Social History of Knowledge

In this course we will look at the ways in which knowledge about society is formed and the impact of social networks as well as social stratification on knowledge formation in society and academia. The specific example will be American and Trans-Atlantic networks of intellectuals in the transition from the Second World War to the Cold War, and the movement of these intellectuals between the intelligence community, the large private and public research funding bodies (such as the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations) and academia. Students will be exposed to different kinds of social theory on knowledge formation (such as Thorstein Veblen, Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, Thomas Kuhn, and Norbert Elias) as well as methods of social history and the social history of knowledge ranging from conceptual textual analysis through biography to quantitative prosopographical Digital Humanities methodologies.