]: FINAL EXAM