What is Latinx futurism? Most of the imagined futures we are exposed to in the United States have been crafted by white authors. From Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels about robots to high-production value blockbusters. An alternative cannon, Afrofuturism, has begun to blaze a path for understanding why the political, racial, and cultural position of those doing the imagining matters. In do so, Afrofuturism aims to inspire us to think carefully about how we deal with the pressing social issues of our time and have offered a new lens for thinking about the future. This discussion-based seminar takes this as a departure point and works towards including Latinx futurism in this frame. This seminar is an introduction to a way of thinking sociologically about technology, science, and society from the perspective of Latinx and Latin American communities. In their reading and writing assignments students will explore a broad array of topics, from the origins of postcolonial states, Zapotec science, and borderlands epistemology.
SOCIOL 101-7 Gender, Classification, and Globalization
In this course, we will explore the relationship between gender and globalization. We will study how gender and sexuality are produced as global social categories. The course will survey liberal approaches to gender and sexuality categories as sites for international human rights claims-making. It will then turn to postcolonial and transnational feminist critiques of taken-for-granted social groupings, such as “woman” and, more recently, “gay” and “transgender,” that are assumed to be globally relevant. Critical approaches to gender and sexuality challenge conventional “born this way” narratives about gender and sexual identities as innate and therefore universal. This course will raise questions that will make us uncomfortable and, hopefully, give us tools to critically reflect on our own gender and sexuality identities and practices.
What is Latinx futurism? Most of the imagined futures we are exposed to in the United States have been crafted by white authors. From Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels about robots to high-production value blockbusters. An alternative cannon, Afrofuturism, has begun to blaze a path for understanding why the political, racial, and cultural position of those doing the imagining matters. In do so, Afrofuturism aims to inspire us to think carefully about how we deal with the pressing social issues of our time and have offered a new lens for thinking about the future. This discussion-based seminar takes this as a departure point and works towards including Latinx futurism in this frame. This seminar is an introduction to a way of thinking sociologically about technology, science, and society from the perspective of Latinx and Latin American communities. In their reading and writing assignments students will explore a broad array of topics, from the origins of postcolonial states, Zapotec science, and borderlands epistemology.
SOCIOL 101-8 First Year Writing Seminar: Teens, 'Tweens, & Adolescents
This course examines the experiences of young people today and how the experience of being a young person varies greatly by socioeconomic status, gender, race, and ethnicity. We will also spend time looking at how life stages associated with youth (such as 'tween, teenager, and emerging adulthood) have evolved and why the road to adulthood is often longer today. We will also consider how the media shapes societal views of young people and how young people use social media. Finally, we will consider how the lives of young people today (Millennials and Gen Z) compare to earlier generations (including Baby Boomers and Generation X), and we will look at inter-generational interactions at home, in school, and in the workplace.
SOCIOL 101-8 First Year Writing Seminar: Gender and Politics
This class will investigate how gender shapes politics and policy, and how these in turn shape gender, with a focus on the United States, in comparative and global context. Gender is conceptualized as a set of relations, identifications and cultural schema, always constituted with other dimensions of power, difference and inequality (e.g., race, class, sexuality, religion, citizenship status). We will analyze the gendered character of citizenship, political participation and representation, social rights and economic rights. We aim to understand gendered politics and policy from both "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives. What do states do, via institutions of political participation and representation, citizenship rights and policies, to shape gender relations? How do gender relations influence the nature of policy and citizenship? How has feminism emerged as a radical challenge to the androcentrism and restricted character of the democratic public sphere? And how have anti-feminism and "anti-gender theory" come to be significant dimensions of politics? We expand on conventional conceptions of political participation and citizenship rights to include the grassroots democratic activism that gave birth to modern women's movements. We explore how women's political efforts have given rise to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, social provision and economic participation, as well as reshaping formal politics and policies. And, finally, we will take advantage of the fact that we are in the run up to a Presidential and congressional election to examine the gendered aspects of the political landscape in the contemporary United States.
Sociology is a field of study that examines how people and groups interact, navigate, and make decisions within the structure and constraints of their social world. Often these social processes go unobserved or unacknowledged, and sociologists treat it as their job to shed analytical light on how people experience and participate in society. Through sociological analysis, we can answer questions like: How did Evanston become largely segregated by race? Why is it illegal for people to sell their kidneys? Is suicide contagious? Why would someone pay for Instagram followers?
