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

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 linguistic diversity. Language and culture are so closely tied that it is nearly impossible to discuss language variation without also understanding its relation to culture, and diversity in language often stands as a symbol of ethnic and social diversity. 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 speak 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:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The use of imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment is only about as old as the United States. Currently, 2.1 million adults–more than one out of every 120 adults–in the United States are in prison or jail. If we include those under probation or parole, the total population under correctional supervision in the U.S. is 6.6 million, or one out of every 38 adults. How should we understand the growth 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:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an overview of environmental activism, politics, and policy making in the United States in historical and comparative perspective. More specifically, we address the following questions: Are human societies destined to environmental collapse? What are the fundamental obstacles to sustainable economies in democratic-capitalist societies? How did environmental lobbies emerge? How have these environmental organizations evolved in the last half-century? Has consumer activism greened US markets and corporations? Which political networks have led the campaigns to regulate greenhouse gases in US? Why have these campaigns failed? Who opposes environmental action on climate change, and why? Why have the US and Europe responded differently to the problem of global warming? What are the prospects for a quick transition from a fossil-fuel economy to one based on clean energy?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In popular discourse, the category of class is often missing, misunderstood as temporary and not institutionalized, displaced onto other discourses of difference such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, or mystified within an ideology of individualism. In this course, we adopt a sociological lens to examine the systematic operation of class divisions through cultural mediums, considering how class identities become formulated and class cultures become differentiated within varying institutional contexts. Our study will track the category of class along multiple lines of cultural distinction, examining class subjectivity as it is constructed in relation to gender, race, and sexual identity, and as it is built around moral discourses of difference and symbolic economies of style, taste, and preference.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is focused and driven by student team project work. Students will prioritize social problems / issues for which they would like to engage in the creation / implementation of a solution. They will spend the semester working to more deeply understand the problems, research successful and failed attempts to resolve the problem in other contexts, and to generate a solution that includes a well researched model for introducing sustainable social change. It is through this engagement that students will grapple with the challenging realities of practice and implementation. Students will study several methodologies including Lean Startup, Human Centered Design, Participatory Poverty Assessment and Impact Gap Analysis. Students will learn through their own experiences and utilize case studies comparing problems, their root causes and the entrepreneurial approaches deployed to address them from various countries and cultural contexts.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Nonprofit organizations are important elements of the public sphere. They are one of the principal means by which we generate, concentrate, and channel our humanitarian and civic impulses. Sociological perspectives on nonprofit organizations presented in this course combined historical and contemporary accounts of the political, economic, and culture dimensions of the third sector: the panoply of private associations devoted to public purposes. Some of the learning goals are to develop an understanding and appreciation of: the legal frameworks that specify the permissible activities of nonprofit organizations; the ethical dilemmas that nonprofit organizations and professionals encounter as they envisage and strive to fulfill their service mission; theoretical scholarship aimed at explaining and justifying the diverse roles of nonprofits organizations in US society; the historical evolution of the relationship between the nonprofit, governmental, and commercial sectors; the challenges of governing and managing nonprofit associations; the transformation of civic engagement in the US; and, the day-to-day workings of nonprofit organizations through a case study based on students' involvements with and studies of associations of their choice.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This class introduces students to the methodologies and analytic techniques of fieldwork and ethnography: participant observation, interviewing, and the use of documents. Students will read exemplary, book-length studies and will conduct an extensive field research for their final project.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Economic activity is a form of social activity: people attribute meaning to economic activity, they pursue such activity in relation to others, and this activity is patterned and organized. Starting from these premises, economic sociologists ask a wide range of questions, such as: How do people find jobs? What historical and social legacies affect prospects for development? How do art dealers know how to set prices on unique original works of art? What social arrangements influence economic inequalities? In what ways do people mix economic activities and intimacy? By surveying recent developments in economic sociology, this course introduces students to the kinds of questions that economic sociologists ask, the types of evidence they use, and the range of answers they generate. Students do not need a background in economics or sociology for this course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

How can we best understand the complexities of the present U.S. "War on Terrorism"? Should it be understood as a clash between two different cultural systems, one modern and democratic and the other feudal and fanatic? Or, is the violence systemic, taking a variety of forms in different parts of the globe? What role does power and inequality on a global scale have to do with it? These and many other questions will be dealt with in this course. We will trace the conflict historically to assess moments of violence and tensions and other periods of calm and symbioses. Finally, we will analyze how modernity transformed the relationship between Islam and the West, Jew and Arab, male and female, and nation/race and identity.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines migration as a global phenomenon addressing questions such as: What motivates people to migrate and what distinguishes migrants from those who remain in their home countries? How does migration reconfigure social relations, such as parental and community relations? How should we understand the different frameworks of immigration policies (e.g., security, human rights, economic growth) and the consequences of these different policy emphases? The course addresses these questions by drawing on recent research about both immigration policies and immigrant experiences.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP

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