Science, Technology, Medicine & War HIS 350L Course Description

Transcription

1 Science, Technology, Medicine & War HIS 350L Instructor: Perrin Selcer Office: GAR Office Hours: M 1-2; W 12-1; F or by app. Spring 2011 M, W, 3:30 5: Calhoun Hall Course Description We tend to think of wars as pathological abnormalities, yet modern society could not have developed without war. Modern nation states and medical, information and transportation technologies, for example, are shaped by the exigencies of war. Warfare, of course, is increasingly dependent on complex knowledge and technology. This seminar explores the ways science and technology have affected the strategies, conduct and experience of war, and the key role of war in the development of science and technology. The course will cover the long history of technical knowledge and war, but will primarily focus on the 19 th and 20 th centuries, with a bias first towards Europe and then the United States. This is a Writing Flag seminar course built around carefully chosen readings. I will give very brief lectures most days to provide a historical context for the next class readings. The emphasis will be on discussions of the readings and on crafting well written, tightly argued, and insightful responses to the texts. To improve our writing, we will be editing and responding to each other s work. There are no prerequisites, but knowledge of modern American and European history will be very helpful. Grading Policies Attendance is mandatory. Late assignments will be docked a letter grade per day unless you ask for an extension well before the due date. Grades for the two longer assignments will be partially based on completing the process (e.g. developing research questions, editing rough drafts). Plus/minus grades will be assigned. Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from Services for Students with Disabilities: University policies on plagiarism and academic dishonesty will be enforced. 1

2 Assignments With a few exceptions noted on the syllabus, all readings are in the course packet available at Abel s Copies, 715 West 23 rd St. #North. 25% of grade, class participation: Includes attendance, quality of contributions to discussions, evidence of intellectual engagement, completion of in class writing exercises, and performance on reading pop quizzes. 20 % of grade, weekly writing responses: Each week you will write a one page (maximum) critical analysis of a major issue from that week s readings and discussions. Weekly writing responses are due on Mondays (responding to the previous week s readings). You may miss two writing responses without affecting your grade. 20% of grade, review essay 1: The first of two longer writing assignments intended to sharpen your synthetic skill, this essay asks you to explore an important theme from the first half of the course. Your review essay must incorporate at least five readings from the course and should be 7 pages in length. 25% of grade, review essay 2: This final assignment builds upon the skills developed in the first review essay, but requires you to review at least six texts not assigned in the class and should be 10 pages. The texts could go into more depth on a subject covered in the course or be about one of the myriad topics related to science, technology and war that the course does not touch upon. 10% of grade, presentation: The last three days of class, students will present their findings from review essay 2 to the class. Feedback should be useful for refining the final draft of the paper. Alternative research paper (45% of grade): Instead of the two review essays, write one longer piece of original historical research. If multiple students choose this option, we will organize a research writing group. In any case, I will work with students individually to define research questions and develop a research strategy. 2

3 Unit One: Historical Framework Week 1 Jan. 19: Introduction to the class: Rationality and war, scientific neutrality, and technological enthusiasm/anxiety In class reading: Franz Boas, Scientists as Spies, The Nation (20 Dec. 1919), 797. Week 2 Jan. 24: Do Technologies Have Politics? And Why War? Reading: Langdon Winner, Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus 109: 1 (Winter 1), ; Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, Why War (Paris: Institut International de Cooperation Intellectuelle), Jan. 26: Nations and Colonies Reading: Barry R. Posen, Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power, International Security18: 2 (Fall 1993), ; Jared Diamond, A Natural Experiment of History and Collision at Cajamarca, in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), Week 3 Jan. 31: Gunpowder Revolution Bert Hall, Gunpowder s First Century, ca , in Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology and Tactics, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 41-66; Patrick Malone, The Arming of the Indians, and Proficiency with Firearms: A Cultural Comparison, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), Feb. 2: Industrialization of War William McNeill, Intensified Military-Industrial Interaction, , in The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), (posted on Blackboard); David Mindell, Introduction: A Strange Sort of Warfare, and Life in the Artificial World, in War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 1-10, Unit Two: War and Medicine; Men and Machines Week 4 Feb. 7: Roger Cooter, War and Modern Medicine, in W. Bynum and R. Porter, eds., Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London: Routledge, 1993), ; Alexis Carrel, Science has Perfected the Art of Killing Why Not of Saving? Surgery, Gynecology, & Obstetrics 20 (1915), (posted on blackboard). Feb. 9: Women at War: Nurses, Sanitation, and Hospital Reform Florence Nightingale, A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army during the Late War with Russia, (London: John Parker and Son, 1859), 16pp; The Civil War, Efficiency, and the Sanitary Impulse, , in John Harley Warner and Janet Tighe, eds., Major 3

4 Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001), Week 5 Feb. 14: Mental Health Joanna Bourke, Medics and Military, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta, 1999), ; Wilbur J. Scott, PTSD in DSM- III: A Case in the Politics of Diagnosis and Disease, Social Problems 37: 3 (Aug. 1990), Feb. 16: Experimental Wounds and Soldier Subjects Eric Prokosch, Introduction, The Science of Wound Ballistics, and Korea: The Redesign of Antipersonnel Weapons, The Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Antipersonnel Weapons (London: Zed Books, 1995) 1-52; Edward F. Adolph, Acclimatization to Heat and Cold and Philip Bard, Motion Sickness, in Science in World War II: Office of Scientific Research and Development: Advances in Military Medicine Made by American Investigators Working under the Sponsorship of the Committee on Medical Research (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1948), , Week 6 Feb. 21: Men and Machines David Mindell, Taming the Beasts of the Machine Age: The Sperry Company and Conclusion: Feedback and Information in 1945, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), , Feb. 23: Populations Fit for War J. M. Winter, Military Fitness and Civilian Health in Britain during the First World War, Journal of Contemporary History 15: 2 (Apr. 1980), ; John Carson, Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence, Isis 84 (1993), Unit 3: Mass Destruction Week 7 Feb. 28: Draft of review essay 1 due March 2: Extermination Edmund Russell, Total War ( ) and Annihilation ( ), War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ; Excerpt from oral history of Section Chief on Fire Warfare, NDRC Hoyt C. Hottel by James J. Bohning, (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1985). Week 8 March 7: Norms and Laws of War: Chemical Weapons I 4

5 J.B.S. Haldane, Callinicus: A Defense of Chemical Warfare (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1925); Richard Price, World War I, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), March 9: Norms and Laws of War: Chemical Weapons II Final Draft of review essay 1 due (annotated bibliography due for research paper) W. A. Noyes, Jr., Offensive Chemical Warfare and Related Problems, Science in World War II: Office of Scientific Research and Development: Chemistry: A History of the Chemistry Components of the National Defense Research Committee, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1948), ; Prohibition of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate (Dec. 1974), Week 9 March 21: Air Power I Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), Chapters 1-2, 4. March 22: Air Power II Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), Chapters 8 (last section), Week 10 March 28: Meanings of the Bomb Paul Boyer, By the Bomb s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), March 30: MAD Albert Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror, Foreign Affairs 37: 2 (Jan. 1959), ; Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, On Thermonuclear War, The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), Unit Four: Big Science Week 11 Topic description and initial bibliography for review essay due (Research proposal for original research paper due) Apr. 4: Big Science Lillian Hoddeson, Mission Change in the Large Laboratory: The Los Alamos Implosion Program, , in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds., Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), ; Peter Neushel, Science, Government and Mass Production of Penicillin, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 48 (1993), Apr. 6: The Military-Industrial Complex Larry Owens, The Counterproductive Management of Science in the Second World War: Vannevar Bush and the Office of Science Research and Development, Business History Review 68 (Winter 1994), ; Solly Zuckerman, The Impact of Technology, Scientists and War: The Impact of Science on Military and Civil Affairs (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), (posted on Blackboard). 5

6 Week 12 Apr. 11: Environmental Sciences at War Roy MacLeod, Strictly for the Birds, : Science, the Military and the Smithsonian s Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, , Journal of the History of Biology 34 (2001), ; Ronald Doel and Pristine Harper, Prometheus Unleashed: Science as a Diplomatic Weapon in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, Osiris 21 (2006), Unit Five: Wars against Nature and for Hearts and Minds Apr. 13: The Moral Equivalent of War and the Science of Democracy Annotated bibliography for review papers due (outline for original research papers due) William James, The Moral Equivalent of War, (1910), 16pp; David Blackbourn, Race and Reclamation, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), Week 13 Apr. 18: Machines as a Measure of Men; Michael Adas, Imposing Modernity Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), (posted on Blackboard). Apr. 20: Counter-Insurgency Michael Latham, Modernization at War: Counterinsurgency and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), Week 14 Apr. 25: Scientific Democracy and Peace Studies David Hollinger, Science as a Weapon in Kulturkampfe in the United States during and after World War II, Isis 86 (1995), ; Kenneth Boulding, A Data-collecting Network for the Sociosphere, Impact of Science on Society 18: 2 (1968), Apr. 27: Presentations Week 15 May 2: Presentations May 4: Presentations Final papers due date of final exam, May 13 th by 10pm. 6