Sociology is a huge field of study, and includes and enormous variety of topics and methods. Each week, we will focus on a specific area of sociological study (Culture, Gender, Race, Family, Money, Deviance, etc.) with the goal of offering you a general overview of the types of questions sociologists ask and how they answer them. By the end of the quarter, you will be able to think sociologically about your own world, and hopefully develop a budding interest in one or more of the areas we discuss in class.
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.
Gender structures our daily lives in fundamental ways, yet we are often unaware of its effects. For example, why do we associate blue with boys and pink with girls? Why do most administrative forms only have two categories (i.e. Male and Female)? Why do male doctors, on average, have higher incomes than female doctors? The course introduces students to the sociological analysis of gender as a central component of social organization and social inequality in the US context. We start by reviewing key sociological concepts that are important to the study of gender. Next, we explore the causes and consequences of gender inequalities in important social institutions such as the family, the education system, and the labor market. We conclude by considering gender inequality in an international comparative context to understand crosscutting similarities and differences between the US and both high- and low-income contexts. This allows us to explore the role social norms and policies play in perpetuating and/or mitigating gender inequalities.
SOCIOL 220-0 Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and Society
We are told constantly, “take care of yourself!” and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us. They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives– our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies:
- Why do some people get better medical care than others? - How should the healthcare system be organized? - How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? - What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? - What happens when no diagnosis can be made?
This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and health care in the United States and also consider potential solutions.
Gender studies have traditionally focused on women. Yet critical work on men and masculinities show us how people of all genders are constrained by gender expectations and assumptions. Furthermore, studies of masculinities shed light on practical questions like, why do men die earlier than women? And, why are men more likely to commit mass shootings? In recent years, the public spotlight has cast light on savory and unsavory aspects of masculinity; think about the rise of the term “toxic masculinity,” the #MeToo movement, the 2019 viral Gillette advertisement, and blogs commenting on the behavior of men on the reality show The Bachelorette. In this course, we will go beyond banal statements like “men are trash” to critically ask, What role does masculinity play in social life? How is masculinity produced, and are there different ways to be masculine? This course provides students with an intensive introduction to the foundational theory and research in the field of masculinities studies. We will use an intersectional lens to study the ways in which the concept and lived experience of masculinity are shaped by economic, social, cultural, and political forces. As we study the institutions that socialize people into gender, we will examine how the gendered social order influences the way people of all genders perform masculinity as well as the ways men perceive themselves and other men, women, and social situations. Verbally and in writing, students will develop an argument about the way contemporary masculinity is constructed and performed.
How do sociologists do their work? How do they make discoveries and draw conclusions about the social world around us? This course is an introduction to sociological research methods. We will learn how to design a research study - everything from choosing a topic and formulating a research question to developing a research plan. We will explore a range of research methods from surveys, interviewing, observational methods and content analysis to "big" data approaches. We will also think about the strengths and weaknesses of various sociological methods and what these methods can contribute to our understanding of the social world. We will also debate and discuss the role of the researcher in the research process along with thinking about ethical concerns and IRB protections for research subjects. We will also critically examine how social science research is presented to us in our everyday lives (including news reporting, political polls and social media postings). The goal of this course is for students to be able to design an appropriate methods plan to investigate a sociological research question they are interested in, but also to become more critical when learning about the latest social science study from media and social media outlets.
What constitutes evidence? How is it created? What makes it relevant and reliable? The interdisciplinary field of legal studies has a diverse range of answers to these questions. In this class, we will focus on jurisprudence and legal reasoning, qualitative and quantitative social science methods, and historical and textual analysis. Through engaging with these interdisciplinary methods, we will develop your ability to both productively evaluate scholarly research on law and legal processes, as well as conduct your own research on legal institutions. This course is intended to build your skills to conduct your own original research for the legal studies thesis (Legal Studies 398); as such, it is recommended for students to take this course in their junior or sophomore years.Prerequisite: LEGAL_ST 206/SOCIOL 206. Taught with LEGAL_ST 207; may not receive credit for both courses.
The concentration of crime in disadvantaged neighborhoods is one of sociology's most enduring findings. In this course, we will seek to understand why crime and the reach of the criminal legal system are unequally distributed across neighborhoods. To do so, we will critically examine how factors like neighborhood inequality, structure and organization, culture, and social-processes of neighborhood life relate to crime and formal and informal responses to crime.
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.
SOCIOL 303-0 Analysis and Interpretation of Social Data
This course introduces statistics and data analysis for the social sciences, focusing on understanding, interpreting, and deploying data and statistical analysis to understand the social world.
