Class Schedules

The course introduces students to the sociological imagination, or "the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of individual and society, of biography and history, of self and the world," as C. Wright Mills described it. The enduring value of a sociological imagination is to help students situate peoples' lives and important events in broader social contexts by understanding how political, economic, and cultural forces constitute social life. Sociology explores minute aspects of social life (microsociology) as well as global social processes and structures (macrosociology). Topics covered vary from semester to semester, but may include: socialization, suburbanization and housing, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class stratification, deviance and crime, economic and global inequality, families and intimate relationships, education, religion, and globalization.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Sociolinguistics is the study of the social language variation inevitable in all societies, be they closed and uniform or diverse and multicultural. Language and culture are so closely tied that it is nearly impossible to discuss language variation without also understanding its relation to culture. As humans, we judge each other constantly on the basis of the way we use language, we make sweeping generalizations about people's values and moral worth solely on the basis of the language they use.  Diversity in language often stands as a symbol of ethnic and social diversity. If someone criticizes our language we feel they are criticizing our inmost self. This course introduces students to the overwhelming amount of linguistic diversity in the United States and elsewhere, while at the same time making them aware of the cultural prejudices inherent in our attitude towards people who communicate differently from us. The class involves analysis and discussion of the readings, setting the stage for exploration assignments, allowing students to do their own research on linguistic diversity.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The use of imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment is only about as old at the United States. Currently, 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison or jail. How should we understand the growth of this form of criminal punishment? How is it similar to other methods to react to and to attempt to control unwanted behavior? What are the social consequences of these formal institutions of social control? In this course, we examine these developments in the processes and organization of social control, paying particular attention to criminal behavior and formal, legal responses to crime. We study and evaluate sociological theories of criminal behavior to understand how social forces influence levels of crimes. We examine recent criminal justice policies in the United States and their connections to inequality, examining the processes that account for expanding criminalization. Finally, we compare the development of formal, bureaucratic systems of social control and informal methods of social control, paying attention to the social and political implications of these developments.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The course focuses on access to water as a case to learn about how racialized populations have been historically marginalized in the Twin Cities. In doing so, the class will study the ways Latinx women navigate and resist such marginalization in their role of caring for others in their families. Theoretically, we will engage with the concept of “environmental suffering” (Auyero and Swistun 2007) and extend it to analyze racial marginalization to analyze how racialization constrains Latinx women’s life chances, and of their families. The course will include two visits to Latinx neighborhoods to learn about local women’s stories. Also, we will partner with COPAL MN to learn about the experiences of current Latinx communities’ experiences regarding women’s water use. Specifically, we will support COPAL MN’s storytelling work in the Twin Cities. Thus, as part of their final project, students will complete an oral history project that will be part of the archive COPAL MN is compiling.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course focuses on reproductive health as a human right following the reproductive justice framework. It will focus on women and how they navigate the system to expand their rights. The course will pay particular attention to women who are marginalized due to their race, class, gender identity, indigeneity, and religion. In doing so, this course studies reproductive health and human rights in relation to the broader structural context in the Americas (e.g. national laws and international conventions). As the topic of women's reproductive rights is vast, we will be focusing on abortion, domestic violence, and motherhood. Students in the class will study these issues from the perspective of women's organizations that have mobilized to expand reproductive rights. This course will be comparative in nature as it will focus on reproductive rights in the U.S. and Latin America from the 1980s onwards. These two regions are intimately connected politically and economically, and in regards to reproductive rights. For example, the gag rule introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984 jeopardized the reproductive health services provided in Latin American countries that received funding from the U.S. government. Yet another way that these two regions have been coupled is through feminist networks that have been working to expand reproductive rights in the Americas.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Social science presents claims about the social world in a particular manner that is centered on theoretical claims (explanations) supported by evidence. This course covers the methods through which social scientists develop emprically-supported explanations. The course covers three main sets of topics: the broad methodological questions posed by philosophy of social science, how social scientists develop research design to generate relevant evidence, and methods with which social scientists analyze data. For both the research design and analysis sections, we will concentrate on quantitative research, learning how to use statistical software.