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Courses for January Term 2010

STS 2500: The Ethics, Protocols and Practices of International Research [3]

Cross listed as EVSC 105

www.people.virginia.edu/~rjs8g

Robert J. Swap, Research Associate Professor

This course is full.

Prerequisite: at least one general science course and  
STS 101 or equivalent.

What are the ethics and protocols of conducting international research? And how faithfully does the actual practice of such research reflect these protocols and standards of ethics? How should students and scholars work to establish research partnerships that bring sustained benefits to the environment and to the people who inhabit the site of a given project? How can international research consortia establish a basis for community service and development? What are the ethical obligations of contemporary researchers and students who visit developing countries, especially in the light of contemporary researchers and students who visit developing countries, especially in the light of the legacy of colonialism? Through an intense combination of readings, discussions, guest presentations, and group projects, students will address all these questions. The class will be facilitated by the lead instructors with the active participation of a delegation of scholars from southern Africa; in addition the class will also have distinguished guest instructors from the university and the wider scholarly community. Drawing on all these resources, students working in autonomous small groups, will design a potential research project of their own and present it to the entire group.

STS 2500: Science, Intention, and Ethics: Copenhagen September 1941 [3]

Patricia Click, Associate Professor Emeritus

This course is full.

Prerequisite:  STS 101 or equivalent.

This course will explore various relationships among modern science, technology, society, and ethics by focusing intently on the mysterious September 1941 visit of German physicist Werner Heisenberg to his former mentor, the half-Jewish Niels Bohr, in occupied Copenhagen.  One pivotal conversation, which ended abruptly, apparently touched on the ethics of working on atomic bombs.  Heisenberg returned to Germany, where he helped to lead the German nuclear program.  Two years later, Bohr fled to Sweden and then to the U.S., where he joined Allied scientists working at Los Alamos.  After the war, Heisenberg and Bohr attempted unsuccessfully to clarify what they had discussed at the Copenhagen meeting.  Since that time, historians and scientists have also debated the subject.   Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, a critically acclaimed play,has renewed interest in the topic and led to even more scholarly articles and the early release of some letters from the Niels Bohr Archive.  Although the course will focus on the September 1941 meeting, it will also include an overview of the history of theoretical physics in the period prior to World War II, as well as an overview of the history of nuclear armaments in the postwar period.  Course materials will include Frayn’s Copenhagen, scholarly essays on the subject, primary source material (including some taped interviews), and the video of the BBC’s production of Frayn’s Copenhagen.  In addition to mastering the thematic content of the course, students will have numerous opportunities to improve listening, analytical, writing, and oral presentation skills.  The culminating experience for the course will be team research projects (substantial team-written research papers and team presentations). 

STS 2500: The Curious History of Wine in Virginia: A Sociotechnical Systems Approach [3]

Kathryn A. Neeley, Associate Professor

This course is full.

From prehistory to the present, wine has played a complicated and important role in human experience in domains ranging from technical innovations, scientific discovery, economics, and politics to social relations, spirituality, aesthetics, and health. To render this vast territory manageable, the course will focus on the history of wine in Virginia with an emphasis on the pre-Revolutionary War period. Using an analytical framework that conceives of sociotechnical systems as integrating three interrelated but distinguishable elements (technical, organizational, and cultural), we will consider all aspects of the human activity of cultivating grapes; making, selling, regulating, and consuming wine; and defining its role and meaning in human experience.