2022-2023 Supported Courses
In 2022-2023, there were numerous Center for Science and Society supported courses. Supported courses were developed by Center faculty and scholars as part of our curriculum development and may be partially funded by the Center.
Supported Courses
Course Information
- Course Instructors: Jason Smerdon (Lamont Research Professor and Co-Leader of the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Research Cluster) and Rhiannon Stephens (Associate Professor of History and Co-Leader of the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Research Cluster)
- Course Type: Seminar course offered Spring 2023
Course Description
- The course examines how Africa’s climate has changed in the past and with what consequences for the people living on the continent.
- Students will learn how have people responded to past climate events, whether short-term, decadal or longer in scope.
Course Information
- Course Instructor: Raphaël Millière (Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience)
- Course Type: Seminar course offered Spring 2023
- Course webpage
Course Description
- A new family of NLP algorithms, called Large Language Models, exhibit a remarkable ability to generate fluent text.
- This technological development raises fascinating questions at the crossroads between philosophy, computer science, and linguistics that will be considered in this course.
Course Information
- Course Instructor: Dilshanie Perera (ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow - Climate Humanities Fellow)
- Course Type: Seminar course offered in Spring 2023
- Course webpage
Course Description
- An anthropological and historical exploration of the
specificities of colonial regimes’ extractive violence against people, land, and resources. - The goal of the course is to provide students with conceptual tools for historicizing climate
change, and for critically engaging the consequences of colonial relations of power.
Course Information
- Course Instructors: Pamela H. Smith (Associate Professor of History and Founding Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University) and Madi Whitman (Postdoctoral Research Scholar and Assistant Director of Co-teaching at the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University)
- Course Type: Lecture course offered in Spring 2022 and Fall 2022
- Course webpage
Course Description
- This course uses historical accounts to show how science and pseudoscience developed in tandem in the period from 1400 to 1800.
- The class traces how areas of natural knowledge became marginalized when a new philosophy of nature came to dominate the discourse of rationality.
- Students will be equipped to examine contemporary issues of expertise, the social construction of science, pluralism in science, and certainty and uncertainty in science.
Course Information
- Course Instructors: Madi Whitman (Postdoctoral Research Scholar and Assistant Director of Co-teaching at the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University)
- Course Type: Lecture class offered Spring 2023
- Course webpage
Course Description
- The lectures invites students to ask big questions about science and interrupt preconceived ideas about what science is and who does it.
- This course is an introductory dive into the interplay between science, technology, health, environment, and society.
- Will eventually serve as an introductory course for the forthcoming "Science and Society" minor.