AMST 2052

Disassembling Silicon Valley: A People's History of High-Tech America across Race, Gender and Empire

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024. Courses of Study 2023-2024 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

"Silicon Valley" may sound like another name for the future, but it also a place with a past. In this course, we will delve into the economic, environmental, political, social, and technological history of both the wider high-tech industry and the specific locale in the San Francisco suburbs. From the Spanish imperial conquest to the Space Race, from steam and radio to microchips and AI, across dimensions of race, gender, class, and immigration status, this course will strip Silicon Valley down to parts. Students will then use what they've learned to put the place back together again in their own way—not as the top-down elite-driven story that we know but as a "people's history" that can speak to all.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (HA-AS, HST-AS)

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