Syllabus

Week 1

Friday, January 24

Introduction

Week 2

Friday, January 31

The research university

Week 3

Friday, February 07

Disciplines

Week 4

Friday, February 14

Interdisciplinarity

Week 5

Friday, February 21

Mode 2 science

Week 6

Friday, February 28

Academic capitalism

Week 7

Friday, March 07

Discovery to product

Week 8

Friday, March 14

Proposal workshop

Week 9

Friday, March 21

SPRING BREAK

Week 10

Friday, March 28

Research tools

Week 11

Friday, April 04

Research publics

Week 12

Friday, April 11

Innovation spaces

Week 13

Friday, April 18

University of the future?

Week 14

Friday, April 25

Guest speaker

Week 15

Friday, May 02

Presentation workshop

Week 16

Friday, May 09

Collective presentation

Finals

Friday, May 16

Research or review paper due


Week 1: Introduction and background

Seminar on Friday, January 24

Seminar meets for the first time this week at 9am in Social Sciences 6117 for two-and-a-half hours.  Students are expected to attend all seminars and to take notes.  

In this introduction session we will introduce the faculty and students to one another, and the faculty will describe where the motivation (and funding) for this seminar came from: a multi-year, interdisciplinary study of the discourse and strategies surrounding the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery here at UW-Madison, and how they both draw upon and push forward particular arguments about the proper role, scope, and future of the research university.

We will also assign days for students to take the lead on readings.

 

Week 2: The history of the research university

Seminar on Friday, January 31

To begin our seminar we will explore some of the key historical developments and common foundational principles of the modern research university, setting them in context of political, economic, and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

 

Readings to complete before seminar

Each week, you need to have your readings completed by the time you get to seminar, in order to be able to discuss them with your professors and fellow students. All of the readings are available online here (use your normal UW NetID and password to access) or by clicking the titles below.

  • C.P. Snow, "The Two Cultures" (1959), reprinted in Leonardo 23:2/3 (1990), pp. 169-173.  4 pages.
    • "I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups. [...] Literary intellectuals at one pole-at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Be- tween the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension-some- times (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding." [169]
  • Robert E. Kohler, "The Ph.D. Machine: Building on the Collegiate Base," Isis 81 (1990), pp. 638-662.  24 pages.
    • Kohler asks "exactly how and why did graduate education and research develop out of collegiate courses, rather than alongside them or separately?" [640] and argues "in the 1880s and 1890s graduate courses and research evolved within departments, the main purpose of which was college teaching." [641]
  • Bruce Hevly, "Reflections on big science and big history," in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds., Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 355-363.  8 pages.
    • ""[T]he work presented here suggests that the changes creating big science were not simply changes in scale. While scientific machines surely increased in size and power, as did the groups operating them, and the objects of research were perceived through ever more precise systems of measurement, data collection, and analysis, new forms of institutional, political, and social organization arose. These changes in the internal and external contexts of science con- stituted new procedures for the conduct of scientific work. Big budgets and big instruments are only part of the story; they represent indicators, which them- selves should not be mistaken for the substantial changes they signal." [356]
  • Steven Brint, "Creating the future: 'New Directions' in American research universities," Minerva 43 (2005), pp. 23-50.  27 pages.
    • "This paper assesses the causes and consequences of recent American efforts to configure the research university as an engine of economic and social change. Drawing upon interviews and strategic plans, the paper describes recent policies to encourage ‘interdisciplinary creativity’, in a context of increasing income from private gifts and endowments." [23]
  • National Research Council, Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to our Nation's Prosperity and Security(Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012).  25 pages.
    • "Our nation’s primary source of both new knowledge and graduates with advanced skills continues to be our research universities.  However, these institutions now face an array of challenges, from unstable revenue streams and antiquated policies and practices to increasing competition from universities abroad. It is essential that we as a nation reaffirm and revitalize the unique partnership that has long existed among research universities, the federal government, the states, and philanthropy, and strengthen its links with business and industry." [1]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • Myron Gutmann and Amy Friedlander, Rebuilding the Mosaic: Fostering Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation in the Next Decade (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2011).  60 pages.