The course begins without numbers, encouraging students to be critical and analytical of the data they encounter every day. Using examples from policy, journalism, and the election, students will practice reading, interpreting, and critiquing empirical analyses.
After gaining familiarity with the reasoning underlying data analysis, the second part of the course will introduce basic statistical analysis. Students will collect, analyze, and interpret data in an area of their interest. The goal is for students to critically engage with statistical topics – to understand the strengths, weaknesses, assumptions, and contributions of statistics to scientific understanding and exploration.
Finally, the course will explore how computation is remaking modern social understanding. Though a focus on machine learning and neural networks, students will explore the contribution of data to human knowledge, while also gaining insight on why such methods pose serious challenges to human well-being.
While not a programming course, students will do exercises and homework using free tools, such as google sheets and the statistical software “R”. Labs will be focused on gaining proficiency with these tools.
This course provides an overview of how human populations change through mortality, fertility, and migration. This year, we will give special attention to how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted mortality, fertility, and migration in the US and globally. Students will learn key concepts from the field of demography and be introduced to cutting-edge demographic research related to health disparities in the United States, the impact of HIV/AIDS on family life and longevity in Africa, migration patterns within and from Latin America, the reasons behind sex-selective abortions in Asia, and the implications of the current low birthrates in Europe.
The main emphasis in this course is on how sociological theory informs social research. We will read selections of classical social theory and then look at how various scholars have used that theory to help them analyze some aspect of society. We will keep moving between theoretical statements and applications or refinements of that theory. The course will be a mix of lectures and discussion.
This course is a critical sociological look at education in the United States with a focus on contemporary debates and issues. The course will cover how sociologists have both theoretically and empirically looked at schooling practices, what students learn, and how schools fit into the larger society including how the educational system in the U.S. interacts with political, economic, familial, and cultural institutions. We will also spend much time examining how educational experiences and opportunities are shaped by multiple social statuses including gender, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity. We will focus on K-12 and higher education including the transition to higher education. Throughout all of these issues and topics, we will consider how schools both challenge and support existing systems of inequality.
This class will investigate how gender shapes politics and policy, and how these in turn shape gender, in the United States and other countries, situated in global context. Gender is conceptualized as a set of relations, identities and cultural schema, always constituted with other dimensions of power, difference and inequality (e.g., race, class, sexuality, religion, citizenship status). We will analyze the gendered character of citizenship, political participation and representation, social rights and economic rights. We aim to understand gendered politics and policy from both "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives. What do states do, via institutions of political participation and representation, citizenship rights and policies, to shape gender relations? How do gender relations influence the nature of policy and citizenship? How has feminism emerged as a radical challenge to the androcentrism and restricted character of the democratic public sphere? And how has anti-feminism come to be a significant dimension of politics? We expand on conventional conceptions of political participation and citizenship rights to include the grassroots democratic activism that gave birth to modern women's movements. We explore how women's political efforts have given rise to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, social provision and economic participation, as well as reshaping formal politics and policies. And, finally, we will take advantage of the fact that we are in the middle of an election to examine some of the gendered aspects of the political landscape in the contemporary United States.
The course readings feature different types of materials – original documents, scholarly books and articles, a textbook, policy reports, popular non-fiction work on aspects of gender, policy, politics and society. These are supplemented by films and online resources.
This course is an overview of the sociology of the family focusing on contemporary issues in the U.S. We will begin the course, however, by looking at the history of the family and how its form and roles within have changed historically. The course will pay particular attention to diversity in family experiences by social status including generation, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender. We will also think about how the intersection of work and family lives differ greatly across demographic groups as well as addressing popular misconceptions regarding the integration of occupational and family lives. The aim of this course is for students to learn how sociologists have studied families in the U.S., understand general trends in how contemporary U.S. families live, explore issues of diversity among family experiences and structures, and contemplate how “the family” fits in with other social institutions, including the economy. Overall, the goal of the course is for students to become more engaged and critical of issues related to family life that are presented to us in our daily lives through the media, from politicians and family advocates, and in our interpersonal exchanges.
This is a class on economic sociology and like many other actions, economic action is just another form of social action. Economic sociology provides us with a different perspective on economic actions, and as such, it is helpful both academically and in our everyday lives. In class we will explore the foundations of economic sociological theory, as well as current research relevant for today’s economic social issues such as financialization, debt and recent changes in the economy. We will engage with research in the course readings as well as in class. The class will have several components such as a short lecture, discussion, group work and guided readings.
