Our approach is truly integrative. The faculty, all housed in a single department and building, includes both numerous specialists in technology studies and many distinguished scholars in more traditional fields of history and sociology. We aim to produce graduates who can readily bridge these domains through scholarship, teaching, and other professional activities. Begun in 1993, the program has grown steadily and now maintains a student population of approximately fifteen to twenty. Though the majority of these students seek the Ph.D., we also offer a two-year terminal M.S. degree.
Applicants come from a variety of backgrounds.
Some have majored in history, sociology, or technology studies, while others did their undergraduate work in the sciences or engineering. Many students come to our program after gaining experience in the workplace or after attaining a masters degree elsewhere. The disparate roots of our student cohort help stimulate intellectual life in our program and promote the genuinely integrative inquiries we desire. During their first three semesters in residence, students in the masters and the doctoral programs take a core of required and elective seminar courses and complete a two-semester research and writing course aimed at producing a publishable paper. These courses include at least one team-taught seminar with a comparative, interdisciplinary emphasis.