My teaching excites students from a broad range of academic backgrounds with perspectives from history of science and science and technology studies (STS). Courses I’ve developed and taught have focused on space exploration, extreme environments, and modern medicine. My approach emphasizes interdisciplinary reading and discussion as well as experiential learning and open format projects.

EXPLORATIONS OF MARS

The University of Chicago: Spring 2021, Autumn 2021, Autumn 2022: KNOW 36070 / HIST 35200 / ENST 26070 / HIPS 26070

Mars is more than a physical object located millions of miles from Earth. Through centuries of knowledge-making people have made the “Red Planet” into a place that looms large in cultural and scientific imagination. Mars is now the primary target for human exploration and colonization in the Solar System. How did this happen? What does this mean? What do we know about Mars, and what’s at stake when we make knowledge about it? Combining perspectives from the social sciences and humanities, this course investigates how knowledge about Mars is created and communicated in not only science and technology fields but across public culture. A major focus will be learning how Mars has been embedded within diverse social and political projects here on Earth. Through reading-inspired group discussions and instructor-led experiential research projects, the course will move from the earliest visual observations of Mars to recent robotic missions on the planet’s surface. In doing so, this seminar will critically grapple with evolving human efforts to make Mars usable. No prior knowledge of Mars is required.

READ: UChicago College News “Jordan Bimm takes students on an exploration of Mars in spring quarter MAPSS course”

THE HUMAN BODY IN EXTREMES

The University of Chicago: Winter 2021: IRHU 27001, KNOW 36000, HIPS 26100

What can the human body endure? This interdisciplinary research seminar focuses on the interplay between bodies and extreme environments. Each week we will “visit” a different hazardous context or locale and consider the challenges it poses to human culture and survival. Environments to be covered include outer space, deep seas, polar regions, radiation zones, mountain summits, underground mines, and disaster areas. With tools from environmental history, the history of medicine, the history of technology, medical anthropology, and sociology, we will consider how ideas of the body and how ideas of the environment change over time, and how producing knowledge about the limits of the body helps to define what people consider “normal” bodies and “normal” conditions. Each seminar will pair short readings drawn from secondary sources with original research tasks in diverse historical archives. Students in the course will develop greater familiarity with humanistic research methods, as well as learn how to apply scientific and biomedical ideas of the body within humanistic research projects. Students in the course will also learn how to participate effectively in current debates about where and how people live, work, and travel.

RESEARCH IN ARCHIVES: HUMAN BODIES IN HISTORY (developed and taught with Dr. Iris Clever)

The University of Chicago: Autumn 2021, Winter 2023: IRHU 27006 1, KNOW 26076 1, HIST 25513

How have we come to know and experience our bodies? This undergraduate seminar develops humanities research skills necessary to study the body in history. Spanning early modern cultural practices to modern medicine, science, and technology, this course explores how ideas and practices concerning the body have changed over time and how the body itself is shaped by culture and society. A major focus will be learning how to conduct different forms of historical research to produce cutting-edge humanities scholarship about the human body. Readings will introduce key themes and recent scholarship including work on disability, reproduction, race, gender, ethics, extreme environments, and identity. This dynamic research group will grapple with issues at the heart of our corporeal existence by combining perspectives from the history of science, medicine, and technology, cultural history, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS). Instructor-led field trips will introduce students to research methods at sites including the Smart Museum of Art, the University’s Archives and Special Collections, and the University’s Pathology Laboratory, Anatomy Laboratory, and Morgue. Students will have the opportunity to learn from curators, archivists, and medical practitioners.