COURSES

ARCHY 508: HISTORIES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE - Winter 2013
Archaeology has not been much studied by professional historians of science, but archaeologists have been prodigious historians of their own field, and they have put histories of various kinds to work in a number of quite different ways. In this seminar we will explore the variety of internal histories that are in play, identifying several distinct genres of history-making ranging from tsweeping histories of disciplinary formation and program-defining histories that have legitimated one after another “new archaeology,” to a range of critical counter-histories that call into question pivotal ideas and forms of practice that are now taken for granted. We will consider, as well, examples of histories that play a direct role in archaeological research, recontextualizing evidence and bringing into view new interpretive possibilities.
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PHILOSOPHIES OF FEMINISM – Spring 2012
Philosophy 206 / Political Science 212 / Women's Studies 206
In this interdisciplinary, introductory course we explore key theoretical concepts and philosophical arguments that feminists have developed in response to the forms of oppression that are the subject of feminist scholarship and that animate feminist activism. We focus, in particular, on four clusters of philosophical assumptions that are articulated in very different ways by feminists and that underpin a broad spectrum of feminist perspectives: Focal questions include conceptions of oppression, and of sex/gender identity, theories of knowledge, and questions of justice. These provide a framework for learning about the diverse, sometimes complementary and sometimes antagonistic, philosophical positions that feminists have developed. Readings are drawn from The Feminist Philosophy Reader (Bailey and Cuomo) and include such authors as Judith Butler, Patricia Hill Collins, Marilyn Frye, Donna Haraway, Nancy Hartsock, Uma Narayan, and Iris Young, among others.
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SCIENCE AND VALUES – Winter 2012
Philosophy 560
The focus of this seminar is the vexed debate about “science and values”: whether a well motivated and clearly delineated distinction can be maintained between epistemic (cognitive, constitutive) norms and non-epistemic (social or contextual) values and interests, and whether this distinction can bear the weight of accounts of objectivity and related epistemic ideals that are widely assumed to define the scientific enterprise. Readings include Douglas, Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal (2009); Machamer and Wolters, Science, Values, and Objectivity (2004); Lacey, Values and Objectivity in Science (2005); Kincaid, Dupré, and Wylie, Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions (2007); and Smith, Science, Truth and the Human (2005).
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ARCHY 574/PHIL 574: PHILOSOPHY OF ARCHAEOLOGY – Fall 2011
A seminar designed to provide graduate students in archaeology and anthropology intensive cross-disciplinary training in the philosophical analyses of scientific reasoning that have played an influential role in internal debates about the status of the archaeology as a science, its orienting goals, and its standards of practice. Topics include: models of explanation; analyses of evidential reasoning (hypothesis testing; hermeneutic and interpretive strategies); strategies of model building and model evaluation; and broader questions about the methodological unity of science, ideals of objectivity, and the role of contextual values and interests in science.
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HPS 400: HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM - Winter 2011
    Beyond the Science Wars: Recent Engagements between HPS and STS
    Co-taught with Simon Werrett (History)
History and Philosophy of Science has long had both a productive and an uneasy relationship with Science and Technology Studies (STS): a family of research programs that focus on the social, cultural dimensions of science. In this capstone seminar we explore the sometimes fierce disputes generated since the 1970s by the sharply contrasting stances that STS and HPS scholars have taken on a range of pivotal issues: questions about the objectivity of scientific knowledge and the unity of the sciences; about whether (or in what sense) scientific knowledge-making is a social, political enterprise; and about how academic studies of science (HPS, STS) bear on the sciences themselves. Readings include classic, field-defining articles drawn from The Science Studies Reader, and selected recent work on two sets of issues: the analysis of scientific expertise, and ideals of objectivity. We conclude with a consideration of how HPS/STS can help us understand such pressing issues as environmental catastrophe and the influence of corporate interests in science, as addressed by Oreskes and Conway in Merchants of Doubt (2010).

