Class Schedules

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:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

We have seen a burst of writing and thinking about men in the past several decades. Many of these writings argue that as more women are excelling professionally, earning more college degrees than their male counterparts and acting as the family breadwinner, the traditional gender landscape is quickly fading into what they identify as a matriarchy. According to this view, men, having falling from their privileged place in society, are being out competed by women for the most prestigious occupations and are now becoming emasculated in the process. We will critically explore the debate that this perspective has engendered, looking at not only the facts of whether this is true or not, but the cultural anxieties and fantasies such a perceived closure of the alpha male trope has produced. We will begin with the idea that manhood has a history, that it is a human creation rather than an edict from above or from nature. Some of the key questions we will ask are: How has manhood changed in the United States since the 19th century? Are there different forms of masculinities, especially when we take into account social indicators like class, race, and ethnicity? Can masculinity take on chameleon forms that in the past seemed antithetical to masculinity, like geeks, cosmopolitans, metrosexuals, or in upper-class gentlemanly cultures? Are we experiencing an emerging hybrid or inclusionary forms of masculinities or are these simply a repackaging of the old?

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

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course applies a sociological perspective to examine consumer culture in American society. The course covers a range of topics, including how consumption structures and reproduces social difference, the role of consumer practices in the constitution of personal identity, sociability and leisure, the role of marketing and advertising, branding and embodied consumer display, and the location of consumption as a site of sub-cultural resistance. The course also explores the troubled relationship between consumerism and sustainability, assessing the possibilities within consumer culture for creating a sustainable future.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores the relationship between production, consumption and social inequality, through the lens of food. Are food preferences a matter of individual choice, or, 
patterned by social forces? To what extent do food opportunities and consumption reflect social inequalities, and to what extent do they create social inequalities? How do food practices constitute social boundaries? What are the political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of food production, distribution, and consumption that operate on local, national, and global scale. How have contemporary social justice movements responded to the inequities of our food system? The courses is a discussion-based workshop and seminar. In addition to developing a term-length research project on food and social justice, students will share their work-in-progress with others and contribute their thoughts and feedback to each others’ projects. The course work begins with a series of short exercises and assignments designed to build student confidence in framing and conducting an extended research project.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In 2015, the Census Bureau reported nearly 2.6 million Black or African-American owned businesses in the U.S., up from 1.9 million or 34.5 percent in 2007. In the same year, American Express reported African American women as the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs, experiencing 322 percent growth between 1997 and 2015. Currently, Black or African American owned businesses have a sizeable footprint in the nation’s economy generating $150 billion in annual revenue and supporting 3.56 million jobs. Entrepreneurship for African Americans wasn’t always encouraged. After the Civil War, freed slaves were legally prohibited from obtaining business licenses to commodify skills (e.g. blacksmithing, horse training, cooking, etc.) learned during their enslavement. In addition to policies barring African Americans from bringing their services and products to the marketplace, racial violence in African American towns and neighborhoods followed destroying their centers of commerce. This course is largely designed to introduce students to entrepreneurship in the African American community from the time the first West Africans arrived in the U.S. as slaves to today. Students will learn key institutions and systems’ impact on African American entrepreneurship within the African American community, and in the U.S. Some of the specific topics covered include Civil War, emancipation, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, the Great Migration, economic revolutions, political and social movements, and hip-hop culture. Ultimately, students should gain an understanding the historical importance of African American entrepreneurship and why the future success of the U.S. economy rests on its expansion.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores historical and contemporary perspectives on racial and ethnic groups in American society, including African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, European Americans, and Americans of Middle Eastern descent. The goal is to develop an understanding of socio-historical forces that have shaped the lives of racial and ethnic groups in America.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

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
Writing WA

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 course places developments in American Indian history into sustained dialogue with often-parallel developments in global approaches to indigeneity. It examines American Indian history in the context of indigenous sovereignty and resistance to colonialism while also addressing comparative and global phenomena, including the growth and diffusion of indigenous rights.

This course is driven by four central themes and accompanying questions: How do we account for the development an encompassing American Indian identity, and does that process also foretell the development of a global indigenous identity? How do we account for the development of AIM and other American Indian movement organizations, and how do these movements connect to (and how were they affected by) global ideas of indigenous rights? In what ways do treaty rights (and related ideals) and international human rights relate to one another with respect to the issues facing American Indian movement organizations? Under what circumstances have American Indian leaders pursued international strategies to address issues and what have the consequences of these strategies been?

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This class is a blend of urban sociology and applied research focused on civic participation and democratic decision-making. Throughout this semester, we will grapple with several questions, including: What are the social conditions and practices that enable all people to have a voice in creating the places that we live? What structures and practices inhibit social justice and equity in urban regions? What role does government play in these processes? We will draw from sociological and urban studies literature as we engage in a collaborative applied research project to develop responses to these questions.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The assignments are twofold. First, we will study the Festival of Nations (International Institute) in the Twin Cities that for the past 85 years brings together cultural performers from over 100 nations every May, providing a critical opportunity to engage with “multiculturalism” in our own community. Given that the Festival brings to the fore the performances of the self carried out from the perspective of the collective, it is a rich ethnographic site for group identity negotiation and embodiment of culture (i.e. dance, food, and crafts), as well as a site for intercultural negotiations. The students will engage in various communities’ preparations for participation in the Festival, which begins in January and runs through early May. The Festival will also allow us to explore, expand, and challenge current notions about multiculturalism. Second, in parallel to this ethnographic research, the students will engage in assignments based on auto-ethnography, which will focus on active critical engagement using the sociological perspectives they will acquire during the semester.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials