Here is a description of the science studies program at The
          Ohio State University.

Category: STStu
Graduate Degree: Master of Arts in Comparative Studies
Institution: The Ohio State University
Contact: Dr. David Horn  (horn.5@osu.edu) or Dr. Marge Lynd
(lynd.1@osu.edu)
Address: 308 Dulles Hall, 230 W. 17th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210  
Phone: (614) 292-2559;  Fax: (614) 292-6707
     The Master of Arts in Comparative Studies is an
interdisciplinary graduate program that encourages comparative
perspectives on a wide range of cultural and historical
discourses and practices: literary, aesthetic, folkloric,
religious, political, and material, as well as scientific and
technological.  Students wishing to continue graduate work in
science and technology studies at Ohio State may do so through
the University's One-of-a-Kind Ph.D. program.  
     Comparative Studies faculty recognize that questions raised
in religious and literary studies are central to the growing
field of science and technology studies.  Of particular interest
are the situated and contested nature of knowledge; the
rhetorical authority of texts; and the boundaries between the
natural and the artificial, the normal and the pathological, the
public and the private.  At the same time, religion, magic,
literature, and folklore can be considered modes of knowing with
their own cognitive claims and social authority.
     Combined and comparative study of the discursive practices
of imagination, belief, and knowledge in different social
contexts is mutually beneficial.  Indeed, the Division reflects
the understanding that religious, literary, and science studies
all increasingly use the same tools and investigate very similar
objects, in particular, discursive and other signifying practices
in social context.
     Our program in science and technology studies exploits this
convergence in both research and teaching.  As humanities
scholars, we explore science's relation to other ways of knowing,
including magic and religion, and we include within the domain of
technology practices as varied as writing, ritual, and medical
imaging.
     At the same time, the constitution and play of difference in
scientific and technical work is emphasized. Professor David
Horn's current research, for example, concerns varied
constructions of the "natural" and the "artificial" in French and
American reproductive sciences, and his recent articles trace
the emergence of sciences of "deviant" bodies in 19th-century
Italy.  Professor Jennifer Terry's current research focuses upon
images and characterizations of "heterosexual" and "homosexual"
brains in American neurosciences.  
     Comparative Studies Associated Faculty include, among
others, James Bartholomew (History), who has written extensively
on the history of science in Japan and East Asia.  Professor Alan
Beyerchen, also an historian, is currently researching the
social, political, and economic relationships between science
and Naziism.  
     Our graduate students construct degree programs and research
projects that bring together disparate objects, methods, and
theories.  Students might, for example, explore the narrative
strategies of science fiction and evolutionary biology, compare
scientific and religious constructions of the body in Japan and
the United States, or examine the policing of the boundary
between biomedical and New Age therapies.
     The graduate curriculum includes such courses as Culture,
Science, and Technology; Gender and Technoculture; Science and
Difference; Body Politics; Science and Sexuality; and Visions of
Complexity.  Science studies faculty also participate in team-
taught interdisciplinary courses and advise students in
departments as diverse as Communication, Educational Studies,
English, Women's Studies, Anthropology, and Preventive Medicine.
     Science studies faculty have forged productive working
relationships with practicing scientists and other scholars from
across the University who have come to serve on the Division's
advisory committees, search committees, and the Graduate Studies
Committee.  All Comparative Studies faculty have formal and
informal connections with other departments, and an extensive
list of faculty associates teach for Comparative Studies and
advise Comparative Studies students.
     The Division also provides a space for interdisciplinary
discussions of science and technology.  In 1993-94, we conducted
a faculty seminar on science and difference.  This year, working
with faculty and with curators at the Wexner Center for the Arts,
Division faculty have helped organize a series of presentations
entitled Gender and Technology: Rethinking Femininity and
Masculinity in a World of "Intelligent" Machines.
     For further information, contact the Division of Comparative
Studies at the above address.