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 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

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

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
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 “theatre 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, find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites like Madison Avenue and politicians produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations? (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 left 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 that can persuasively defeat this emerging Far right? 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

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 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

The course introduces students to principles of cross-national and cross-cultural analysis. The class begins with a survey of the basic methodological orientations that distinguish various modes of analysis in the social sciences. The lectures and discussions in this section provide a general introduction to the logic of causal analysis, explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of differing methodological approaches to understanding social phenomena, and specifically, consider in greater detail the distinctive blend of theoretical, methodological, and empirical concerns that inform comparative-historical social science. The substantive topics of the course include: the Social Origins of the Modern State; the Sociology of Democracy and Authoritarianism; the Sociology of Revolution; and The Rise of the Welfare State.

General Education Requirements:

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

In this course we will explore the frameworks, concepts and theories developed by sociologists for understanding the nature and dynamics of social movements through exploring cases of social movements in 20th and 21st century U.S. history. We will be applying sociological approaches to these cases, exploring different facets of collective action. We will examine why and how movements emerge as well as the strategies and tactics of those movements. In the course we will cover a wide range of movements, such as the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, feminist movements, the gay liberation movement, as well as the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements.

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

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:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

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:
Writing WA
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 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

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:
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 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:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

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:
Writing WP
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