 

Week 3: The nature of academic disciplines

Seminar on Friday, February 07

What makes a particular combination of research topics, research techniques, and research teachings into a "discipline"?  Are disciplines the same as professions?  Are they the same as departments?  Before we can get a handle on what "interdisciplinarity" means, we have to explore some of the contradictions of "disciplinarity" itself.

 

Readings to complete before seminar

  • Charles E. Rosenberg, "Toward an ecology of Knowledge: On discipline, context, and history," in No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 225-239. 14 pages.
    • "Academic disciplines and subdisciplines, institutions, applied science, the ideological uses of scientific ideas and authority have all become the focus of attempts to illuminate the interconnections and interactions between the realms of thought and language and the world of material goods and decisions. The ecology of knowledge has become a significant historical concern." [226]
  • Timothy Lenoir, "The Discipline of Nature and the Nature of Disciplines," in Ellen Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway, and David J. Sylvan, eds., Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1993), pp. 70-102. 32 pages.
    • "Disciplines are dynamic structures for assembling, channeling, and replicating the social and technical practices essential to the functioning of the political economy and the system of power relations that actualize it." [72]
  • Liora Salter and Alison Hearn, "Disciplines," in Outside the Lines: Issues in Interdisciplinary Research (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996), pp. 16-25. 9 pages.
    • "We suggest that there is a middle ground between acknowledging the arbitrary and highly fluid divisions that exist within the research community, on the one hand, and using a static conception of disciplines (as always having existed in their current form and as representing something essential about human knowledge), on the other." [17]
  • Stephen Turner, "What are disciplines? And how is interdisciplinarity different?" in Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr, eds,. Practising Interdisciplinarity (Toronto: University of Toronto
    Press, 2000), pp. 46-65. 19 pages.
    • "[D]isciplinarity is a matter of two things: identity and exchange. Neither calling oneself a member of a discipline nor exchanging students is enough. Fully fledged disciplines are systems of multigenerational, multilateral exchange — that is to say, markets." [51]
  • Andrew Abbott, "The Context of Disciplines," in Chaos of Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 121-153. 32 pages.
    • "In the United States, for the last century, the map of disciplinary social structures has been remarkably constant, even while the equivalent map of cultural structures — the pattern of knowledge itself — has greatly shifted. The departmental structure of the American university has remained largely unchanged since its creation between 1890 and 1910." [122]
  • Peter Weingart, "A short history of knowledge formations," in Robert Frodeman, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 3-14. 11 pages.
    • "The scientific disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, and, in the social sciences, psychology, sociology, and economics shape not only our perception of the sciences proper but also of the world around us as if they were the given structure of the world. A look back in history reveals that they are a fairly recent phenomenon, barely 200 years old in their present form (with precursors going back further), and are well on their way to yet another transformation." [3]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • Pierre Bourdieu, "The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason," Social Science Information 14:6 (1975), pp. 19-47. 28 pages.
    • "The sociology of science rests on the postulate that the objective truth of the product - even in the case of that very particular product, scientific truth - lies in a particular type of social conditions of production, or, more precisely, in a determinate state of the structure and functioning of the scientific field. The "pure" universe of even the "purest" science is a social field like any other, with its distribution of power a.pd its monopolies, its struggles and strategies, interests and profits, but it is a field in which all these invariants take on specific forms."

 

Special note

Please note that Wednesday during the third week of classes is generally the last day to drop without a "DR" on your transcript. (You can still drop through the ninth week of class but there will be a notation on the transcript.)

 

Week 4: The contradictions of interdisciplinarity

Seminar on Friday, February 14

Is interdisciplinary practice meant to link together traditional disciplines, to synthesize and transform traditional disciplines, or to do away with any sort of disciplinary structure altogether?  What is the difference between inter-, multi-, and trans- disciplinary work? What is the proper scale of interdisciplinary work — a cross-trained individual, a collaborating team, or a comprehensive research university?  And what difference does interdisciplinarity make, if any, to the quality and impact of knowledge production?  These questions will stay with us all semester long; we'll begin to consider them this week.

