Last Updated: Mon, 07/28/2025
Syllabus
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General Class Information
Academic year:
2025
Semester:
Fall
Course prefix:
HTS
Course number:
2100
Section:
A
CRN
89972
Instructor first name:
Taylor Elizabeth
Instructor last name:
Dysart
Class Details
Course description:

This course’s purpose is to examine how historical and modern developments in science and technology refract and shape culture, politics, and society on a global scale. It does so through the history and anthropology of drugs. This course asks how drugs—across many forms and meanings—have been central to major historical developments around the globe. It also explores whether and to what extent human engagements with drugs—as objects of study, consumption, wonder, art, power—are a facet of modernity. This course examines how drugs have been variously understood, defined, studied, and legislated across time and space. This course begins with an exploration of the economic changes spurred by colonial commodities, moves to the medical impact of nineteenth-century pharmaceutical sciences, traces the spiritual technology of modern psychedelics, and ends with the future promise of “magic bullets.”

Academic honesty/integrity statement:

Scholarship is an intellectual, ethical, and social endeavor. It can be a great joy to discuss and debate assignments, ideas, theories, and readings with your peers. For this class, I encourage you to reflect on course materials, workshop ideas, and proofread drafts with your peers outside of our scheduled class time. However, you also have a responsibility to properly and clearly cite any ideas, language, or theories that you did not generate. It is a form of plagiarism to misrepresent another scholar’s work as your own without proper attribution, even if such misrepresentation is unintentional. See below for proper citation practices, including a reference for the Chicago Manual of Style.

Any instances of academic dishonesty will result in disciplinary action, which may include a required resubmission, a failing grade, or a report to the Office of the Dean of Students. Violations include cheating, plagiarizing, or the inappropriate use of online software, including AI.  

If you have any questions or you’re in doubt, please ask me. It is our shared responsibility to foster an environment where you can debate, discuss, take risks, make mistakes, improve, learn, and grow. 

For more information, please see Georgia Tech’s Academic Honor Code and Student Code of Conduct.

https://policylibrary.gatech.edu/student-life/academic-honor-code

https://policylibrary.gatech.edu/student-life/student-code-conduct

Citation Requirements

For all assignments, please reference the citation guidelines for the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, unless otherwise explicitly stated. 

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Core IMPACTS statement(s) (if applicable):

This is a Core IMPACTS course that is part of the Social Science area. 

Core IMPACTS refers to the core curriculum, which provides students with essential knowledge in foundational academic areas. This course will help master course content, and support students’ broad academic and career goals.

This course should direct students toward a broad Orienting Question:

  • How do I understand human experiences and connections?

Completion of this course should enable students to meet the following Learning Outcomes:

  • Students will effectively analyze the complexity of human behavior, and how historical, economic, political, social or geographic relationships develop, persist or change.

Course content, activities and exercises in this course should help students develop the following Career-Ready Competencies:

  • Intercultural Competence
  • Perspective-Taking
  • Persuasion

This course carries the Georgia Tech-specific Ethics attribute. 

To carry the Georgia Tech-specific ethics attribute, a course must demonstrate alignment of course level objectives, content, and assessments with each of the following:  

  1. An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in real-world contexts.
  2. An ability to assess actions or decisions based on established ethical principles and theories, or through deliberative processes.
  3. An ability to consider the implications of actions, both broadly (e.g. global, economic, environmental, or societal) and for individuals.