Last week, Matt Whitehead and I gave a presentation about the relationship between poetry and science for National Poetry Month as part of the STEAM Cafe series at Hay Camp Brewing. If you were not able to attend, this is a brief version of what we presented.
As members of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences department, Matt and I (as Art and English faculty, respectively) spend a lot of time thinking about how to get students thinking creatively and engaging in creative projects. Given our work with the Science, Technology, & Society degree, we also work with connections between humanities/arts and science/technology, and we encourage our students to see creativity as something that they don’t do only in our classes but that is a part of their scientific and engineering work, too.
Our core question grows out of this work: What does poetry have to do with science?
The two might seem fundamentally dissimilar, belonging to different realms, but both offer opportunities to look carefully, communicate observations, make connections, and understand the world more fully – piece by piece, experience by experience.
“[Zines] are practices of ‘poetic world-making’—poetic not in the sense of a poem on the page (although they can be this too), but in the sense of poesis: the process of creating something that did not exist before.” – Gwen Allen
The classes I teach create communities. Students get to know each other as they learn the course material, and they share ideas and work with each other. This is a form of world-making, even if temporary, and I love this about my classes. But I don’t want the connections and sharing to stop at the classroom door or to be forgotten when the semester ends. The goal is for my students to connect what they’re learning in class with the rest of the world, to share what they’ve learned with others, to hear what others have learned, and to join and build other communities.
Finding ways to do this can be challenging, but it’s not impossible.
This semester, as a way for students to connect across classes and share work with broader audiences, a few of us in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences department (myself, Matt Whitehead, Evan Thomas, Erica Haugtvedt, and Mary Witlacil) put on a series of zinemaking events that culminated in a Zinefest in the Apex Gallery on December 4th. Zinefest was an all-day come-and-go event that displayed the zines students made in classes (and, in a few cases, just for fun!), provided some examples of interesting zines made by others, and gave visitors a chance to make their own zines. (If you missed it this year, watch out for another event next year!)
This event let students share some of what they have learned this semester, giving them a broader audience, and it also connected them to students in other classes and to the audiences who came to Zinefest. While I did not count the number of visitors during Zinefest, the gallery filled several times and was rarely empty. Some people walked through relatively quickly and took in only a few zines; others stayed for quite a while, standing and reading multiple zines before finally deciding on some they wanted to keep. One student – who will remain nameless for obvious reasons – wrote in a reflection afterward, “I spent almost 2 hours there and accidentally missed class, so I would say I had a good time.” Although I would (of course) never encourage a student to miss class, this indicates that Zinefest offered this student something meaningful.
Because most students were asked to bring multiple copies of their zines, visitors could take a copy of one if they were particularly interested in its ideas or really loved it. Hopefully, they will re-read any zines they took, remember the event, and maybe even be inspired to make their own! Leaving with a material artifact helps the experience and community created through this event extend past Zinefest itself.
Student zines on display with an invitation to take a zine.
As an event, Zinefest promoted connections and community; as a practice, making zines (even without an event like Zinefest) provides us all with an opportunity to create something new – to engage in world-making – and to share that something with others, without requiring elaborate technology or infrastructure, refined skills, or many resources. Anyone can make a zine, and that’s what’s so beautiful about them.
Most semesters, I teach at least one section of Introduction to Humanities (HUM 100). In order to anchor the class’s exploration of such a potentially broad topic, I choose one or two topics to guide our semester-long inquiry into the human experience. This semester, those two topics are place and sound. On the one hand, they are nearly universal categories of human experience, as we inhabit location and experience vibration every day. But on the other, they are infinitely variable. One person’s experience and understanding of a place, or of a particular set of sounds, may be entirely different than another person’s, even if that place and sound are outwardly identical.
One way that my students are exploring the possibilities of sound and space is by experimenting with an artform called “audio walks.” Popularized by artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, these mobile art installations ask the participant to go on a walk, retracing the artist’s footsteps as they listen to an audio recording of the artist’s walk. The artist will often comment on their surroundings, including exact navigation directions for the listener. Inevitable differences in the artist’s recording of their walk and the listener’s own environment (different people passing by, different vehicle sounds, even different times of the day or seasons) draw attention to the differences between the ways we represent experience and our actual experience. This, in turn, helps students appreciate the ways that media technologies affect how we experience, understand, and value the world around us.
Some audio walks are straightforward, presenting an ostensibly “authentic” recording of what the artist experienced on their walk. However, the artist may also choose to more actively compose their audio walk, either by preplanning events to be captured during the recording or by editing the recording after the fact. Such additions amplify the disjuncture between what listeners hear in the recording and what they experience as they retrace the walk.