 

Readings to complete before seminar

  • Julie Thompson Klein, "The evolution of interdisciplinarity," in Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, Practice (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), pp. 19-39. 20 pages.
    • "Any attempt to understand the concept of interdisciplinarity is complicated by a considerable difference of opinion about its origin ' For some it is quite old, rooted in-the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Rabelais, Kant, Hegel, and other historical figures who have been described as "interdisciplinary thinkers." For others it is entirely a phenomenon of the twentieth century, rooted in modern educational reforms, applied research, and movement across disciplinary boundaries." [19]
  • Edward J. Hackett, "Interdisciplinary research initiatives at the US National Science Foundation," in Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr, eds,. Practising Interdisciplinarity (Toronto: University of Toronto
    Press, 2000), pp. 248-259. 11 pages.
    • "In the post-Cold War era, when the intrinsic and symbolic value of disciplinary knowledge seems to have diminished, federal research-funding agencies, such as the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), may propose interdisciplinary research initiatives to highlight the practical value of their research investments." [249]
  • Peter Weingart, "Interdisciplinarity: The paradoxical discourse," in Peter Weingart and Nico Stehr, eds,. Practising Interdisciplinarity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), pp. 25-41. 16 pages.
    • "[I]nterdisciplinarity (or transdisciplinarity and similar derivatives) is proclaimed, demanded, hailed, and written into funding programs, but at the same time specialization in science goes on unhampered, reflected in the continuous complaint about it. How is it possible that, in the face of all available evidence to the contrary and very little reason for hope, the discourse on interdisciplinarity can persist?" [26]
  • Diana Rhoten, "Interdisciplinary research: Trend or transition," Social Science Research Council Items & Issues (Spring 2004), pp. 6-11. 5 pages.
    • "[U]niversities have tended to approach interdisicplinarity as a trend rather than a real transition and to thus undertake their interdisciplinary efforts in a piecemeal, incoherent, catch-as-catch-can fashion rather than approaching them as comprehensive, root-and-branch reforms. As a result, the ample monies devoted to the cause of interdisciplinarity, and the ample energies of scientists directed toward its goals, have accomplished far less than they could, or should, have." [6]
  • Robert Frodeman and Carl Mitcham, "New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical," Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 27:6 (2007), 506-514. 8 pages.
    • "This article explores the history of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, arguing for a new, critical form of interdisciplinarity that moves beyond the academy into dialogue with the public and private sectors. Contemporary knowledge production should involve not only a horizontal axis stretching across academia but also a vertical axis where academic research is integrated into contemporary life." [506]
  • Creso M. Sá, "'Interdisciplinary strategies' in US research universities," Higher Education 55 (2008), pp. 537-552. 15 pages.
    • "In the context of increasing support for interdisciplinary modes of research, many in the policy, scientific, and academic communities propose that universities should change structurally to reduce the barriers to investigation that involves researchers from multiple disciplines. This paper examines 'interdisciplinary strategies' in U.S. research universities—deliberate efforts to spur collaborative research across traditional departmental and disciplinary boundaries, including the creation and adaptation of university policies, practices, and structures. It identifies and analyzes the use of incentive grants to initiate new interdisciplinary units, the establishment of 'campus-wide institutes' that steer campus investments in interdisciplinary areas, and new modes of faculty hiring and evaluation." [537]
  • Jerry A. Jacobs and Scrott Frickel, "Interdisciplinarity: A critical assessment," Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009), pp. 43-65. 22 pages.
    • "This article draws together disparate research and theorizing on interdisciplinarity. We first describe widespread efforts to promote interdisciplinarity in U.S. universities and critically examine the assumptions underlying these initiatives. Next, we present a cross-sectional view of interdisciplinary communication, knowledge diffusion, research assessment, and interdisciplinary research centers. We then describe research and theories that provide historical perspectives on the disciplinary system, interdiscipline formation, applied and professional fields, and institutional fragmentation. We present original findings on the prevalence of research centers, faculty hiring patterns in hybrid fields, and the diffusion of research across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences." [43]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • Wolfram W. Swoboda, "Disciplines and interdisciplinarity: A historical perspective," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education (Penn State Univ. Press, 1979).  43 pages.

