Designing a Curriculum for Addressing Human Enhancement and Transhumanism

Abstract

This dissertation demonstrates the need for higher education to address human enhancement and transhumanism, and then offers a curriculum design for accomplishing the task by leveraging an already growing trend in education known as the “STEAM” movement. The STEAM acronym represents the integration of the “arts” with the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines. This dissertation reviews the STEAM philosophy and its adaptation to the higher education setting, and then proposes improvements to the STEAM framework for addressing specific needs of 21st century learning. To appropriately address the concepts of transhumanism, and more generally, human enhancement, an idea for “STEAM Labs” will be introduced. STEAM Labs, which would facilitate transdisciplinary project-based learning, could be used as a framework for implementing an emerging academic branch known as the metahumanities in order to address transhumanism. Illustrating that idea, this dissertation offers a design for a curriculum in the metahumanities.

First Advisor

Sean O'Callaghan

Date of Award

1-1-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

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