FRS 001S — Sec. 001 —
(1 unit) — CRN 35579 — M 3:10-4:30 PM — 156 Voorhies
Authorship and Authority in Scientific Culture
Instructor: Tina Choi, Department of English, College of Letters and
Science
Description: When we read a scientific research
article, we often
see a long list of author’s names and institutional affiliations, and a
list of government or corporate sponsors. Yet when we read accounts
of scientific
discovery, the emphasis is usually on the accomplishments or insights
of the individual.
How might we reconcile these different accounts of authorship, and understand
the place of the individual in the context of the laboratory and of
collaborative
research? What is the relationship between the process of scientific discovery
and other cultural pressures, such as ethics and economics? In this course we
will read a number of accounts of scientific discovery, some written
by scientists
and others written by historians or anthropologists of science, and
we will want
to consider how each deals with the problem of scientific authority
and authorship.
We will think critically about the relationship between the process
of scientific
discovery and the culture at large – between the “objective”
sphere of science and the “subjective” sphere of personal ambition,
religion, gender, financial gain, and ethical considerations. Our
discussion will
weigh the role of individuals, the research group, corporations,
funding agencies,
and cultural and social conditions, in these accounts of research.
Format: The seminar will meet once a week. Weekly readings for
class will consist of chapters or essays drawn from the writings of Evelyn Fox
Keller, Daniel Kevles, Thomas Kuhn, Bruno Latour, Paul Rabinow, James Watson,
and others, and will be assembled into a course reader. Students will be asked
to read the assignment before class and to come prepared to discuss the reading
during class. Grading: One-third of the
course grade will
be based on regular class participation and engagement with the
readings; one-third
will be based on informal, assigned oral and written responses to the readings;
one-third will be based on a short critical essay (4-5 pages) due at the end of
the term.
About the Instructor: Tina Y. Choi holds graduate degrees in
both English and Molecular Biology. She is currently a Postdoctoral
Teaching Fellow
in the Department of English, where she specializes in
nineteenth-century British
literature and culture. Her current research project focuses on the
relationship
between disease and the social body in Victorian England, and she has
also written
on recent representations of bioterrorism as well as on the history
of risk.