POSTCOLONIAL STS (HPS4020)

Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, U of T

2022 -

The course is organized around the “grounds” of postcolonialism and science and technology studies, meaning such key determinants of human experience and objects of humanistic inquiry as nature, social formations, power, economy, science, colonialism, gender, race and ethnicity. These grounds can correspond to methodological subfields, each distinguished by the objects placed at the center of analyses, narratives, and causal explanations.

Since scholars of postcolonialism and science and technology studies rarely confine themselves to any single approach, the best scholarly writing draws on diverse objects of inquiry, causal stories, and types of evidence. This means that whatever a work’s central focus, the more attention paid to the various grounds of history the richer the writing will be. Neither the grounds nor the subfields in the syllabus are meant to be exhaustive. Rather, the readings represent influential and rewarding examples of old and recent works, none of which fits perfectly within its category. The goal here is to understand the creative weaving together of objects and methods both in recent scholarship and in your own work.