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:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of childhood studies. We will question taken-for-granted assumptions about the child as we explore how understandings, representations, and experiences of childhood vary across historical, cultural, and geographical contexts. Examining the significance of race and ethnicity, social class, gender, gender identity, sexuality, and disability within children’s lives, we will consider the diverse experiences of childhood. Core themes include the social construction of childhood, children’s agency, and debates surrounding children’s rights in a global context. We will consider various case studies of contemporary children’s and youth issues, including growing up trans and what that reveals about society’s ideas about gender identity more broadly; how children cope and recover following disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and wildfires; and how children and youth can participate and lead in electoral politics and social movements. Finally, we will discuss contemporary research on how, why, and with what consequences the transition to adulthood has become stratified, scrambled, or only partially realized because of systems of oppression and privilege. These systems shape people’s opportunities in higher education, paid work, partnering, parenting, and living independently. Assignments will encourage students to bring a critical perspective to images and narratives of childhood.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course, which has no prerequisites, examines the deep structural crisis of the entire edifice of our political and economic system that some call progressive neoliberalism, characterized by a market-based economy wrapped in progressive sounding diversity politics. The course title reflects a predicament described by Antonio Gramsci in the 1930s, but that may be more salient today: "'the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old order is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." The morbid symptoms of our own old order can be seen in the severe and increasing inequality. The two beneficiaries of this system are (1) those who are at the apex of the system, the so-called 1% and (2) the highly-educated elite professionals, intellectuals, and managerial class, the next 9% and sometimes called the clergy or the secular high priests of the system. The remaining population, largely composed of less educated whites, minorities, blacks, and women are being further and further removed from the rewards of the system. This hyper-inegalitarian system of rule is now experiencing a legitimacy crisis by both the far right and the left, but no true alternatives have yet been proposed to reform or replace it. The far right wants to take us on a path of racial white supremacist rule and further escalate inequalities and prepare us for possibly even a more sinister form of a postcapitalist society. The far left, on the other hand, wants to create a system of radical democracy and respect for nature that has the potential for replacing capitalism with a new historical system based on a more just foundation. This course will identify what was historically in place, capitalism's distinctive dynamics so that we may better determine what is needed to resolve it. With that in mind, as Nancy Fraser has argued, we need to seek a path forward that leads beyond the current impasse -- through political realignments to societal transformation. We will explore what this capitalist system is, how it functioned historically, where it is now, and what systems may replace it in the future. To cover all that in one course is exciting and may help us think about some possible futures we can begin to imagine and work toward.

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. Prerequisite(s): For declared Sociology majors only; all others require permission of instructor.

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

This course delves into the topic of suburbanization, exploring a wide range of themes and issues that have converged in the suburbs as arguably the most important spatial form of the 20th century for observing major shifts in American culture, politics, and economic activity. Broadly, we will examine the complex and multifaceted relationship between suburbs and cities, analyzing the theoretical underpinnings that have shaped the dynamic between them. Additionally, we will explore: the allure and deceit of the American Dream, scrutinizing how this ideal has been both a driving force and a source of disillusionment for many suburbanites; the spatial and possessive logics of whiteness, examining how suburbanization has been intimately tied to the construction and maintenance of racial hierarchies; and the political importance of the suburban homeowner as a voting bloc, looking into how this group has wielded significant influence in local, state, and national elections. Moreover, through examining suburban architecture and its surrounding built environment, we will also explore the gendered, sexual, and social control functions of the single-family home, the highway, and the shopping mall as normalizing structures designed to regulate and shape our behavior and values. Finally, thinking critically about what it means to participate in placemaking within these broader themes, we will close by theorizing together about the significance of rejecting the “cruel optimism” of the suburbs amidst the recapture of city centers by the forces of financial capital. What does it mean to be in place and in community in a world where space has become increasingly territorialized, privatized, and hoarded?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Popular examinations of wealth and poverty often start and end with various market-related institutions (work, ownership of capital, rates of return); however, in the world of nation-states much of the accumulation, distribution, and reproduction of wealth and disadvantage happen through states. In this course, we focus on the fiscal—taxing and spending—and how these practices relate to both material and cultural formations that influence peoples’ life chances and social, cultural, political, and economic life. We will address topics such as how the nature of government collection and expenditure relates to beliefs about who deserves wealth and how it is achieved; why different systems of funding government expenditure emerge, persist, or change; and how these policies shape the nature of inheritance, philanthropy, and the broader political communities of the contemporary world.

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:

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 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