This course is intended to give students (1) social-scientific tools for describing, diagnosing, and solving social problems and (2) a critical understanding of the ways in which such social-scientific ideas and methods can be, and have been, misused. This course will also examine some of the most prominent social problems in the contemporary United States and the ways in which Americans' views about social problems have changed over time.
Law is everywhere. Law permits, prohibits, enables, legitimates, protects, and prosecutes. Law shapes our day-to-day lives in countless ways. This course examines the connections and relationships of law and society using an interdisciplinary social science approach. As one of the founders of the Law and Society movement observed, "law is too important to leave to lawyers." Accordingly, this course will borrow from several theoretical, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives (such as sociology, history, anthropology, political science, critical studies, and psychology) in order to explore the sociology of law and law's role primarily in the American context (but with some attention to international law and global human rights efforts). The thematic topics to be discussed include law and social control; law's role in social change; and law's capacity to reach into complex social relations and intervene in existing normative institutions and organizational structures.
Our climate is rapidly changing. Rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, higher temperatures, more droughts, melting glaciers, wilder weather patterns, and mounting environmental disasters mean that climate change is increasingly visible in our daily lives. What role does human society play in these changes, and what consequences does society suffer as these changes occur? This course is an introduction to environmental sociology during which we will employ an intersectional, sociological perspective to look beyond the scientific basis for environmental problems to understand the social roots of environmental issues. We will cover a variety of topics in environmental sociology, including new directions in sustainable development and how actors such as corporations, the media, and social movements impact public opinion and environmental issues. Further, we will critically examine the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks.
This course is an introduction to research methods from a sociological point of view. It aims to show how sociologists (and related social scientists) do research. We will examine fundamental concepts in research design (from sampling to bias), many different types of methods (from experiments to surveys), research ethics, and the benefits and limitations of various methodological approaches. In this hands-on course, we will learn about various methods, research ethics, and the fundamentals of research design by interacting with scholarly articles and practice and by looking at how social science research factors in our everyday lives (from social media posts to stories on the nightly news). A capstone project includes development of a full research proposal. This course is conducted completely online.
We all interact with organizations. You are interacting with an organization right now. Much of everyday life, whether it is school, work, shopping, or eating occurs within the context of organizations. The goal of this course is to teach you to think analytically about the organizations you interact with. We will examine why organizations are the way they are, how scholar's understandings of organizations have changed over time, and how scholars today think about organizations.
