/ TAS Summer Seminar - Technology and the Human Experience

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
PROGRAM IN TEACHER PREPARATION
Teachers as Scholars Summer Seminar

Technology and the Human Experience

Professor Michael S. Mahoney
Department of History and Program in History of Science

Home Schedule Further Reading Web Resources Forum

Schedule and Readings

The readings will be found in the packet distributed before the start of the seminar. As an overview of the subject, and a resource for pursuing it in the classroom, I recommend Ruth Schwartz Cowan's A Social History of American Technology (Oxford U.P., 1997)

7/10
 Reading a Machine
 Michael S. Mahoney, "Reading a Machine"

Reading a Machine: Projects by and for Teachers prepared by members of my 1984 and 1985 NEH Summer Seminars for Secondary School Teachers on "Technology and the Human Experience" (take a look for an idea of the sort of project you might undertake yourself for the seminar)

Projects from TAS Summer Seminar 2005

7/11
 Power Machinery Anthony F.C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the early Industrial Revolution, Chap. IV, "The Machines, Their Operatives, and the Fabrics" [in packet]

Slides on power machinery
7/12
 The Factory System
 Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860, Chaps. 2-5 [in packet]

E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism", Past and Present 38(1960), 56-97 [JSTOR]

Slides on the factory and on the factory system
7/13
 Ford's Model T
 Henry Ford, "Mass Production", Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th ed. (1926) [in packet] (Picture tour of the Assembly Line)

Lindy Biggs, "The Engineered Factory", Technology and Culture 36,2 (1995), Supplement, S174-S188 [JSTOR]
7/14
 Mass Production and Mass Consumption
 Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown, Chaps. 4-8, 13-14, 17-19, 27-29

Slides on Taylorism

Enjoy the Weekend!
7/17
 The Computer
 Campbell-Kelly/Aspray, first half

Michael S. Mahoney, "The Histories of Computing(s)", Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30,2(June, 2005) [pdf]

Slides on computer
7/18
 The Information Society Aspray/Campbell-Kelly, second half

Michael S. Mahoney, "Boys' Toys and Women's Work: Feminism Engages Software", in Angela N.H. Creager, et al. (eds.), Feminism in Twentieth Century Science, Technology and  Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), Chap. 9

Slides on computing
7/19
Field Trip to the National Museum of American History
7/20
 The Political Ecology of the Artificial Environment
 Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Daedalus (Winter 1980), 121-36
Michael S. Mahoney, "Technology and the Democratic Ideal:  The Search for a Middle Landscape" ( web document)
7/21
 Presentation of Projects and Final Thoughts
 Link to Projects