History of Technology Research Paper Remote S2020
5 pages
Double Spaced, Times New Roman font or equivalent.
Submit through Blackboard
Paper Assignment
Choose an example of American technological change that you can analyze in terms of race, ethnicity, or gender. In this paper you must relate the invention or development of a specific technology to one or more racial or ethnic or gendered groups. You can think about how these categories affected the development of the technology you chose, how different groups of people used a technology, and how this technology might have influenced race or gender relations.
This technology should be something historical, meaning that it should have been invented and developed in the past – before 1990.
Research issues
I expect you to conduct academic research for this paper. You will need to cite a minimum of three scholarly or primary sources in this paper and three additional sources such as Wikipedia for a minimum of six sources total. You must use a minimum of six sources from outside the assigned readings. You will probably need to use sources that indirectly relate to your topic. For example, an article dealing with segregation of railroads or a book dealing with Jim Crow segregation in general can be applied to the segregation of streetcars. (Newspapers are not scholarly sources).
In all cases, you can think about intersectionality. How did gender or class intersect with the racial or ethnic issues you are exploring?
Citations
You must cite your research using footnotes. We will discuss this in class, but examples abound on the internet. The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University is helpful.
Other goals
In addition to exploring the history of a technology, this paper has several other goals.
1. You must demonstrate your ability to conduct research into technological change.
2. Show your understanding of the course readings and discussion as they relate to technological change.
3. Demonstrate your capacity for stating a proposition, analyzing your sources/data, organizing your thoughts, and presenting your conclusions in a clear and concise manner.
4. Write in a proper and professional manner that will be required by most office environments.
Possible Race and Ethnicity Topics
Flintlock Rifle Native American and European war cultural exchange
Native American technology and identity before Europeans arrived
Power plants or landfills and Environmental Justice
(Ways of thinking about Environmental Justice as it relates to technology)
Television and the Civil Rights Era
Transcontinental railroad Chinese laborers
Native American and European technology transfers (also African)
Streetcar as it related to the development of cities racial aspects
Railroads and racial segregation
Black porters on railroads (Pullman Porters)
Irish workers in factories
Racial issues related to bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Black inventors
The development of whiteness in specific technological settings like factories
Segregation of busses during the civil rights era Jim Crow and technology
How was Jim Crow applied to technology in general?
The tomahawk and the relationship between Europeans and Native Americans
Body and hair care technologies that have been connected to certain ethnicities
For example, Madam C.J. Walker
Public housing such as Stuyvesant Town in NYC and Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis
Camera and image lighting, and race OJ Simpson images on Time and Newsweek
The first uses of video cameras to document racial violence by police
Slave skills on plantations
Agricultural technologies and ethnicity corn or the Three Sisters for example
History of skilled black artisans in the 18th and 19th centuries
The development of music technologies that are linked to ethnicity (this will need to be very well defined before I will let you do it).
African American travel books Green Book gets at transportation segregation
Confederate Patent Act
Manifest Destiny the Railroad and Native American culture
Digital divide unequal racial access to computing technology
Algorithms and racial assumptions
Cotton Gin and slavery
The history of slave ships (Technology of the Middle Passage)
Eugenics and race (sterilization)
Development of Movies and race Film Birth of a Nation about the KKK.
Race and toys White normativity. For example, Barbie dolls
Development of nuclear technology as it related to Native Americans Ogallala reservation and Uranium mining.
Oil pipelines and Native American reservations
Bathroom technologies as they related to race, ethnicity and gender
Navaho Code Talkers during WWII
Medical Technologies, race and ethnicity:
Tuskegee syphilis experiments
Henrietta Lacks HeLa cells
Possible Gender Topics
Masculinity and femininity and the automobile
Gendering of kitchen space
Development of feminine products
Gendering of consumer culture department stores for example
Masculinity or femininity of toys
Gendering of industrial workplaces
Lowell and women workers
Women who worked as colonial artisans
Gender and childbirth medical technologies and widwives
History of Tech Research Paper Topic Name:___________________________
Description of the Technology.
In a few sentences, describe the issues of race or gender that you might deal with in your paper.
List sources that you plan to use in your paper.
Is it possible that I could get a message saying what the topic you chose is by Nov. 9th
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