HIS 4526‑01 - Science, Art, and Invention 1790-1970 TR 1:00-02:15 pm, JBARRY 211

CRN: 25167 Dr. Johnson

This undergraduate elective course is designed to examine patterns of creative work in science, technology and art that shaped modern society and culture from the French and industrial revolutions of the late 18th century to the decline of classical modernity after the Second World War. Through case-studies, we will explore social, cultural, and psychological sources of creativity and of opposition to creativity; social and political conditions such as wars or political repression that have produced destructive as well as creative effects from creativity; and group interactions and shared cultural values among scientists, inventors, and artists that produced especially creative conditions.

The course will meet for two lecture‑discussion sessions per week; graded oral participation will include short oral reports related to the take-home papers. Written work will include an in-class midterm and final essay examination as well as two take-home papers examining creative individuals in their social contexts, each from a different part of the course.

Readings will include works like the following (revised list):

Michael J. Howe, Genius Explained

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Arthur Miller, Einstein, Picasso:  Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc

Loren Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union

George Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich

James D. Watson, The Double Helix

Course materials will also include some additional reserve readings available on-line, as well as films to be shown in class, such as The Day After Trinity (on the men who made the first atomic bomb).