Midterm Exam
The exam will consist of 6 short-answer questions covering the material of the first 9 weeks. Most of the questions will be drawn from a list posted during Week 8. Others may be drawn from the questions in the weekly reading guides.
The exam will count for 30% of the final course grade.
Final Paper
The final paper must be between 4000 and 5000 words and should either address in greater depth one of the case studies explored in class or develop a different case defined by an activist, movement, or event involving science activism after 1945 anywhere around the world.
Sample topics include:
- An analysis of Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov’s 1968 article “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom”
- The 2017 March for Science
- Examples of science activism from MIT
For some topics, the MIT Archives and the MIT Museum will provide useful material not found elsewhere.
The final paper should include an introduction, literature review, description of the case study, analysis, and conclusions. Each student will prepare a 15-minute presentation of the idea for this paper in weeks 7 through 9 before the paper is due during week 12 and will participate in the discussion of other students’ ideas.
The final paper will count for 30% of the final course grade.