This course is co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Studies Program of the College of Engineering and by the Department of History. This course investigates the role of technology in the American experience and, in particular, the place of technology in the experience, culture, and identity of different American groups. The course begins with an introduction to the relationship between technology and cultural identity.
Technology is, among other things, the means by which a people interact with their environment.
Technology therefore expresses how a people values its environment and how a people defines the value of its own members. Beginning with an overview of technologies used by Native Americans prior to European settlement, the course then follows a fairly conventional chronology through the major stages in the development of American technologies and technological systems, such as agriculture, the railroad, the automobile, and the computer. Such a chronological outline privileges European technologies, which is fitting for this particular course, because those technologies are central to the means by which Europeans have gained hegemony over the North American continent and the people who live here. The course introduces students to key historical, anthropological, and sociological concepts used in the study of technology, as well as to technology as an overarching theme in American history.