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TECHNOLOGIES AND CULTURES
Course Description
SP353 Tues/Thurs 11-1 12 units
SP353, Technologies and Cultures, is a 12-unit HASS-D (category
4), CI-H, subject. It meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-1. Students
also meet for a 2-hour hands-on workshop each week (days and times to
be arranged).
In SP353 you will study several technologies and explore how the
cultural settings of these technologies have caused them to develop in
particular ways. You win also look at how these technologies in turn affect
their cultural settings. We begin with fairly basic technologies that
become increasingly more complex as the semester progresses. This fall,
we will begin exploring our work by exploring our relationships with food.
In the course of human history, we have developed the most extraordinary
attitudes, habits, and ways of dealing with food. Why? In workshops, we
will explore meaning in food as we cook. From food, we move to a module
on "appropriate technologies." The purpose of this module is
to take a look at devices used for cooking in a variety of societies around
the world. We will try to figure out whether these devices make sense
within the context of the societies in which they are used. In hands-on
workshops, we will field test a variety of stoves from around the world.
In the final module of the semester we turn our attention to ways metal
is shaped. This module focuses on craft technologies. We will explore
the relationship between the material and the craftsman working with that
material. What happens as craft technologies are replaced by large-scale,
mechanized production? We will spend our workshops working with Blacksmith
Toby Bashaw to create our own forged objects.
As part of the subject, we sponsor lunch each Thursday at noon. A variety
of guest speakers from within and without MIT come to tell us about their
work.
A subject of the Integrated Studies Program. For more information, visit
the ISP office in 16-177, call us at 617-253-4074, or email us at daczel@mit.edu.
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