ARCHY 600: ARCHAEOLOGY AND STS - Winter 2011
A directed reading seminar focused on Science, Technology, and Society literature of practical and reflective relevance for archaeology. We first developed some common background in STS and History/Philosophy of Science: a selection of classics drawn from the Science Studies Reader that represent  dominant schools of thought, major transitions, key issues in STS. Then we turned to a series of pivotal topics: recent work on expertise and tacit knowledge (Collins and Evans); discussions of "trading zones" and inter/multi-disciplinary forms of practice (Galison's original work, and a selection of later articles); and a juxtaposition of STS work on skilled practice and tacit knowledge (e.g., Shapin, Daston, Collins) with discussions in and of archaeological practice (e.g., Lopes on lithic illustration and with McGuire on Archaeology as Political Action).  

ARCHY 469 / PHIL 401: RESEARCH ETHICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: ACCOUNTABILITY, CONSERVATION, STEWARDSHIP - Fall 2010
Archaeological practice raises profoundly challenging ethics issues. The central question we address in this seminar is: to whom and to what are archaeologists accountable? In particular, what responsibilities do archaeologists have to those whose cultural heritage they study? Do archaeologists have an obligation to protect the archaeological record--to “save the past for the future”-- and how is this balanced against destructive investigation of the record? Is it ever legitimate to work with archaeological material that has been looted and commercially traded? How should archaeologists navigate conflicts between the demands of employers, oversight agencies, and research goals when they work in industry or in government? These questions are at the center of debates that are changing the way archaeology is practiced; we address them through analysis of cases juxtaposed with theoretical and philosophical literature on research ethics. 

HUM 596: GRADUATE MICROSEMINARS - 2008-2009

“Feminist Legacies/Feminist Futures” (five-meeting microseminar linked to Hypatia 25th anniversary conference, (Fall 2009)
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2008-2009 Science Studies Network microseminars on "Democratizing Science": a bi-weekly seminar run in conjunction with the year-long SSNet facutly/graduate colloquium on "Science in Democracy" (Fall 2008); "Democracy and Diversity in Science" (Winter 2009); "Normative Claims for a Democratic Science" (Spring 2009).
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Winter 2008: Presuppositions of Practice: Philosophical Issues in the Social Sciences: a bi-weekly (C/NC) seminar linked to the 10th Annual Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable (hosted by the Simpson Center at the University of Washington, March 7-9, 2008), on questions about the presuppositions of social inquiry.
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PHIL 456: PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY – Winter 2007
An honors capstone seminar that focuses on ideals of objectivity and constructivist challenges in history. If history is, as many claim, “rewritten by every generation of historians,” what sort of understanding does it provide of the past? Novick’s history of objectivist ideals, That Noble Dream, and Trouillot’s Silencing the Past, are the point of departure for exploration of this question, which has been as much a concern for practicing historians as for philosophers. Essays drawn from Hacking’s Historical Ontology, and from The Social Construction of What?, provide a philosophical rationale for reframing the stark oppositions that have dominated debate about the status of historical knowledge, and Tucker’s recent philosophy of historiography, Our Knowledge of the Past, offers a model of reasoning from evidence of the past that extends well beyond human, social history to the life sciences (evolutionary bioloy), and geological sciences.
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PHIL 566: PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE – Fall 2006
A graduate seminar on naturalism and the interpretive social sciences. The focus is a pivotal question in philosophical debates about the social sciences: can human, social subjects can be studied scientifically or do they require, instead, a distinctively interpretive methodology? The anti-naturalist accounts we consider include Winch's Wittgensteinian position (The Idea of a Social Science); debates about the nature and status of translational practice (principles of charity and humanity; Henderson’s argument for treating interpretation as a form of explanation); Risjord’s pragmatic (erotetic) account of ethnographic interpretation; and Hacking’s analysis of “looping effects” and the processes by which social kinds are constructed.
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