This course explores the economic and social changes that have constituted "development," and that have radically transformed human society. The course focuses on both the historical experience of Europe and the contemporary experience of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the historical discussion, we explore the birth of the "nation state" as the basic organizing unit of the international system; the transition from agrarian to industrial economic systems; and the expansion of European colonialism across the globe. In our discussion of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we consider the legacies of colonialism for development; the ways in which countries have attempted to promote economic development and industrialization; and issues of inequality and human welfare in an increasingly globally connected world.
In this course, we will examine how the Western medical system and accompanying health practices impact people of different genders, as well as how healthcare as an institution and practice produces gender categories. Using interdisciplinary research with a focus on sociological studies, we will interrogate the social, institutional, and biological links between gender and health. We will discuss health inequalities between women, men, and trans* people from different race, ethnic, and class backgrounds, using sociological research to understand why these inequalities and forms of difference emerge and are sustained. We will explore how modern Western medicine views male and female bodies and defines their health and illnesses accordingly. Students will complete two short research projects over the term in which they use different data sources (interviews and media content) to examine gendered perceptions of health, health behaviors, help-seeking behaviors, and experiences with medical institutions.
SOCIOL 329-0 Field Research and Methods of Data Collection
The goal of this course is to give students experience in qualitative research methodologies. Qualitative methods are a primary way that sociologists learn about the larger social world, test and develop theories and hypotheses, and make sense of complex situations and interactions. Qualitative methods allow sociologists to understand the world from the perspective of the individual and gain a better understanding of how the social world operates.
Social networks have a profound affect on what you feel, think, and do. Whether or not you get a job, who will date or marry, whether or not you’ll catch a contagious disease are all affected by the social networks in which you live. This class explores the ways our social networks shape society, and how society shapes our social networks. Social Network Analysis (SNA) refers to both a theoretical perspective and a set of methodological techniques. As a theoretical perspective, SNA stresses the interdependence among social actors. This approach views the social world as patterns or regularities in relationships among interacting units and focuses on how such patterns affect the behavior of network units or actors. A “structure” emerges as a persistent pattern of interaction that can influence a multitude of behaviors, such as getting a job, income attainment, political decision making, social revolutions, organizational merges, global finance and trade markets, delinquent youth behaviors, the spread of infectious diseases, and so on. As a methodological approach, SNA refers to a catalog of techniques steeped in mathematical graph theory and now extending to statistical simulation, and algebraic models. This course surveys the growing field of SNA, emphasizing the merger of theory and method.
A polity governed by “We the People” is the foundational principle of democracy. Yet, who is included in this “We” and who is not? How is that decided and enforced? What does it mean to live in a country without being part of the governing “We”? This course draws from anthropology, critical race theories, history, political science, sociology, and sociolegal scholarship and explores the deeply intertwined processes of race, politics, and law. These important questions are relevant globally, even though the course focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on the U.S. context. The course first develops students’ conceptual toolkit for analyzing the relationships between race, law, and politics. Then, the course examines two core tensions: social differences versus law’s universality and law’s role in maintaining the status quo versus instigating social change. This course will be student discussion-forward and the main component of the course will be a self-directed research paper.
This course is an opportunity for students to critically examine what is often a taken-for-granted aspect of social life: gender. This course will involve learning about gender as well as applying gender theory. We will study a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender, with particular focus on ethnomethodological, post-structural, macro-institutional, and intersectional approaches to the topic. By the end of the term, students will be able to 1) describe and compare theoretical anchors for the study of gender and 2) in writing, demonstrate mastery of two theoretical approaches to gender and apply one theory to a topic of their choosing. Prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of taking Gender & Society or other course work) is strongly advised.
What is the scientific status of our ideas about race? How are medical and legal ideas invoked in determinations about people's gender identities? Overall, how do developments in the life sciences affect our understandings of who we are, how we differ, and how social inequalities are created, perpetuated, and challenged? This seminar explores how scientific claims and technological developments help transform cultural understandings of race, gender, and sexuality. Conversely, we will consider how cultural beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality influence scientific knowledge and medical practice. We will take up a series of controversies from the recent past and present to explore the dynamic interplay between expert findings, social identities, and political arguments.
SOCIOL 376-0 Neoliberalism, Postcolonial Theory, and Human Rights
International human rights frameworks have been promoted as a central mechanisms through which transnational activists and international organizations pursue justice globally. In this course, we will examine whether human rights paradigms live up to this promise. Readings will consider the geopolitical and economic context in which human rights frameworks are forged, both in terms of neoliberal economic relations and postcolonialism. We will examine the history of human rights documents and how discussions of human rights frameworks have changed over the last century. We will also examine contemporary efforts to expand human rights frameworks to “new” rights, including those based on gender and sexuality rights.
