| 1 | Life now | "Meanings of 'Life'." Editorial, Nature 447 (2007): 1031-1032. |
| 2 | What is life? |  Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form." In Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 15-49. ISBN: 9780674012509.
Kay, Lily. "In the Beginning Was the Word? The Genetic Code and the Book of Life." In The Science Studies Reader. Edited by Mario Biagioli. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999, pp. 224-233. ISBN: 9780415918671. Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Molecules, Messages, and Memory: Life and the Second Law." In Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 43-78. ISBN: 9780231102056. Schrödinger, Erwin. What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780521427081 — SKIM. Bedau, Mark. "The Nature of Life." In The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Edited by Margaret Boden. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 332-357. ISBN: 9780198751557. Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. "Life: The Eternal Enigma." In What Is Life? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 1-32. ISBN: 9780520220218. |
| 3 | Evolutionary narratives | Beer, Gillian. "Preface to the Second Edition," and "Introduction." In Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New York. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. xvii-xxxiii and 1-21. ISBN: 9780521767699. Hodge, M. J. S. "Natural Selection: Historical Perspectives." In Keywords in Evolutionary Biology. Edited by Evelyn Fox Keller, and Elizabeth A. Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 212-219. ISBN: 9780674503137. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 214-236, 240-250, 316-329, and 381-384. ISBN: 9780691023694. — SKIM. Fedigan, Linda Marie. "The Changing Role of Women in Models of Human Evolution." Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 25-66, read only 27-29. Nelkin, Dorothy. "The Powers of the Gene," and "Creating Natural Distinctions." In The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman, 1996, pp. 1-18 and 102-126. ISBN: 9780716730491. Lewontin, Richard. "A Story in Textbooks." In Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 87-104. ISBN: 9780060975197. Marks, Jonathan. "98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context." In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Edited by Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 132-152. ISBN: 9780520237933. |
| 4 | Biopolitics | Foucault, Michel. "Right of Death and Power over Life." In The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1990, pp. 135-159. ISBN: 9780679724698. Rabinow, Paul. "Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality." In Zone 6: Incorporations. Edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter. New York, NY: Zone, 1992, pp. 234-252. ISBN: 9780942299298. Taussig, Karen-Sue, Rayna Rapp, and Deborah Heath. "Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of Self in the Age of Eugenics." In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Edited by Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 58-76. ISBN: 9780520237933. Petryna, Adriana. "Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations." Osiris 19 (2004): 250-265. Martin, Emily, and Richard Cone. "Corporeal Flows: The Immune System, Global Economies of Food, and New Implications for Health." In Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems. Edited by James Wilce Jr. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003, pp. 232-266. ISBN: 9780415310055. Nguyen, Vinh-kim. "Antiretroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic Citizenship." In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 124-143. ISBN: 9781405123587. |
| 5 | Biology for sale | Ritvo, Harriet. "Possessing Mother Nature: Genetic Capital in Eighteenth-Century Britain." In Early Modern Conceptions of Property. Edited by J. Brewer and S. Staves. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 413-426. ISBN: 9780415153140. Landecker, Hannah. "Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science." Science in Context 12 (1999): 203-25. Waldby, Catherine. "Stem Cells, Tissue Cultures and the Production of Biovalue." Health: an Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 6 (2002): 305-323. Hayden, Cori. "From Market to Market: Bioprospecting's Idioms of Inclusion." American Ethnologist 30 (2003): 359-371. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in 'Fresh' Organs." In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 145-167. ISBN: 9781405123587. |
| 6 | Biodiversity, natural and artificial | Massey, Adrianne. "Crops, Genes, and Evolution." Gastronomica 1 (Summer 2001): 20-29. Gusterson, Hugh. "Decoding the Debate on 'Frankenfood'." In Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties. Edited by Betsy Hartmann, Banu Subramaniam, and Charles Zerner. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 109-133. ISBN: 9780742549074. Haraway, Donna. "Mice Into Wormholes: A Technoscience Fugue in Two Parts." In Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 55-63 and 79-94. ISBN: 9780415912457. Mansfield, Barbara. "From Catfish to Organic Fish: Making Distinctions about Nature as Cultural Economic Practice." Geoforum 34 (2003): 329-342. |
| 7 | Race in the genomic age | Gould, Stephen Jay. "Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View." In Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. New York, NY: Norton, 1992, pp. 231-236. ISBN: 9780393308181. Smedley, Audrey. "'Race' and the Construction of Human Identity." American Anthropologist 100 (1999): 690-702. Duster, Troy. "The Sociology of Science and the Revolution in Molecular Biology." In The Blackwell Companion to Sociology. Edited by Judith R. Blau. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001, pp. 213-226. ISBN: 9780631213185. Rotimi, Charles. "Genetic Ancestry Tracing and African Identity: A Double-Edged Sword?" Developing World Bioethics 3 (2003): 151-158. Reardon, Jenny. "The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction." Social Studies of Science 31 (2001): 357-388. Montoya, Michael. "Bioethnic Conscription: Genes, Race, and Mexicana/o Ethnicity in Diabetes Research." Cultural Anthropology 22 (2007): 94-128. Kahn, Jonathan. "Patenting Race." Nature Biotechnology 24 (2006): 1349. |
| 8 | Remixing sex | Fausto-Sterling, Anne. "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." The Sciences (March-April 1993): 20-24. Chase, Cheryl. "Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4 (1998): 189-212. Thompson, Charis. "Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic." In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 175-202. ISBN: 9780822327967. Franklin, Sarah. "Sex." In Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 19-45. ISBN: 9780822339205. |
| 9 | Animals, wild and domestic | Ritvo, Harriet. "Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons." Representations 39 (1992): 1-22. Grasseni, Christa. "Designer Cows: The Practice of Cattle Breeding between Skill and Standardization." Society and Animals 13 (2005): 33-49. Haraway, Donna. "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden." In Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Societies. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990, pp. 26-58. ISBN: 9780415902946. Mitman, Gregg. "Domesticating Nature on the Television Set." In Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Washington, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009, pp. 132-156. ISBN: 9780295988863. |
| 10 | Biotechnology and biopolitical art | Landecker, Hannah. Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780674023284. Kac, Eduardo, ed. "Art that Looks You in the Eye: Hybrids, Clones, Mutants, Synthetics, and Transgenics." In Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 1-27. ISBN: 9780262112932. Munster, Anna. "Bioaesthetics as Bioethics." In Art in the Biotech Era. Edited by Melentie Pandilovski. Adelaide, Australia: Experimental Art Foundation, 2008, pp. 14-21. ISBN: 9780949836526. |
| 11 | Biology and computers | Keller, Evelyn Fox. "The Body of a New Machine: Situating the Organism between Telegraphs and Computers." In Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 79-118. ISBN: 9780231102056. Helmreich, Stefan. "Kinship in Hypertext: Transubstantiating Fatherhood and Information Flow in Artificial Life." In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 116-143. ISBN: 9780822327967. Kelty, Chris, and Hannah Landecker. "A Theory of Animation: Cells, L-systems, and Film." Grey Room 17 (2004): 30-63. Myers, Natasha. "Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modeling." Science Studies 19 (2006): 6-30. |
| 12 | Earthly aliens | Helmreich, Stefan. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. |
| 13 | Class conference | |