 

Week 5: Mode 2 knowledge production

Seminar on Friday, February 21

Is this a transformative point in the history of the modern research university?  Some have argued that, especially in scientific research, we are shifting from an older pattern of "Mode 1" knowledge production (hierarchical, insular, disciplinary) to a new pattern of "Mode 2" knowledge production (networked, collaborative, and interdisciplinary).  What are the implications of such a shift, and how has this framework been understood and received by both researchers and those who sponsor them?

 

Readings to complete before seminar

  • Michael Gibbons et al., "Introduction" in The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), pp. 1-16. 16 pages.
    • "By contrast with traditional knowledge, which we will call Mode 1, generated within a disciplinary, primarily cognitive, context, Mode 2 knowledge is created in broader, transdisciplinary social and economic contexts. [...] The emergence of Mode 2, we believe, is profound and calls into question the adequacy of familiar knowledge producing institutions, whether universities, government research establishments, or corporate laboratories." [1]
  • Michael Gibbons and Helga Nowotny, "The potential of transdisciplinarity," in J. Thompson Klein et al., eds., Transdisciplinarity: Joint Problem Solving among Science, Technology, and Society (Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2001), pp. 67-80. 13 pages.
    • "The book referred to in the previous session today is The New Production of Knowledge, and, it is fair to say, the book has caused a modest stir in universities and some policy circles. I also think the work has been only superficially understood. So, Helga and I are going to try, during this joint presentation, to illuminate some of the points we regard as crucial to understanding what we were saying in The New Production of Knowledge, particularly as they bear on the issue of transdisciplinarity." [67]
  • Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons, "The role of universities in knowledge production," in Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp. 79-95. 16 pages.
    • "Under conditions of the previous Mode-1 regime the social and scientific roles of the universities have often been seen in conflict. Under Mode-2 conditions we can see a possible resolution of such tension in the following sense - the so-called elite university cannot abandon the wider social responsibilities it has acquired, while so-called mass institutions cannot be discounted as research-producing institutions." [95]
  • Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn et al., "The emergence of transdisciplinarity as a form of research," in G. Hirsch Hadorn et al., eds., Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research (Springer, 2008), pp. 19-39. 20 pages.
    • "Differences between basic, applied and transdisciplinary research, as specific forms of research, stem from whether and how different scientific disciplines, and actors in the life-world, are involved in problem identification and problem structuring, thus determining how research questions relate to problem fields in the life-world." [19]
  • Laurens K. Hessels and Harro van Lente, "Re-thinking new knowledge production: A literature review and a research agenda," Research Policy 37 (2008), pp. 740-760. 20 pages.
    • "This paper offers a systematic reflection on the Gibbons–Nowotny notion of 'Mode 2 knowledge production'. We review its reception in scientific literature and compare it with seven alternative diagnoses of changing science systems. The 'Mode 2' diagnosis identifies a number of important trends that require further empirical efforts, but it suffers from severe conceptual problems. It is time to untie its five major constitutive claims and investigate each separately." [740]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • TBD

 

Week 6: Academic capitalism

Seminar on Friday, February 28

The research university has always been implicated in the political-economic context of the society of which it is part; however, with the increasing globalization of the capitalist economy and the increasing neoliberalization of government strategies at levels from the local to the national, have the practices of research, teaching, and service at the modern university become implicated in privatization, profit, and production in new ways?  Does "research innovation" no longer mean new ideas, but new products and services and revenue streams as well?  The controversial term "academic capitalism" has been used to analyze everything from the rising cost of student tuition to the professionalization of college sports, but we will be focusing on when and how capitalist pressures transform the way research is conducted, the way disciplines are defined, and the way academic careers are lived.