Eden Otten, a freshman Civil Engineering major, captured the contrast well in a discussion board reply:
I think a sense of community in sound is more fleeting than one in place. We still shared the same trail to Boneyard, and I was in the same place that this audio tour gave meaning to. However, many aspects of sound that gave the walk uniqueness were gone in the days between capturing it and listening to it. We experienced the place the same, but the unique sound couldn’t be a shared experience, as I could hear your contributions to the soundscape, but you couldn’t hear mine.
Below are links to download some of the students’ audio walks. If you’re on campus, I encourage you to download one or more to your mobile device and go on the same walk that the artist did! Walks are best experienced with headphones.
It’s nearly Halloween, so we wanted to share some information about this year’s Halloween costume contest and some spooky content from years past.
Last year, we got some great costume contest entries (see the winners here!), and we’re looking forward to more excellent costumes this year. Open to all SD Mines students, faculty, and staff, the costume contest is simple to enter and offers prizes for winners! If you love dressing up for Halloween, enter by sharing a picture and description of your costume on Instagram and tagging us (@sts_sdmines) or by emailing Dr. Christy Tidwell your entry (christy.tidwell@sdsmt.edu). We really hope to see some STS-related costumes, but all costumes are welcome!
We also wanted to highlight some past posts about scary movies to check out if you missed them the first time around: a series of posts called Spooky Science at the Movies (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5), as well as a post about the Science of Scare project, which measures the so-called scariest movie of the year each year. This year, the Science of Scare named Oddity the scariest movie – watch it for yourself and see what you think!
This semester, I am teaching a section of Connections: Humanities & Technology (HUM 200), which is one of our core STS courses as well as a general education course that students from across the university take to fulfill their humanities requirement. There are many ways to teach this course to get students to think more critically and more deeply about the relationships between the humanities and various technologies, and this particular semester’s class begins with a few weeks exploring printing technologies.
What better way to understand printing technologies than to try them out?
To incorporate a hands-on approach to printing in the class, I worked with our art professor, Matt Whitehead, to prepare an activity for students in the art room. We wanted to give students a chance to work with printing presses in a couple of different ways, to try using a typewriter and a Leroy lettering set, and to check out some old toy moveable type presses. These toy presses date from the 1940s and are no longer totally functional, so they were more on display than for use, but they still allowed students to get a better sense of what a moveable type printing press is like on a small scale.
A mini printing press from the Open Press Project, with students working in the background.
After a brief introduction to some basic printing techniques and explanation of what was available, students were given the freedom to explore these technologies in whatever order they wished. Some made an effort to try everything and even combined elements (the printing press with text from the typewriter or lettering set, for instance); some really focused in on one technology or technique and tried it multiple times or in multiple ways.
As we begin this academic year, the Science, Technology, & Society program has plenty of news to share and exciting events coming up. Check out some of what’s been going on with us and keep an eye out for events you can attend in the coming weeks and months!
Faculty News
We are excited to welcome Carlie Herrick as a Lecturer in English. She has taught English classes here at South Dakota Mines for many years already and is a wonderful colleague, so we’re glad to have her take on this new position! We are also pleased to announce that Kayla Pritchard has been promoted from Associate Professor and is now Professor of Sociology.
Carlie Herrick (and dog)Kayla Pritchard
STS Program News
One of our core STS courses – STS 201: Introduction to Science, Technology, & Society – now counts as a Goal 4 general education course. This doesn’t change the course itself in any significant way, but it does mean that there’s now a good reason for students of all majors to take the course. The class gives students a chance to do the kind of work STS scholars do and to gain a different perspective on their own disciplines. In STS 201, students thoughtfully examine the relationships between science, technology, and society; explore the ways we define these terms and the effects of defining them in these ways; and learn about the history and ethical consequences of scientific research and technological innovations.
Upcoming Events
If you’re looking for cool things to do, STS has you covered this year! Here’s a list of upcoming events sponsored by the STS program and/or the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) department. Add them to your calendar and come to as many as you can!
The Office of Student Engagement and Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (the STS program’s home) are hosting a 2024 Local Election Forumthe evening of Thursday, September 12 (7-9 pm), in the Beck Ballroom in Surbeck Center. Come hear from local candidates, learn about ballot initiatives, and ask questions!
On Tuesday, September 17 at 6 pm, Erica Haugtvedt, Associate Professor of English, will present an introduction to George Eliot, the Victorian novel, and science as part of the university’s STEAM Cafe series. These presentations are free to the public and take place at Hay Camp Brewing Company (601 Kansas St., Rapid City).
The STS program is sponsoring a series of zinemaking events, culminating in a zinefest at the end of the fall semester. We will set up with materials, examples, instructions, and plenty of enthusiasm for a zinemaking event from 9:30-2:30 on Wednesday, September 18, on the second floor of the Classroom Building and then for another from 9:30-2:30 on Wednesday, November 13, on the first floor of the Devereaux Library. Zinefest will show off some of what has been created this semester as well as featuring some information about the history of zines, and will take place in the Apex Gallery (2nd floor of the Classroom Building) on Wednesday, December 4.
The STS program is also sponsoring an STS Book Club beginning this semester. It’s open to faculty, staff, students, and their friends and will provide a space to read and discuss books related to science, technology, and society. The first book will be Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous, a science fiction novel, but future books (to be determined by participants) may include science writing, biographies of scientists/inventors, histories of science and technology, memoirs, or other fiction addressing science. The group’s first meeting will be held in CB 334 (the Stoltz faculty and staff lounge) – Thursday, September 26 at 5 pm.
A grant-funded collaboration between South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Dick Termes, and South Dakota Mines presents an event exploring connections between art and science. The event is scheduled for Saturday, October 5, from 1-4:30 pm on the second floor of the Devereaux Library and will include a screening of parts of the new Ken Burns documentary about Leonardo Da Vinci, a talk by Dick Termes, a chance to use VR goggles to explore Termespheres, and screenprinting with Matt Whitehead (Director of the Apex Gallery and Lecturer in art) and SD Mines students. All are welcome to come check out the various parts of the event at their own pace.
Fundraising
Finally, we want to highlight a fundraising effort to support SD Mines music students. The South Dakota Mines Concert Choir has been invited to perform in the festival choir at the 2025 Salzburg International Choral Festival next summer. Choir members are raising money now to fund their trip, so if you’re able to donate, please consider doing so – it would help them immensely! This supports not only STS students and HASS faculty but students from across the university. You can find out more and donate to support their trip here.
The Exorcist. Hereditary. The Ring. Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These are often named some of the scariest movies out there. They’re also among the most popular horror movies, ones that are watched and re-watched, considered classics. Horror movie fans want to be scared, after all.
But what makes these movies – and others like them – so scary? And which is really the scariest?
Since 2020, the Science of Scare Project has run an experiment to try to answer the second of these questions. The project asks a panel of 250 people to watch horror movies while measuring their physiological responses to them and then ranks the scariest movies based on those responses. In past years, they have relied simply on heart rates, but – after some criticisms from horror fans that this emphasizes only one sudden type of fear – they have updated this for 2023. Now their study includes not only heart rate as way to measure excitement and fear but also heart rate variance, arguing that “the lower the heart rate variance the more stressed our audience members became, a good indicator of slow burn fear and dread.”
I often teach a general education Humanities course (HUM 200, officially titled Connections: Humanities and Technology) on the topic of “Automatic Art.” As a Humanities class, we study representative elements from the entire range of arts and letters:
we study the Hockney-Falco hypothesis that primitive optical cameras were used in the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age;
Those are representative examples of the coursework – but what is “Automatic Art”? The term doesn’t actually have much reality outside of my course. (Frustrated students will often turn to the surrealist technique of Automatic Writing, which does exist, but has little bearing on the collection of objects we study.) I like to tell students that “automatic art” is equivalent to “taking the human out of art,” but what does that actually mean?
In any case, monsters demonstrate something about both the world we live in and what we fear. In the 1950s, people feared nuclear war; now, we fear climate change. The two horror movies I’m recommending for this week directly address those fears, presenting viewers with monsters that embody the harm of nuclear warfare/testing in one case and that are the direct result of climate change’s superstorms and unpredictable weather patterns in the other.
October means cooler temperatures, cozy sweaters, falling leaves – and scary movies. Horror might not be where you turn for your STS-related entertainment, but the genre frequently addresses science, technology, and humanity’s relationship to both. In Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre, Jason Colavito writes that “horror cannot survive without the anxieties created by the changing role of human knowledge and science in our society” (4). These anxieties are also a big part of what we study in STS (Science, Technology, and Society), and they can shape the kinds of technologies we embrace or reject, both as individuals and as a culture.
In the spirit of Halloween, then, this is the first post in a series where I will recommend horror movies that address STEM topics, broadly defined. Each week until Halloween, I’ll suggest one classic and one contemporary horror movie that provide opportunities both to think more deeply about the relationships we as humans have with science/technology and also to have a little fun.
The Novum 
