This page presents the assigned readings per class session, followed by bibliography with complete citations for all works.
Assigned Readings
| LEC # | READINGS |
|---|---|
| 1 |
Introduction Discussion of Leo Marx’s paper. “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Smith and Clancey. pp. xiii-xv and 1-25. |
| 2 |
Mumford. Technics and Civilization. pp. 3-106. Mumford Article Lapartito. “Historian in the Rose Garden.” |
| 3 |
E. P. Thompson Article Gutman Article Smith and Clancey. pp. 144-190. |
| 4 |
Cronon. Nature’s Metropolis. (Complete) Smith and Clancey. pp. 191-233. |
| 5 | Reading period (class does not meet) |
| 6 |
Aitken. Taylorism. (Complete) Smith and Clancey. pp. 267-354. |
| 7 | Fritzsche. Nation of Fliers. (Complete) |
| 8 |
Nye. Electrifying America. (Complete) Smith and Clancey. pp. 233-66 and 355-82. |
| 9 |
Cowan Articles McGaw Article Lapartito. “When Women Were Switches.” |
| 10 |
Russell. War and Nature. (Complete) Smith and Clancey, pp. 383-426. |
| 11 | Reading period (class does not meet) |
| 12 |
MacKenzie. Inventing Accuracy. (Complete) Smith and Clancey. pp. 427-70. |
| 13 | Reading period (class does not meet) |
| 14 | Maines. Asbestos and Fire. (Complete) |
Bibliography
Books
Smith, Merritt Roe, and Gregory Clancey, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Technology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780669354720.
Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1963. ISBN: 9780156882545.
Cronon, W. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West . New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. ISBN: 9780393308730.
Aitken, H. G. J. Scientific Management in Action: Taylorism at the Watertown Arsenal, 1908-1915. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780691042411.
Fritzsche, Peter. A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780674601222.
Nye, David. Electrifying America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780262640305.
Russell, Edmund. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780521799379.
MacKenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy: An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780262631471.
Maines, Rachel. Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780813535753.
Articles and Book Chapters
Marx, Leo. “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Social Research 64, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 965-88.
Mumford, Lewis. “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.” Technology and Culture 5 (Winter 1964): 1-8.
Lipartito, Kenneth. “The Historian in the Rose Garden.” Technology and Culture 41 (July 2000): 537-48.
———. “When Women Were Switches: Technology, Work, and Gender in the Telephone Industry, 1890-1920.” American Historical Review 99 (October 1994): 1074-1111.
Thompson, Edward P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56-97. [Also reprinted in Thompson’s book, Customs in Common (1992).]
Gutman, Herbert. “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919.” American Historical Review 78, no. 3 (June 1973): 531-88. [Also reprinted in Gutman’s book, Work, Culture, and Society (1976).]
Cowan, Ruth S. “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th century.” Technology and Culture 17, no. 1 (January 1976): 1-24.
———. “The Consumption Junction.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780262022620.
McGaw, Judith A. “No Passive Victims, No Separate Spheres: A Feminist Perspective on Technology’s History.” In In Context: History and the History of Technology. Edited by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Robert C. Post. Cranbury, NJ: Lehigh University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780934223034.
Noble, David F. “Social Choice in Machine Design.” In Case Studies on the Labor Process. Edited by Andrew Zimbalist. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1981. ISBN: 9780853455196.