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is designed to engage students with the most sophisticated and useful schools of thought available in the social science disciplines. The course raises a number of questions: How can we best understand the complexities of self and society? Are these units of analysis useful in and of themselves? Are they contained in an essential body or polity that we can identify as some unitary entity called Jenny and John Doe, American, French, Arab/Jew, black/white, modern/primitive, developed/underdeveloped, Oriental/ Occidental, homo/heterosexual, male/female? Or are they socially produced units that have no essence in-of-themselves, produced and made real only through performance with the "Other"? Furthermore, is there something unique about modernity that has fundamentally transformed the notions of our selves, bodies, polities, races, and civilizations? If the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, how and why did this come to be the case, and what consequences does it hold for our understanding of the past and of the future? These are the kinds of questions that great figures in sociology have been asking since the nineteenth-century, including classic theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as more recent writers such as Ervin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Edward Said.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This is a team-taught class that combines sociology and anthropology decolonial theories to provide a critical examination of global perspectives which tend to be associated with modern institutions that emerge in the Global North. More importantly, through a decolonizing lens, we will delve into an alternative understanding of the global rooted in the perspective of the Global South and discuss its liberatory possibilities. To better grasp the “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2000) we will focus on how this is manifested in intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and educational and arts institutions. The course will introduce students to subaltern practices and movements in the Global South that have the potential to unsettle the Western hegemony that dominates international organizations, and the fields of education and the arts in the Global North. A decolonial approach to global perspectives also requires an inquiry into the cultural and racial differences embedded in local-global contexts. Finally, the course will allow students to learn new ways of thinking about power, responsibility, and ethics in the context of globalization, and become aware of organizing experiences that have engaged in decolonizationprocesses. Students may write assignments in English or Spanish.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Differently positioned groups and individuals in society experience and understand historicaloccurrences from distinct vantage points. What becomes the accepted account of what hastranspired in our collective lives? How do we as a society remember and make sense of the past? What types of knowledge get produced when only certain accounts of history make their way into official repositories? How is the past ordered and tamed in the service of maintaining systems of domination, exploitation, and perverse forms of inclusion? These questions orient us toward the study of “collective memory,” a concept coined by early sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1925 to refer to how memory becomes socially significant once taken up in a collective context. With a focus on placing the United States in global perspective, we will examine material such as video testimonies, museum displays, archival collections, public monuments, and news coverage to consider the relationship between power and knowledge, the place of history in contemporary political struggles, and the role of technology in historical preservation. Moreover, this course emphasizes how collective memory is also an ongoing project and practice that holds the capacity for transformative social change. Taking a community-engaged approach, we will close by considering the possible futures available to us if we reckon with the past and engage in critical-creative heritage practices in the present.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What is the nature of power within society and how does it relate to the development of nation-states? This course explores the development and operation of nation-states, examining how civil society and state practices relate to each another. We examine how the system of nation-states came into existence and what contemporary developments mean for the future of nation-states. We consider the nature and consequences of both citizenship and nationalism, trying to understand how these relations between individuals and states have developed. We also examine contemporary developments that might change citizenship, such as how we should understand national citizenship given the development of international human rights.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The course introduces students to the sociological imagination, or "the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of individual and society, of biography and history, of self and the world," as C. Wright Mills described it. The enduring value of a sociological imagination is to help students situate peoples' lives and important events in broader social contexts by understanding how political, economic, and cultural forces constitute social life. Sociology explores minute aspects of social life (microsociology) as well as global social processes and structures (macrosociology). Topics covered vary from semester to semester, but may include: socialization, suburbanization and housing, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class stratification, deviance and crime, economic and global inequality, families and intimate relationships, education, religion, and globalization.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Most people in wealthy societies today spend a decade or more time in schools even though their experiences may differ greatly. Schools hold out promises of individual development, upward mobility and societal advancement. And yet schools also are frequently at the center of debates over curriculum, inequalities or health. This course introduces students to the field of sociology of education by focusing on the links between schools and society. We explore the various theoretical views on schooling, examine the social forces shaping modern schooling, and review its relations with individuals and society. We will also focus on selected topics related to contemporary educational debates.