questions
& comments
are welcome! email
mailing address:
Department
of the
History of Science
Univ. of Oklahoma
601 Elm Avenue
Norman, OK 73019
tel: 405.325.3427 fax: 405.325.2363
As I build this portion of scipop, what I plan to focus on
are three areas:
1) Sharing some of the nuts and bolts I’ve
used to weld together my Science and Popular Culture class.
2) Analytical reflections on some of the choices
I’ve been confronted with, options I’ve pursued, and how
I’ve modified my thinking in light of what my students have
taught me; and
3) Some examples of assignments and results produced
by the students themselves, in the form of excerpts and selections.
My
first contribution is of the “nuts and bolts”
variety: a list of virtually all the books and visual materials I’ve assigned
to students in the ten years I’ve taught the course. In all
my teaching I’ve benefitted enormously from being able to read
the syllabi that other professors have posted on the web; I hope this
is a partial payback of that debt that may be useful to someone else
wondering how to put such a course together.
My
second contribution regarding the "reflections" category is the text of a plenary address I delivered
at the joint meeting of the History of Science Society and the Society
for the History of Technology in 2005, which gives some background
on my thoughts about why historians of science need to make more of
an effort to participate in digital history efforts:
And teaching reflections can also be found on the scipop blog, petri
dish.
My
third contribution, an example of our "assignments," will be to put together a digitized presentation from the “Draw-a-Scientist” test
I've done with my undergraduates, to be used as a mini-archive for further classowrk.
…[research] will be
of little import except in so far as it is transmuted into common
knowledge. The history that lies inert in unread books does no work
in the world…If we remain too long recalcitrant, Mr. Everyman
will ignore us, shelving our recondite works behind glass doors
rarely opened.
— carl becker