The Science, Technology, and Society (STS) domain emphasis provides students with critical capacities to engage with a world shaped by science, technology, and medicine. It explores how these fields are constructed, contingent, and contested and how they interact with institutions, policy, and various forms of global social inequality.

From the lists shown below, students will select one course from the lower-division, and two courses from the upper-division. The lower division course is a required element of the Domain Emphasis.


Prerequisites are shown within square brackets.

Lower Division (select one)

  • DATA 4AC. Data and Justice (4 units)
  • GEOG 80. Digital Worlds: An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies (4 units)
  • HISTORY 30. Science and Society (4 units)
  • ISF 60. Technology and Values (4 units)

Upper Division (select two)

  • ANTHRO 115. Introduction to Medical Anthropology (4 units)
  • ANTHRO 119. Special Topics in Medical Anthropology (4 units)
  • ENGIN 157AC/IAS 157AC. Engineering, the Environment, and Society (4 units)
  • ENGLISH 180Z. Science Fiction (4 units)
  • ENVECON 143. Economics of Innovation and Intellectual Property (4 units)
  • ESPM 161. Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (4 units)
  • ESPM 162. Bioethics and Society (4 units)
  • ESPM 163AC / SOCIOL 137AC. Environmental Justice: Race, Class, Equity, and the Environment (4 units)
  • FILM 155. Media Technologies (4 units)
  • GEOG (N)130. Food and the Environment (3-4 units)
  • GWS 130AC. Gender, Race, Nation, and Health (4 units)
  • HISTORY 100S/100ST. Special Topics in the History of Science (4 units)
  • HISTORY 103S. Proseminar: History of Science (4 units)
  • HISTORY 138/138T. History of Science in the U.S. (4 units)
  • HISTORY 180/180T. History of the Life Sciences since 1750 (4 units)
  • HISTORY 182A/182AT. Science, Technology, and Society (4 units)
  • INFO 103. History of Information (4 units)
  • ISF 100D. Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture (4 units)
  • ISF 100G. Introduction to Science, Society, and Ethics (4 units)
  • RHETOR 107. Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse (4 units)
  • RHETOR 115. Technology and Culture (4 units)
  • RHETOR 145. Science, Narrative, and Image (4 units)
  • SOCIOL C115 / PB HLTH C155. Sociology of Health and Medicine (4 units)
  • SOCIOL 166. Society and Technology (4 units)
  • SOCIOL 167. Virtual Communities / Social Media (4 units)
  • STS C100 / HISTORY C182C / ISF C100G. Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society (4 units)
  • UGIS 110. Introduction to Disability Studies (3 units)

One additional course that meets the Data Science Human Contexts & Ethics requirement may be counted toward the Domain Emphasis in STS. If counted toward the STS DE, this course may not be used to satisfy the HCE requirement:

  • AMERSTD / AFRICAM 134 or C134. Information Technology and Society (4 units)
  • BIO ENG 100. Ethics in Science and Engineering (3 units)
  • CY PLAN 101. Introduction to Urban Data Analytics (4 units)
  • DATA C104 / HISTORY C184D / STS C104. Human Contexts and Ethics of Data (4 units)
  • DIG HUM 100. Theory and Method in the Digital Humanities (3 units)
  • ESPM C167 / PUB HLTH C160. Environmental Health and Development (4 units)
  • INFO 188. Beyond the Data: Humans and Values (3 units)
  • ISF 100J. The Social Life of Computing (4 units)
  • NWMEDIA 151AC. Transforming Tech: Issues and Interventions in STEM and Silicon Valley (4 units)
  • PHILOS 121. Moral Questions of Data Science (4 units)