The Joy of Science

Just in time for the Spring semester, ScienceBlogger Zuska has rolled out an online course of sorts. She's conducting a college-level corse entitled Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science--as professor and student. The course explores science, women, and pleasure. From Zuska's syllabus:

This course explores the existence of pleasure, intellectual excitement, and desire as an important component of theorizing and doing science and engineering. We will examine the presence and/or absence of accounts of pleasure/desire in feminist theories of science, and in mainstream science and engineering texts and pedagogy. We will also examine feminist accounts of what might be termed the diversity challenge in engineering, and how feminist theories of science and pleasure can inform this issue. The implications for an adequate feminist theory of science, and for attracting members of underrepresented groups to science and engineering, will be a focus of the course.

Why not study along? Zuska writes:

I'll try to stick to a weekly format, and will plan to post my first piece on Monday, February 5th. You can find the assigned readings for week 1 on the syllabus. Most of the books are available through amazon.com.

Give it a try, and if you like what you're learning, don't forget to give Zuska a few chili peppers at RateMyProfessor.com.

Get the course introduction here, and the second and latest installment here.

(Image: iStockPhoto)