I finally finished Mary Terrall’s marvelous “The Man Who Flattened the Earth,” a biography of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. Anyone who has read even a small part of that book could verify how bad the old wikipedia entry was. I’ve taken the liberty of making some improvements, although it could still use some work.
Meanwhile, school starts up for me next Wednesday. I’m still not totally sure what classes I’ll be taking, but the frontrunners are:
- Narrative and Other Histories – John Demos. I’m fairly sure I’ll take this, as I’ve heard great things about it.
- Fabrication and Uses of Knowledge – Ulrich Schreiterer. A sociology of knowledge class would be great, but I’m not sure how undergrad-oriented it is.
- Intro to History of Medicine and Public Health – John Warner. All the people in my year were supposed to take this last year, but Warner taught “Grounding of Modern Medicine” instead. This one will have all the new first-years and should be fun, but I’m not certain he wants people who took the other class last year to take this.
- Science, Technology and Modernity – Ole Molvig. This is a research seminar and Ole says it worked well with two grad students and the rest undergrads last year, where the grad students helped push the class along. The topic is something historical on the interaction of people with some concrete aspect of science and/or technology.
- Political Economy of Nature – Steven Stoll. This class is cross-listed History and Forestry & Environmental Studies, and it deals with the foundations of political economy and the historical ways nations have dealt with resources.
I’d like to take the top three, but I might have to take one of the last two to fulfill a research requirement. Actually, if I could manage all of the top 4 that would be great. If I could audit John Warner’s class and take all the others but the last that might work.
Also on the radar for sitting in but not actually enrolling for credit are:
- Archeaometallurgy
- Nicholas of Cusa and Alberti
- Introduction to Geochemistry
- Humans and Animals since Darwin
- Economic Sociology