 

Readings to complete before seminar

  • Daniel Lee Kleinman and Steven P. Vallas, "Science, capitalism, and the rise of the 'knowledge worker': The changing structure of knowledge production in the United States," Theory and Society 30 (2001), pp. 451-492. 41 pages.
    • "[A] process of convergence is underway in which the codes and practices of industry are infiltrating the academy, even as academic norms are increasingly governing the work practices of selected knowledge workers in high technology firms and industries. We refer to the process as asymmetrical convergence because although codes and practices circulate in both directions, industry ultimately appears to have an upper hand in this process." [451]
  • Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, "The theory of academic capitalism," in Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 1-34. 34 pages.
    • "[T]he theory of academic capitalism sees groups of actors — faculty, students, administrators, and academic professionals — as using a variety of state resources to create new circuits of knowledge that link higher education institutions to the new economy." [1]
  • Philip Mirowski and Esther-Mirjam Sent, "The Commercialization of Science and the Response of STS," in Edward J. Hackett, et al., eds., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 635-689. 54 pages.
    • "The "commercialization of science" turns out to be a heterogeneous phenomenon, resisting simple definition.  Consequently, many contemporary discussions of the commercialization of science have proved deeply unsatisfying, tethered as they are to totemic monolithic abstractions of Science and The Market pushing each other around in Platonic hyperspace." [636]
  • Ellen Schrechker, "'Tough Choices': The Changing Structure of Higher Education," in The lost soul of higher education: Corporatization, the assault on academic freedom, and the end of the American university (New York: The New Press, 2010), pp. 154-186. 32 pages.
    • "As we well know, the academic community has never been immune to the broader political, cultural, and economic forces that have transformed American society. In recent years, those forces, in particular the economic upheavals of the past thirty years along with the neoliberal assault on the welfare state, swept across the nation's campuses, not only threatening their financial security but also imposing new, and not necessarily academic, values." [154] 

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • TBD


Week 7: Discovery to product

Seminar on Friday, March 07

Continuing our theme from last week, we delve into the nature of "translational research" and its reliance on defining intellectual property (often in the form of patents) designed to simultaneously help the results of research work their way out into the world as material interventions in human life (as corporate products and services) and to help subsidize the next round of research in a university faced with shrinking budgets (in the form of licensing fees).  Does focusing on "discovery to product" through the for-profit sector blind us to other avenues for research impact, such as the "knowledge to action" path through the non-profit sector?

 

Readings to complete before seminar

  • Rima D. Apple, "Patenting university research: Harry Steenbock and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation," Isis 80 (1989), pp. 375-394. 19 pages.
    • "The controversy surrounding Steenbock's efforts to patent the irradiation process and the subsequent development of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation to manage the patents, their licenses, and their royalties provide a significant case study of the tensions and conflicts that arise at the intersection of university research and commercial enterprise." [376]
  • Daniel Lee Kleinman, "Owning science: Intellectual property and laboratory life," in Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 114-137. 23 pages.
    • "[T]he typical concerns people have with increased secrecy in academic biology fail to take into account more complicated and less easily resolved issues: first, who controls research, and second, how and what is happening not just to the culture of the academy, but to the knowledge commons." [117]
  • Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, "Patent policies: Legislative change and commercial expansion," in Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 69-107. 38 pages.
    • "The academic status and prestige system is still concerned with discovery, fundamental (broad) scientific questions, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, and recognition as reward. However, that system may be sustained only if there continues to be an organizational infrastructure that supports it with a degree of separation from a (relatively autonomous) state and a degree of separation from the market." [107]
  • Alexander Styhre, "From the laboratory to the pipeline: New drug development in the pharmaceutical industry," in Science-Based Innovation: From Modest Witnessing to Pipeline Thinking (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 94-127. 33 pages.
    • "[T]his chapter will discuss how science-based innovation is organized in practice, and more specifically in the case of new drug development in pharmaceutical industry and in the British-Swedish major pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca." [94]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • TBD

 

Week 8: Proposal workshop

Seminar on Friday, March 14

Since this is the Friday before Spring Break, and many students have early travel plans, we will not hold a regular seminar but instead the faculty will be available for individual 15-minute meetings with students regarding their final research or review project proposals.  These proposals must be uploaded to the blog before the next seminar (after spring break).

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • Come to the seminar with a thorough idea for your final research or review project to discuss with one of the faculty members in a 15-minute meeting.  (If you cannot attend the seminar in person, email a written description of your idea to Professor Downey at gdowney@wisc.edu for some brief feedback.)

