Module PHL3096 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
PHL3096: Cyborg Studies
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
Introduction; history of cybernetics; industry, warfare and modernity; human-machine interfaces and interactions; agency; subjectivity and desire; animals and the environment; cyborg politics; cyborg aesthetics
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 22 | The module will be taught as a series of seminars, meeting for two hours each week, organised around discussions of pre-assigned readings |
| Guided independent study | 66 | Weekly reading and working through assigned articles and book chapters |
| Guided independent study | 62 | Essay writing |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Sample reading:
Hables Gray, C. (1995) The Cyborg Handbook (New York: Routledge)
Haraway, D. (1991[1985]) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ in Haraway, D. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge) pp.149-181
Haraway, D. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly
Paradigm Press).
Hayles, N. K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (Chicago:the University of Chicago Press)
Pickering, A. (2010) Sketches of Another Future: Cybernetics in Britain, 1940-2000 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press).
Suchman, L. (2007a) Human–Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions, revised edn. (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Suchman, L. (2007b) ‘Feminist STS and the Sciences of the Artificial’, in E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch and J.Wajcman (eds) The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd edn, pp. 139–63. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wiener, N. (1961 [1948]) Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ELE pages