Technology is ubiquitous. This course covers central tenets in the sociology of technology by pairing an empirical focus on a different technology each week with a theoretical paradigm. A total of eight technologies will serve as the exemplars through which the question(s) concerning technology will be explored: bicycles, cars, computers, facial recognition, genetic sequencing, soap, shipping containers and virtual reality. Each of these technologies is approached as a window into the social, political, racial, and economic determinants of technological innovation. The central goal of the course is to equip students with the tools for unpacking the technologies societies take for granted and critically engaging with new technologies that may reproduce social inequities. While much of the scholarship we will consider is broadly sociological, some of it is drawn from other fields, and part of the goal of the course is to show what is gained when we think about technology from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students from other disciplines are welcome.
Since the 1980s, third wave feminists have critiqued fundamental assumptions of second-wave feminism and worked to incorporate perspectives and voices outside the "West." In more recent decades, a similar movement has happened among queer and trans theorists. In this course, we will engage this work, much of which has been published in the past decade and a half. Course readings, which will survey scholarship on gender/sexuality in many regions of the world, will draw our attention to the ways in which gender/sexuality are implicated in capitalist, imperial and post-colonial projects as well as how gender and sexuality operate outside the "West," both in practice and identity. Finally, we will consider the possibilities and limitations for studying gender/sexuality beyond our own societies. Critical approaches to gender and sexuality challenge conventional “born this way” narratives about gender and sexual identities as innate. This course will raise questions that will make us uncomfortable and, hopefully, transform our understandings of our own gendered and sexual identities and practices.
SOCIOL 392-0 Racial Inequalities in American Schooling
What are the racial inequalities in K-12 schooling in the United States? Why do these racial disparities persist? In this course, we critically examine the last 25 years of scholarship on race and schooling to consider how racial inequality is defined and measured, and how education scholars explain the causes of racial disparities in education. As a starting point, we look at racial disparities in academic achievement and discipline. Then, we focus on different approaches scholars use to explain why racial inequality continues to persist in K-12 education. In particular, we focus on key debates such as the extent to which schools compensate or exacerbate differences in achievement, how policy interventions impact inequality in schools, and how racial hierarchies are embedded in school structures and practices. In the final portion of this course, we consider what should come next in the study of race and inequality in schools.
How are global legacies of colonialism, empire, and racism maintained in modern punishment processes? When, how, and why do different organizations seek to measure, evaluate, and change racist punishment practices, and with what implications? In this seminar, we will survey social scientific theories and studies that explain how race is linked to punishment institutions, as well as the possibilities and limits of different models for change. Using the US as our case study, we will investigate how varying definitions of race and racism are applied in research on carceral settings. Then we will explore how race and racism are institutionalized through numerous social control mechanisms, from the rise of algorithmic technologies that enable racially disparate policing practices to the inscription of racist rhetoric in criminal court transcripts. Finally, we will examine approaches to penal institutional change such as incremental reforms and radical reconstructions. This course is designed to equip students with tools to critically interpret and produce data on race, punishment, and institutional change.
Wealth inequality has increased exponentially since the 1970s, with the bottom 50% of US households now holding less than 3% of total wealth according to recent Federal Reserve statistics. With the disappearance of social safety nets and an increase in financialization, more people are turning to credit to make ends meet. Society is both richer than ever before, but it is also more indebted. We are familiar with student loans, 30-year mortgages, and credit cards, but do not overlook apps like Robinhood, Venmo, and BitPay. Finance is more than a tool to make payments and investments; it also plays a role in reproducing and deepening inequality in the US and globally. What impact has financial technology and regulation had on society? What is the future of “fin-tech”? In this course, we will trace financialization in the United States from a business and regulatory perspective. Most importantly, we critically examine the disparate impacts of this new financial capitalism.
SOCIOL 392-0 American Obsessions: Crime, Health, & Social Control
Crime and violence are among the most defining and seemingly intractable problems of American society. There is scarcely a part of our public and private lives that is not in some way touched by the criminal justice apparatus, regardless of whether or not we personally experience victimization. Entrenched health epidemics around gun violence, addiction, and police brutality regularly vie for our focus. Likewise, myths and moral panics about crime, when taken to the extreme, extend punitive action deep into our social fabric in the name of protecting individual and public health. This course delves into these intricate connections linking crime, health, and social control. We will spend much of our time together examining three interrelated topics. At the center of this course is how different groups experience crime and health and the role social institutions play in abetting and reproducing these processes. We will also examine what behaviors become criminalized and why – from abortion to drug use and sexual behavior. Finally, we will explore which of the behaviors defined as criminal are punished and, just as importantly, how laws around criminal behavior are unevenly enforced. Taken together, these topics will help to shed light on the role that interlocking systems in our society play in shaping our gendered, racialized, and profoundly American experience.