 

Week 9: SPRING BREAK

No seminar on Friday, March 21 

Work on your formal research or review project proposal.  It must be posted to the blog 24 hours before next week's seminar.

 

Special note

Please note that the Friday of the ninth week of classes is generally the last date a student may drop a course.

 

Week 10: Research tools and techniques

Seminar on Friday, March 28  

Now that all students have posted their formal project proposals to the blog, we will review some different research techniques used to explore interdisciplinary knowledge production within the modern university.

 

Readings before seminar

  • Rob Kitchin et al., "Producing data for qualitative analysis" in Conducting research in human geography: Theory, methodology, and practice (New York: Pearson, 2000), pp. 211-228. 17 pages.
    • "[C]hoosing a research method is not just a case of picking the one that seems the easiest but picking the most appropriate relative to the knowledge you require. Qualitative data consist of words , pictures and sounds and are usually unstructured in nature. As such, qualitative data are not easily converted into a numeric format and, in general, need to be analysed using a different set of techniques from quantitative data. Studies which utilise, generate, analyse and interpret qualitative data are quite complex to design. You should be under no illusions -the production and analysis of qualitative data is no easier than for quantitative data." [211]
  • Carol A. B. Warren, "Qualitative interviewing," in Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein, eds., Handbook of Interview Research: Context & Method (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), pp. 83-101. 18 pages.
    • "[U]nlike the survey interview, the epistemology of the qualitative interview tends to be more constructionist than positivist. Interview participants are more likely to be viewed as meaning makers, not passive conduits for retrieving information from an existing vessel of answers (Holstein and Gubrium 1995). The purpose of most qualitative interviewing is to derive interpretations, not facts or laws, from respondent talk." [83]
  • Daniel Lee Kleinman, "Impure cultures [introduction]," in Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 3-32. 29 pages.
    • "In the second portion of the chapter, I reflected on my research experience and how difficult it is to travel a terrain where the distinction between subject and object blur. More specifically, I suggested that it was my efforts to understand the life of the Handelsman lab in structural terms that led to tensions in my relationships with lab workers." [32]
  • Carole L. Palmer, "Information research on interdisciplinarity," in Robert Frodeman, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 174-188. 14 pages.
    • "[T]wo core bodies of research [in library and information studies] address interdisciplinarity from very different perspectives: bibliometric research that provides statistical analyses of patterns and flows of information within and among disciplines, and information behavior research that investigates the information practices and needs of interdisciplinary scholars." [176]
  • Katri Huutoniemi, "Evaluating interdisciplinary research," in Robert Frodeman, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 309-320. 11 pages.
    • "In both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, the presence of various per- spectives raises questions about the contents and procedures of research evaluation - How can a balance be achieved between different epistemic viewpoints, and what criteria may be used to assess them? How should we organize the evaluation of research, and who should we include in the process?" [309]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • Your formal research or review project proposal must be posted to the blog at least 24 hours before seminar.
  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • TBD 

 

Week 11: The many publics of the research university

Seminar Friday, April 04

As the demand for new kinds of funding, new practices of accountability, and new evidence of impact on research universities grows, scholars find themselves speaking to, and sometimes collaborating with, more and more diverse publics than ever before. How do issues of interdisciplinarity and innovation affect the boundaries we draw between the "public" and the "private" when considering the place of scholarly research in society?  What does it mean to be a "public" research university when state taxpayers only fund 15% of that university's budget?  What does it mean to be accountable to the "public" interest when private firms are the most desired partners in research design and impact?  And which publics within the university itself are participating in all of these debates?

 

Readings before seminar

  • Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons, "Science moves into the agora," in Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp. 201-214. 13 pages.
    • "In recent decades the number of risks has proliferated in the borderland between science and technology on the one hand and society on the other. A curious kind of reversal has occurred. Science (and to some extent the technological mastery of nature and technical artefacts) has been regarded by the public as a major source of uncertainty and risk, especially with regard to environmental hazards. But science had been able to cope with its own science-induced uncertainties. Today many scientists find it more difficult to cope with these uncertainties; they have become haunted by public fears about scientific research." [202]
  • Abby J. Kinchy and Daniel Lee Kleinman, "Democratizing science, debating values," Dissent (2005), 54-62. 8 pages.
    • "In this essay we discuss some of the problems inherent in the argument against 'politicizing' science. Despite criticism of the Bush administration's approach to science, deep questions about science, values, and democracy typically go unconsidered. Although there are no easy solutions to the problems raised here, they must become part of the public debate." [54]
  • Kelly Moore, "Powered By the People: Scientific Authority in Participatory Science," in Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore, eds., The New Political Sociology of Science: Organizations, Networks, and Institutions (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 299-323. 24 pages.
    • "The sources of scientific authority have traditionally included the idea that science ultimately benefits all people ("progress"); that competence in science requires years of specialized training; that it is a unified social activity based on common methodological and theoretical bases; and that scientific knowledge is, after vetting by scientists over time, ultimately objective, independent of political, moral, and social influences. Participatory science both supports and challenges these ideas, but it does not do so in a uniform fashion." [300]
  • Sarah R. Davies, "Constructing communication: Talking to scientists about talking to the public," Science Communication 29:4 (2008), 413-434. 21 pages.
    • "Recent work has started to explore "scientific understandings of publics" alongside public understandings of science. This study builds on this work to examine the ways in which public communication is talked about by scientists and engineers." [413]
  • Massimiano Bucchi and Federico Neresini, "Science and Public Participation," in Edward J. Hackett et al., eds., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 449-472. 23 pages.
    • "[P]ublic participation may be broadly defined as the diversified set of situations and activities, more or less Spontaneous, organized and structured, whereby nonexperts become involved, and provide their own input to, agenda setting, decision-making, policy forming, and knowledge production processes regarding science (Callon et al., 2001; Rowe & Frewer, 2005)." [449]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 

For more information

  • TBD 

 

Week 12: Spaces for research innovation

Seminar Friday, April 11

Despite the growth in online education and collaboration, research universities remain physical, material places, where equipment must be housed, bodies must be situated, and disciplines judge each others' status through their architectural prominence on campus.  How have universities attempted to find a "technological fix" for interdisciplinarity and innovation through spatial arrangement and social engineering? 

 

Readings before seminar

  • David Allison, "Places for Research," International Science and Technology 1:9 (1962), pp. 20-31. 11 pages.
    • "As research gets bigger, the buildings for research get bigger.  This is a challenge to the designers of research buildings, for part of the strength of re- search derives from intimacy and ready communication. The buildings shown here attempt to solve the bigness problem in a variety of ways: by clustering groups of laboratory spaces, by stacking them vertically, by setting up a research 'campus.'" [20]
  • Christopher R. Henke and Thomas F. Gieryn, "Sites of scientific practice: The enduring importance of place," in Edward J. Hackett et al., eds., The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Cambridge,
    MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 353-376. 23 pages.
    • "Whether or not place matters for science-and how-has long been debated in [science and technology studies]. These discussions have moved through four waves, and we suggest the need for a fifth." [353]
  • Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones, "Factory, laboratory, studio: Dispersing sites of production," in Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, ed., The Architecture of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999),
    497-540. 43 pages.
    • "This paper focuses on historical sites of production in literal and figurative terms: actual places and architectures in which science and art were produced, as well as discursive sites where they were made meaningful to a wider culture. Despite their location in different disciplines in different parts of the country, American postwar artists and scientists occupied common ground and experienced shifts in that common ground at particular synchronic moments from the 1940s to the 1980s. The timeworn two-culture debate polarizes the products of such spaces, but multiple links still bind science and art together as practices." [498]
  • Stuart Leslie, "'A Different Kind of Beauty': Scientific and Architectural Style in I.M. Pei's Mesa Laboratory and Louis Kahn's Salk Institute," Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38:1
    (Spring 2008), 173-221. 48 pages.
    • "I. M. Pei's Mesa Laboratory for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and Louis Kahn's Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, are rare examples of laboratories as celebrated for their architecture as for their scientific contributions. Completed in the mid-1960s, these signature buildings still express the scientific style of their founding directors, Walter Roberts and Jonas Salk. Yet in commissioning their laboratories, Roberts and Salk had to work with architects as strong-willed as themselves. A close reading of the two laboratories reveals the ongoing negotiations and tensions in collaborations between visionary scientist and visionary architect." [173]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).
  • Please note that next week, each student will need to find one of the class readings and submit it to the rest of the class.  Get started on this early.

