UC Berkeley undergraduates interested in the Sciences and Society Course Thread should contact course-threads@berkeley.edu.
From climate change and nuclear risk to the promises and challenges of new developments in biomedicine, the pressing problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic. Beyond the confines of traditional disciplines, the Sciences and Society Course Thread helps Berkeley undergraduates investigate the complex relationships between perspectives and practices too often kept apart.
Courses in this thread give students opportunities to consider how science, technology, and medicine change our horizons of political possibility and social (in)justice and how social and ethical commitments, historical processes, and political formations shape authoritative knowledge and viable technologies.
With courses in departments including Integrative Biology, Rhetoric, History, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, Ethnic Studies, Engineering, Geography, and Anthropology, the Sciences and Society Course Thread encourages Berkeley undergraduates to consider such topics as the histories and futures of artificial intelligence; race, identity, and genetics; the politics of access to medicines and medical technologies; and global environmental politics, social justice, and sustainable development.
Watch Professor of Anthropology Cori Hayden's introduction of the thread: http://youtu.be/jcRlY8K6aNg.