Amherst HSTEM 2025 Spring Reading List

The HSTEM reading list grows and evolves over time with each iteration. HSTEM values the unique expertise and experiences of its facilitators, who bring their human selves and interests into the classroom. As a result, the reading list has taken an interdisciplinary approach, as exemplified by this 2024 reading list, which was created by Zac Watson ’24, Dr. George Abraham, and Dr. Jaswal.

Week 1 – Humanism in STEM

Week 2 – Being Human in Community

  • Appiah, Kwame. “Go Ahead, Speak for Yourself.” The New York Times (Aug. 10, 2018). (3 pgs)
  • Ross, Loretta,  “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.” The New York Times (Aug. 17, 2019) (3 pgs)
  • Schulman, Sarah. “A Reparative Manifesto.” In Conflict is not abuse: overstating harm, community responsibility, and the duty of repair, 15-31. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016.  (17 pgs) 
  • Wing Sue, Derald et. al. “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life”,  American Psychologist (May-June 2007) (16 pgs)
  • Seedtheway.com, Interrupting-Bias- Calling-Out-vs.-Calling-In (2 pgs)
  • Departmental Action Teams – Norms of Collaboration (2 pgs)

Week 3 – Being Human in Elite Academic Spaces

  • The Privileged Poor: How Elite Universities are failing Disadvantaged Students, Tony Jack, Amherst ‘07, Introduction: Can Poor Students Be Privileged? pp 1-24; 24 pages 
  • Meanings of Mobility: Family, Education, and Immigration in the Lives of Latino Youth. Schmalzbauer, Leah Intro: pp 1-23 (23 pgs)
  • Meanings of Mobility: Family, Education, and Immigration in the Lives of Latino Youth. Schmalzbauer, Leah
    • Chapter 2:  A New World pp 48-74  
    • Chapter 3: The Price of Mobility pp. 75-103 
    • Chapter 6: Redefining Success 163-181 

Week 4 – Towards Educational Freedom

  • We want to do more than survive: abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom / Bettina L. Love.
    • Ch. 2, Educational Survival (pg 16- 41)
    • Ch.  4, Grit, Zest, and Racism (The Hunger Games) (Pg 69-87)
    • Ch. 5, Abolitionist Teaching, Freedom Dreaming, and Black Joy (Pg 88-124)

Week 5 – What is Identity? Who does it serve?

  • Olufemi O. Taiwo, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (150 pages)

Week 6 – Indigenous & Black Feminist Ways of Knowing

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Asters & Goldenrod, 39-47
    • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
      • Asters & Goldenrod, 39-47 (9 pages)
      • Sitting in a circle, 223-240  In Section – “Braiding Sweetgrass” (18 pages)
      • People of Corn, People of Light, 341-347 In Section – “Burning Sweetgrass” (7 pgs)
  • Kim Tallbear, “Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry.” Journal of Research Practice 10, no. 2 (2014): N17.
  • Shapes of Native Nonfiction- Edited by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton
  • Candace Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i (introduction, 30 pgs)

Week 7 -Black Feminist, Indigenous, & Anti-colonial Ways of Knowing Cont’d

  • Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science
  • Umniya Najaer, “disarming humanity”
  • Dionne Brand, Salvage: Readings from the Wreck

Weeks 8 & 9 – Being Human in STEM – The Experience & The Data I

Week 10 – Science, What is it? Where is it Going?

  • The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins , 2015, pp. 217-225 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77bcc.25 
  • Land, Bodies, and Knowledge: Biocolonialism of Plants, Indigenous Peoples, Women, and People with Disabilities- https://doi.org/10.1086/508224 
  • Regimes of Description: In the Archive of the Eighteenth Century, Natures Unruly Body: The Limits of Scientific Description, Londa Schiebinger. (Pages 25-43)
  • Optional:
  • Clifford D Conner, A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks, Ch 1, What Science? What History? What People? (pg. 1-24)
  • Regimes of Description: In the Archive of the Eighteenth Century, Natures Unruly Body: The Limits of Scientific Description, Londa Schiebinger. (Pages 25-43)