Welcome to STS at Wesleyan
The College of Science and Technology Studies offers a dynamic interdisciplinary major in science and technology studies (“STS,” for short) that investigates of the sciences, technology, and medicine as integral to society and culture. The College of STS is comprised of transdisciplinary faculty with scholarly expertise in historical, philosophical, social scientific, and humanistic approaches to systematic forms of inquiry that contextualize science, technology, and medicine as objects of study. For decades, we have been known as the “Science in Society Program” (1980-2024) and before that, as the “College of Science in Society” (1974-1980).
Science acquires significance, direction, authority, and application within specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. In turn, science affects people’s intellectual standards, cultural meanings, political possibilities, economic capacities, and physical surroundings. The STS major exposes students to reflexive ideas about science that help them navigate a world that respects no clear boundary between nature, society, and culture.
The STS major combines the historical, philosophical, and social and cultural studies of the sciences, medicine, and technology, two years of coursework in a single scientific discipline, and an area of concentration to provide depth in a related discipline. The STS major helps students gain an understanding of the richness and complexities of scientific practice and of the cultural and political significance of science, technology, and medicine. The STS major is well suited for students interested in a variety of professional and academic pursuits, since it encourages students to integrate technical scientific knowledge with a grasp of the contexts within which it is understood and used.
STS @ Wes Announcements
Professor Courtney Fullilove, Associate Professor of History and Science and Technology Studies, has received a seed grant from the Manresa Island Corporation to develop a program on “Regenerative Landscapes.” Based in the College of Science and Technology Studies, this program integrates coursework and research on ecological design, resilience, and sustainability, with a focus on expired fossil fuel infrastructure, de-industrialized urban areas, and coastal communities confronting sea level rise.
Wesleyan faculty and students in the “Regenerative Landscapes” program gain direct experience navigating the policy, science, and communication challenges of reimagining post-industrial sites as inclusive and sustainable public spaces. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, participants model research-driven, practice-based approaches to environmental regeneration, drawing on methods from art, sciences, technology, and humanities. This program empowers undergraduates as leaders in political and environmental change and reaffirms Wesleyan’s commitment to liberal arts education grounded in accountability, interdependence, and collective vitality.
The transformation of fossil fuel infrastructure in an era of climate change and disinvestment in public space is a defining challenge for the 21st century. The imperative and problem of bridging industrial pasts and sustainable futures take special form in coastal environments transformed by centuries of industrialization and pollution of surrounding waterways. The primary site for the Regenerative Landscapes program is Manresa Island in South Norwalk, CT.
Manresa Island was the site of a Jesuit retreat from the late 19th century until the construction of a coal-fired power plant in the 1950s. The plant converted to oil in the early 1970s. In 2012, the facility, already slated for decommission, was shuttered overnight after heavy flooding during Hurricane Sandy. The 125-acre site includes disused oil drums, a birch forest growing from dumped coal ash, salt marsh, and wetlands supporting migratory birds and local populations of turkey, osprey, and deer. The Long Island Sound, in which Manresa Island is situated, has an ecological history marked by successive waves of urbanization and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is the second largest estuary on the East Coast, behind Chesapeake Bay. Manresa’s planned transformation, announced in October 2024 and funded by a 501(c)3, includes the remaking of its massive turbine hall as a community space and the remediation of the entire peninsula for use as a public park, enlisting state and local institutions as partners in research, education, and community engagement.
Two STS faculty have been awarded seed grants from the New England Humanities Consortium.
Assistant Professor of STS Elaine Gan has been funded as co-principal investigator on a grant from the New England Humanities Consortium to create the Botanical Humanities Curriculum Project. This project which will create a set of curricular resources that draws upon the strengths of our regional scholarly community in the Botanical Humanities, a growing and vibrant field that focuses on understanding plants in anthropogenic environments through interdisciplinary methods and lenses.
Professor Gan will partner with co-PIs Colin Hoag, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, and Xan Chacko, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Science, Technology, and Society at Brown University, to produce three virtual reading/discussion groups to establish key emerging themes in the field and lay the groundwork for an in-person workshop that will be convened to develop curriculum building exercises and teaching materials for future courses in the Botanical Humanities. In spring 2023, Professor Gan organized and co-led in a seminar at the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute called Vegetal Forms: Knowing Time and Space Through Plants.
To learn more about Professor Gan’s research in the botanical humanities, check out these recent publications:
Elaine Gan. 2023. “The Time Travelers: Im/Possibilities of Return.” In Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art, edited by Giovanni Aloi and Michael Marder. MIT Press.
Elaine Gan. 2023. “The Compromised/Compromising Life of a Farmed Plant.” In Plants by Numbers: Art, Computation, and Queer Feminist Technoscience, edited by Jane Prophet and Helen V. Pritchard. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Professor of STS Anthony Hatch has also been funded as co-principal investigator on a seed grant from the New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) to form the North Atlantic STS Network. The aim of the network is to connect the faculty and programs probing the social and cultural contexts of science, technology, and health within the NEHC and larger New England region. In the 2024-2025 academic year, the network will form to provide opportunities to foster scholarly exchanges, encourage collaborative curricular design, build opportunities for mentoring, and cultivate a regional STS community. For this seed grant, Professor Hatch will partner with co-PIs Suzanne Gottschang, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith College, and Kathleen Pierce, Assistant Professor of Art, Smith College.
During spring 2023, Professor Hatch held the William Allan Neilson Chair of Research at Smith, leading a transdisciplinary conversation with Professors Gottschang and Pierce about social inequality and STS while appointed at the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute. The Neilson Chair has been appointed since 1927 and, in more recent incarnations, invites a senior scholar to advance their research and scholarship in residence in Northampton in three public lectures. In his three lectures, Professor Hatch articulated a wide of transdisciplinary theories and methods to study the social relationships between biotechnologies and health inequalities. The three lectures were (1) “Intersectionality. Coproduction. Translation: Three Keywords for Cultural Studies of Health,” (2) “Automated and Intelligent Pharmacies in Global Technocorrections,” and (2) “Metabolism Cages for New World Animals” which has been developed with student researchers in Black Box Labs.