 

For more information

  • TBD

 

Week 13: The future of the research university?

Seminar Friday, April 18

This week we'll detour from academic readings to explore some more popular, professional, pundit and journalistic accounts of the future of the research university, using what we've learned so far to interpret, contextualize, and critique these visions of tomorrow. And students will assemble this reading list!

 

Readings before seminar

  • (As students submit readings, they will be posted here for download by everyone.  Try to read at least two other articles besides the one that you post.)

 

Homework to complete before seminar 

  • This week, each student will find one article on "the future of the research university" and circulate it to the rest of the class (email it to gdowney@wisc.edu, and I will post it here).  Write a summary and analysis of the reading you found and post it to the blog as usual.  You need to submit your article at least 48 hours before the seminar, and post your analysis at least 24 hours before the seminar.  Please be aware that you must find a unique article, not duplicating one that a classmate found, so it is in your interests to do this assignment early!

 

Week 14: Guest speaker

Seminar Friday, April 25

This week, Professor Jeannette Colyvas will be in attendance as a special guest.  Her work spans the concerns of this seminar, so we will open up our course meeting to a public presentation and discussion.

 

Readings before discussion

  • Jeannette A. Colyvas and Walter W. Powell," Roads To Institutionalization: The Remaking Of Boundaries Between Public And Private Science," Research in Organizational Behavior 27 (2006), 305–353. 48 pages
    • "We analyze the process of institutionalization, arguing that it is the out- come of the self-reinforcing feedback dynamics of heightened legitimacy and deeper taken-for-grantedness, using novel techniques to document and trace this change over a 30-year period. Our focus is the remaking of the boundaries between public and private science, an institutional transformation that joined science and property, two formerly distinct spheres. The setting is Stanford University, an early adopter and pioneer in the formulation of policies of technology transfer. " [305]
  • Jeannette A. Colyvas, "From divergent meanings to common practices: The early institutionalization of technology transfer in the life sciences at Stanford University," Research Policy 36 (2007), 456–476.  20 pages
    • "The formation of Stanford University’s technology transfer program in the life sciences is analyzed from 1968 to 1982. The program evolved from multiple models based on divergent definitions of invention, inventor, rewards, and university–industry boundaries. The eventual program that emerged proved to be widely emulated. The norms of the academy shaped the uses of resources and the conditions of their appropriation. In turn, the currency of industrial science prompted the rethinking of academic norms." [456]

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • If you are in this week's discussion leadership group, you need to post your summary and analysis of one of the readings at least 24 hours before seminar (or, if you are assigned to take notes during the discussion, you need to post your summary of the discussion no later than 48 hours after the seminar).

 


Week 15: Presentation workshop

Seminar on Friday, May 02

Students will be given time in today's seminar to work in large and small groups to coordinate next week's public presentation.  (See Grading section for more on this assignment.)  Faculty will be on hand to assist if needed.

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • Students should review each others' project proposals (posted on the blog) and come with ideas for drawing out common themes or interesting contrasts between the proposals, that might be developed for the 45-minute public presentation.

Week 16: Student presentations

Seminar on Friday, May 09

Plan on a 45-minute public presentation followed by a 45-minute period for questions.    (See Grading section for more on this assignment.) 

Your group presentation will be promoted as a regular event in the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies brown bag workshop series — so your audience will be somewhat expert and very interested in your ideas, your questions, and your preliminary conclusions. 

We will conduct a short, closed debriefing after the public presentation, and students will fill out course evaluations as well.

 

Homework to complete before seminar

  • Students should make time to practice their presentation alone and/or in groups.

 

Final Exam Week

There is no final exam for this course.

Your final research or review project is due on the last weekday of finals week: Friday, May 16, by 5pm.  Turn it in to Professor Greg Downey as an electronic file or in his mailbox on the 5th floor of Vilas Hall.

Have a good summer!

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