Pedagogy
SOC 496 Race and the Scientific Method
At the heart of science lies the scientific method: hypothesis, observation, experimentation, analysis, theory… and repeat. Yet the neutral language of the scientific method that ultimately gives science its undisputed legitimacy leave room to interrogate its social context: Who makes the hypothesis? Who observes whom? How and what is being experimented with? Who makes the theory and why? This course explores the ways in which racialized notions of bodies, nature and society inform scientific thought and practice, with a focus on the scientific method. Taking the NSF Classroom Activity Sheet on the Scientific Method as a springboard for discussion, the course focuses on aspects of colonialism and racial capitalism from the 17th century until today to critically explore the enduring—albeit shifting—interdependencies between the scientific norms of authority, objectivity, evidence and expertise and racially extractive frameworks. Featuring inter-disciplinary scholarship from STS, anthropology, history of science, environmental humanities and STEM, the course exposes aspects of science that inconspicuously legitimize white perspectives while simultaneously appropriating, extracting and erasing Indigenous, Black and brown ways of living in the world. As we will unpack STEM notions of authority, objectivity and expertise throughout the semester, we will foreground Indigenous, Black and brown perspectives to science to help generate more racially equitable frameworks for scientific research and practice.
Taught at UW-Madison, Fall 2024.
Email arosoaie@wisc.edu for a copy of the full syllabus.
At the heart of science lies the scientific method: hypothesis, observation, experimentation, analysis, theory… and repeat. Yet the neutral language of the scientific method that ultimately gives science its undisputed legitimacy leave room to interrogate its social context: Who makes the hypothesis? Who observes whom? How and what is being experimented with? Who makes the theory and why? This course explores the ways in which racialized notions of bodies, nature and society inform scientific thought and practice, with a focus on the scientific method. Taking the NSF Classroom Activity Sheet on the Scientific Method as a springboard for discussion, the course focuses on aspects of colonialism and racial capitalism from the 17th century until today to critically explore the enduring—albeit shifting—interdependencies between the scientific norms of authority, objectivity, evidence and expertise and racially extractive frameworks. Featuring inter-disciplinary scholarship from STS, anthropology, history of science, environmental humanities and STEM, the course exposes aspects of science that inconspicuously legitimize white perspectives while simultaneously appropriating, extracting and erasing Indigenous, Black and brown ways of living in the world. As we will unpack STEM notions of authority, objectivity and expertise throughout the semester, we will foreground Indigenous, Black and brown perspectives to science to help generate more racially equitable frameworks for scientific research and practice.
Taught at UW-Madison, Fall 2024.
Email arosoaie@wisc.edu for a copy of the full syllabus.
Plantation Worlds
This syllabus as an open-ended resource for both academic and non-academic audiences. Each of the three main sections signals an approach to understanding plantation worlds, and may be taken up in sequence or as stand-alone units. The sources listed under each subsection are featured based on the relevance they bear to the respective theme. The 13 subsections roughly correspond to each week of an academic semester, giving instructors the opportunity to customize the syllabus by using any remaining weeks to explore certain themes in greater depth, or to connect selections on the multimedia to previous discussions held in the classroom. Alternatively, we envision this syllabus as a guide for critical reflections on the enduring legacies of past and present plantation worlds, through an anthropological lens that trangresses academic boundaries. The subsections in our syllabus can, for example, inform critical conversations on pedagogies, epistemologies, praxes, and methodologies in creative and organizing spaces, as well as in institutional settings like governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“Plantation Worlds Syllabus.” Fieldsights: Syllabus Archive, Society for Cultural Anthropology, June 2022
A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds
In this syllabus, we use plantations—and the worlds and configurations of life they have engendered—as the main mode of organizing time, space, and knowledge under extractive capitalism.We also intend this syllabus as a point of departure for readers who seek to understand the many different ways in which plantations, past and present, anchor the relations of power that sustain projects of colonialism, capitalism, and empire. We envision this syllabus as a means to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of plantation worlds by foregrounding the ways of knowing and being that racial capitalism silences. Through a collection of readings, we interrogate how plantation worlds have been constantly made and unmade, and how these opposing processes have structured understandings of and ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans. This syllabus destabilizes imaginaries of the Plantationocene that anchor “the plantation” in linear time and space. Instead, we want to account for the dynamic and contextually contingent processes of making and unmaking of plantation worlds, past and present.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds” Edge Effects, May 2021
This syllabus is concludes an essay series on the Plantationocene published by Edge Effects as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar ”Interrogating the Plantationocene” at UW-Madison (2019-2021). You can access the Plantationocene Series here.
In this syllabus, we use plantations—and the worlds and configurations of life they have engendered—as the main mode of organizing time, space, and knowledge under extractive capitalism.We also intend this syllabus as a point of departure for readers who seek to understand the many different ways in which plantations, past and present, anchor the relations of power that sustain projects of colonialism, capitalism, and empire. We envision this syllabus as a means to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of plantation worlds by foregrounding the ways of knowing and being that racial capitalism silences. Through a collection of readings, we interrogate how plantation worlds have been constantly made and unmade, and how these opposing processes have structured understandings of and ways of being in the world for humans and nonhumans. This syllabus destabilizes imaginaries of the Plantationocene that anchor “the plantation” in linear time and space. Instead, we want to account for the dynamic and contextually contingent processes of making and unmaking of plantation worlds, past and present.
Citation:
Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie.“A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds” Edge Effects, May 2021
This syllabus is concludes an essay series on the Plantationocene published by Edge Effects as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar ”Interrogating the Plantationocene” at UW-Madison (2019-2021). You can access the Plantationocene Series here.