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

This course responds to the decades-long call from disability scholars and activists for an approach to disability that moves away from the medical model of individual deficit or defect to understanding ableism and disability instead as forms of social meaning-making that work within larger systems of power, privileging some and marginalizing others. In this course we will work with the social model of disability, by approaching the study of dis/abled bodies (and minds) through the ever-shifting historical, socio-cultural, and political formations that name them as such. We will draw on classics of disability studies and emergent feminist sociological texts on disability, as well as memoir, personal essays, pop culture and current events and disability justice activism. By understanding disability as a vector of privilege and oppression, we will analyze its intersections with other vectors of oppression, such as race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship. Although the course will focus on disability in the United States, we will do so by locating the U.S. transnationally within larger global economic, social and political systems.

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:
Writing WA
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Disasters are fundamentally social processes. While triggered by the impact of natural or technological events, their causes lie in the vulnerable social conditions of the impacted society or community. Also, their consequences are not equally distributed across the impacted population. The objective of this course is to introduce students to the sociological examination of disasters. The course is designed as a survey of the social, cultural, and structural causes and consequences of those collective crisis situations that we call disasters. We will be focusing on the conceptual foundations of the discipline and, through the analysis of contemporary disasters, in the main theoretical approaches in the field including homeostatic and political ecological models.

General Education Requirements:

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 talk, we make sweeping generalizations about people's values and moral worth solely on the basis of the language they speak. 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 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

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

This course will attempt to analyze a range of contemporary issues from conservative women who vote for Trump and the rise of white identity and the Black Lives Matter to debates around cultural appropriation, Climate Change, and toxic masculinity. How can social theorists like W.E.B. Dubois, Antonio Gramsci, black feminists, neo-Marxists and others help us better understand these contemporary political issues? For instance, when looking at cultural appropriation debates, how can DuBois's theory of the color line help us understand the process by which appropriation occurs? By exploring the brilliant work of theorists like W.E.B. Du Bois and others, we will quickly learn that the conceptual tools available to us can serve as a resource to dealing with the significant political and social issues of our times. There are no prerequisites for the course. Note: This course fulfills the Social Theories requirement for the Sociology major.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What is social about sexuality? Sexuality and its components (desire, pleasure, love, the body) is something more than a personal or individual characteristic. It is socially constructed. Sexuality has been configured during different historical time periods as sin, as a means of fostering alliances between powerful families, as perversion, as a means to pleasure, as a symbol of love, and as personal identity. These different sexual configurations are connected with larger social-historical trends such as the development of capitalism, the use of rationalized technologies, and the expansion of scientific-medical discourse. In this course, we explore how sexuality has been constructed through history. We examine how categories shape our understanding of sexuality such as male/female, heterosexual/homosexual/queer. We also will address issues such as child sexuality, prostitution, images of sexual minorities in the media and heteronormativity.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores reproductive rights. 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 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. The course will cover an array of readings from the seminal Our Bodies Ourselves (1969) to My Body My Choice (2019), including Dorothy Roberts (1997) Killing the Black Body, along with readings from Latin America.

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

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

In many contemporary social movements, the roles of race and class may either seem obvious or relatively easy to ascertain. But what happens when we add gender to this mix? What are the different roles that women take on in social movements and how can we account for differences across movements? How do gender, race, and class intersect in social movements? For example, what happens when we compare the ideas of progress in Black Lives Matter and white nationalist movements with particular emphasis on women’s place(s) in the future? In this course, we scrutinize the intersections of race, class, and gender as they relate to the ideals to which movements aspire. Social movements that emphasize concepts such as progress, development, and nation-making indicate visions of the future that can illuminate how gender, race, and class shape peoples’ lives. We will focus on the experiences of women (as individuals and as members of groups or organizations) in their historical and structural locations and explore what concepts such as progress, development, and nation-making mean for women in the struggle over feminist meanings and claims.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Despite declining in the early part of the 2010s, the scope and extent of homelessness--along with public attention--has increased over the past few years. This course examines homelessness from a sociological perspective to inform the responses that we might take to address homelessness. What causes changes in homelessness? What are the social, political, and economic dimensions of homelessness? The course will incorporate guest speakers who work with individuals experiencing homelessness as well as people from non-governmental organizations and policy making sectors who aim to address homelessness through systems change.

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

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 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:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

There is a deep structural crisis of the entire edifice of our political and economic system that some have called progressive neoliberalism, characterized by a market-based economy wrapped in progressive sounding diversity politics. The two benefactors 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. The far left wants to create a system of radical democracy and respect for nature. This course will identify this historical system'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 system is, how it functioned historically, where it is now, and where it may go in the future.

General Education Requirements:

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 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

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. Immigrant Voices in Times of Fear will examine 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 WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

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:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials