IHPST Fall/Winter 2025-26 Courses
HPS1100Y - Advanced Research Paper
*Mandatory for all IHPST PhD Students, Optional for MA students (1500Y), and all students must pass this course with an A- or above to continue in the program.
Rebecca Woods and Elise Burton
WED 09:00-11:00 – Full Year biweekly
The purpose of the 1100Y is for students to demonstrate their ability to conduct original research in their chosen field of interest that shows promise of eventual publication. Students pursue research projects of their own design over the course of the year in consultation with both the faculty member leading the 1100Y seminar and with a faculty advisor specializing in their field of expertise. This course is required for all PhD students, and all students must pass this course with an A- or above to continue in the program.
IHPST Fall 2025 Courses
HPS1200H - Topics in the History and Philosophy of Science & Technology - Empire, Vision, and Racial Capitalism
Anjali Nath
FRI 11:00-13:00
This course offers an eclectic approach to examining cultural, social, and technological histories of empire. Drawing heavily from critical ethnic studies, we begin from both the standpoint of empire's victims and the resultant critical frames that have most poignantly described systems of domination. Some of the questions we ask: How can social histories, ethnic studies approaches, and feminist methods offer situated critiques of imperial infrastructure? How might theories of racial capitalism inform the writing of counter histories of empire? Can a critical perspective on the visual — as a set of normative assumptions about sight, bolstered by the affordances of particular media — inform our conceptualization of state power? To address these questions we examine theories of antimilitarism, activist / social histories of technology, counterhistories of visuality, and more.
HPS2010H - The Science of Human Nature
Marga Vicedo
MON 1500-17:00
Why do we do what we do? What factors play a role in shaping our personality? What biological and social elements help configure a person’s moral, intellectual, and emotional character? In this course we examine landmark studies that shook standard beliefs about human nature in their time. We analyze those studies in their historical context and discuss their lasting relevance to social, ethical, and policy debates. In addition, this course will help students to understand what is involved in choosing a large research project and to think about the steps needed to turn it into a viable dissertation/book project. Thus, we will devote parts of some meetings to discuss the different aspects of conceptualizing a project, organizing the research, developing a manageable timetable, and writing the different parts of a book (introduction, arch of the chapters, conclusion).
HPS4300H - The Historian's Craft: Sources, Methods, and Approaches
Nikolai Krementsov
TUE 1500-17:00
This graduate seminar offers an introduction to the principles of research in the history of science, medicine, and technology (HSMT). Through a close examination of classic texts and recent publications in the field, it focuses on sources, methods, and approaches in the practice of HSMT. We will explore the major genres—history of ideas, individuals, institutions, disciplines, and networks—as well as the main modes of analysis—intellectual, social, and cultural—employed in the field. The seminar will emphasize the development of skills essential to the profession—good writing, attentive reading, analytical thinking, concise presentation, academic debate, and historiographic and methodological knowledge. Each week, we will examine in depth a particular genre or level of analysis based on assigned readings and book presentations, focusing on thev“Whats,” “Whys,” and “Hows” of historical research and writing.
HPS4600H - Topics in the Philosophy of Science
Karina Vold
THU 13:00-15:00
This course comprises a survey of current issues in the general philosophy of science. General philosophy of science is concerned with (inter alia) questions about how science works, what it purports to tell us about the world, how scientific theories and models reveal the nature of the world, if and how scientific knowledge claims are justified, and how science manages to explain the world to us.
IHPST Winter 2026 Courses
HPS3004H - Philosophy of Medicine
Brian Baigrie
TUE 15:00-17:00
This seminar course provides a graduate level introduction to the philosophy of medicine, a fast-growing philosophical field. We will explore both classic and cutting-edge work. In line with the orientation of the field, we will examine metaphysical/conceptual and epistemic questions in medicine and medical research rather than the kinds of questions traditionally asked in the field of bioethics. Also following the contemporary focus of philosophy of medicine, most of the readings are situated in the philosophy of science. Topics explored will include: varieties of medicine (mainstream, alternative) and their critics; the concepts and nature of health, disease, and illness; disease kinds and classification; the philosophy of psychiatry; biomedical science and medical explanation; the methodology of clinical research and epidemiology; the epistemology of evidence-based medicine; clinical reasoning; and values and the social epistemology of medicine. While most readings follow an ‘analytic’ approach to philosophy of medicine, some follow a more ‘continental’ approach. Classes will consist in a discussion of the course readings with an introduction to the topics provided by the instructor. Links to all required readings will be provided.
HPS4040H - Computing and Information from Babbage to AI
Chen-Peang Yeung
TUE 10:00-12:00
"In this graduate seminar, we aim to understand computing and information as technological, scientific, social, and cultural phenomena from a historical perspective. Drawing from the insights in the history of technology, history of mathematics, STS, media studies, business history, intellectual history, and security studies, we examine the histories of, e.g., artificial intelligence, big data, cyberspace, information infrastructure, theories and imageries of computation and mind, open source, human-machine relations, tech-industrial ecosystems, and geopolitics of semiconductor supply chains. Our geographical scope is transnational, as we focus not only on crucial developments in the US—often viewed as the epicenter in the history of computing and information—but also those in Western Europe, East and South Asia, and Latin America. In addition, we discuss historiographical and methodological issues in researching and writing the history of computing and information."
HPS4105H - Vision and Machines: Material Cultures of the Visual
Adrien Zakar
MON 1500-17:00
This course introduces the history of material cultures of the visual through a broad range of research in the fields of STS, visual studies, and cultural history. Each week illuminates the politics of vision and machines, visual practices, and image-making by centering on a particular keyword, including worldmaking, attention and surveillance, epistemologies of the eye, grams, performance, para-empiricisms, interface, techno-mysticism, macrographies & micrographies, infrastructure, imperial optics, and computer vision. Each session combines the discussion of secondary literature and historical texts and artifacts with considerations of method and craft, including practical research skills, narrative techniques, and theoretical reflections. The conversation will focus on the questions scholars of visual technologies and visual practices in the sciences ask, the conversations they get into, the tools and evidence they use to answer those questions, and the form of their narratives and interpretation. We will ask how and why scholars working with visual STS choose to examine their subjects the way they do, and what the ramifications of those choices are for knowledge production.