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course has no prerequisites: Why is it in the United States controversial or seen as difficult to advocate for justice for Palestinians? Why are so many justice activists often accused of Antisemitism when advocating for Palestinians or criticizing the action of the Israeli state or zionism? Why is advocating to end occupation or settler-colonialism in Palestinian Occupied Territories often silenced in major American institutions while discussions of the Ukraine-Russian war or Apartheid in other contexts are permitted? Why do professors close their office doors when discussing Palestinian rights on campuses? Why is mainstream American media unwilling to use the “G” word when discussing what is happening today in Gaza where over a million of Palestinians are in the process of being displaced and tens of thousands are being killed, most of whom are children, women, and civilians? This course will try to answer these questions and more. It will also cover some basic history of the conflict from the rise of zionism and Palestinian resistance to the growing American-Jewish dissenting voices. We will read key scholarly articles and books by Palestinians and others as well as include excellent documentaries. We will also invite a number of speakers to talk in class.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

According to the International Organization for Migration (OIM), in 2019, the United States had the largest foreign-born population in the world. During the same year, immigrants represented 15% of the United States population while 53% of the foreign-born migrants came from Latin America. At the same time, we are observing the securitization of the US-Mexico border that is resulting in the removal of undocumented individuals from the U.S. in large numbers, specifically Latino men. The course examines recent U.S. immigration as part of a global (historical) phenomenon to understand how we got to where we are. While we will become familiar with immigration policies, we will pay attention to the experiences of immigrants, particularly those coming from Latin America. We will explore questions such as: What motivates people to migrate? How does migration reconfigure social relations, such as parental and community relations? This is a discussion-based course and includes guest speakers and a civic engagement project with a local organization.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces students to comparative and historical methods used in the social sciences, most prominently but by no means exclusively in sociology and political science. Comparative-historical researchers use huge comparisons to understand big structures and large processes that have immense importance for social life. The course addresses questions such as: How do social scientists gather and analyze evidence about macrosocial phenomena? What types of logic guide the definition and selection of cases? In addition, we learn about analytical choices facing comparative-historical researchers, including different methods of comparison and analysis of historical evidence. Beyond reading and discussing material about comparative-historical methods, we will analyze examples of research and apply lessons we learn to gain more familiarity with using comparative-historical methods.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores how sex and gender as categories of knowledge and being have been culturally formed and socially negotiated within colonial structures. Through an interdisciplinary approach drawing from perspectives such as sociology, history, feminist and queer of color critique, geography, legal studies, and cultural studies, the content delves into the role of gender and sexuality in shaping both imperial governance and relations of exploitation. Organized into three distinct periods, the course traces the transformation of sexual and gender ideologies amidst shifting colonial landscapes: firstly, the emergence of domestic ideals alongside racial state formations in the 19th century; secondly, the development of gendered ideologies within colonial settings during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and finally, the enduring impact of colonial constructions of gender and sexuality on post-colonial discourse and action. Additionally making the case that late 19th century imperialism and late 20th century globalization are related political economic processes, the course investigates gender and sexuality at this point of globalization as derived from an imperial inheritance, considering what this means for us in the present. Throughout the course, students will critically examine topics such as the feminization of labor, neoliberal policies, the nexus of war and torture, the carceral state, immigration dynamics, environmental justice, and transnational feminist movements. Special attention will be given to the ways othered gendered and sexual subjects have challenged and resisted globalization and empire, offering insights into forms of resistance and refusal.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Although we often think of mental health individually, how we experience and understand mental distress is powerfully shaped by the world we live in. In this course we will: explore how mental illness definitions and labels are shaped by historical and cultural contexts; consider how the distribution of mental suffering in society is shaped by access to power and resources; examine how social relationships contribute to our mental health; assess how political and social forces shape how we organize and provide mental health care; and examine how social movements shift how we understand and respond to mental health concerns. Throughout we will consider how sociological research calls into question dominant views of mental health and illness.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This class focuses on the relationship between families and larger social institutions, including governments, economic institutions, and labor markets. This course also explores how various societal forces shape relationships within contemporary American families, as well as considering other historical forms and understandings of the family.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This senior seminar serves as the capstone experience for sociology majors. This class provides students with an opportunity to develop a synthetic understanding of their sociology course work and to conduct prospective research that may culminate in honors projects.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials