EDCP 501: Seminar on Bruno Latour and STS

Instructor: Stephen Petrina
Section: 001
Term: 1
Meets: Thursdays 1:00-4:00pm

This seminar focuses on recent work of Bruno Latour, arguably the most creative and challenging scholar of Science & Technology Studies (STS). Latour’s reputation and scholarship traverses an extremely wide range of disciplines in addition to STS (e.g., anthropology, art, education, environmental studies, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, sociology, theology, etc.). Following a survey of Latour’s work and the postsecular turn in STS, we will focus on three new texts: An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (2013), Rejoicing or the Torments of Religious Speech (2013), and On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (2010). The seminar is interdisciplinary and inviting, and students from any and all disciplines are encouraged to enroll. We will work systematically through these texts to closely examine Latour’s strategies for doing STS.

Required readings:

  • Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012/2013).
  • Bruno Latour, Rejoicing or the Torments of Religious Speech trans. Julie Rose (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2002/2013).
  • Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods trans. Catherine Porter & Heather MacLean (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

Click here for full syllabus