This is the first class in a two-quarter sequence in which students will complete a senior thesis in sociology. In this fall quarter, students will identify and motivate a sociological research question and create a research design and empirical strategy that will answer that question. Students will also complete a research proposal and begin data collection. Finally, students will connect with a faculty advisor in the Department of Sociology. The faculty advisor will provide each student with intellectual input throughout the research and writing process. They will also serve as the primary reader of the thesis when it is complete.
SOCIOL 400-0 Introduction to Statistics and Statistical Software
This course is designed to teach you the basics of single variable calculus, probability, set theory, random variables, and hypothesis testing. The course prepares students for the next class in the statistics sequence. Required Math Prefresher **BEFORE** the quarter starts - contact instructor for details and schedule.
This course is part of the quantitative methods sequence for graduate students in sociology. The main topic of the course is the theory and practice of linear regression analysis. We will cover multiple ordinary least squares regression, regression assumptions, regression diagnostics, basic path models, data transformations, and issues in causal inference. If time permits, we may discuss other regression-based topics such as fixed and random effects models.
This course is part of the quantitative methods sequence for graduate students in sociology. For most of the course, we will focus on regression-like methods for categorical outcomes, notably binary outcomes, ordered outcomes, nominal outcomes, count outcomes, and (if time permits) event outcomes. The course will also include discussion of practical issues in performing statistical analysis of secondary data. I assume that you the enter class either having data at hand to perform an analysis or that you can find data on your own. The major goals of the course are for students (1) to become proficient enough in regression models for categorical variables to understand, explain, and critique its use in articles appearing in sociology journals and (2) to be able to perform a competent analysis of data that is of sufficient quality to appear as an article in a sociology or social science journal. The major assignment for the course will be for students to write a paper that is a data analysis of secondary data. The final paper should be similar to a draft of a publishable article, although there will be some required sections not found in a regular article..
This graduate course is an introduction to ethnographic field methods. Students will learn how to conduct participant observation and in-depth interviews, two methods that often work in tandem in ethnographic sociological studies. We will discuss various aspects of research design and practical strategies to manage and adequately analyze and make sense of the considerable volume of data that ethnographic studies commonly generate. We will discuss epistemological issues, attending to how to use empirical ethnographic data to generate conceptual and theoretical conclusions, and we will also demarcate the capabilities and limitations of ethnographic research. Throughout the course, we will reflect on questions of research ethics, power, and representation.
SOCIOL 406-1 Classical Theory in Sociological Analysis
Against the backdrop of Cartesian reservations about the possibility of a "science" of the social world, this course examines several of the major justifications that social thinkers have offered, historically, for constructing such a science. In the process, the course also considers the different conceptions of the social world that have been part of these justifications. The principal thinkers examined are Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
SOCIOL 406-3 Contemporary Theory in Sociological Analysis
This course offers an introduction to classical sociological theory. A “classical” work is thought to be a must-read, a foundational text that influenced the older (as opposed to contemporary or modern) ideas that undergird discipline of sociology, both the way we think about it and perform it. We will focus mainly on Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois, exploring what they have to teach us about the sociological enterprise. Readings and graded assignments focus on determining these foundational disciplinary authors’ (1) methods for viewing and understanding the socioeconomic world, (2) ideas about the proper objects and subjects of study and how sociology should be properly conducted, and (3) key contributions to early sociological thought. Ten weeks is a very short time to acquire and engage with this knowledge, so expect this course to be very reading and writing intensive.
Race and racism are global formations rooted in colonialism and imperialism, and constitutive of modernity, liberalism, and capitalism. This class will focus on the development and contemporary manifestations of racial categories, racist structures, racial inequalities, and anti-racist social movements across multiple national and continental contexts. The course asks what is “race,” and how does it function in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the U.S. and Oceania. And since racial concepts are not stable across time or place, how is “race” transformed by transnational migration and global cultural exchange. In exploring these ideas, the course also pays attention to intersecting formations of class, gender, ethnicity, region, etc. The goal of the course is to destabilize the concept of race by looking at its transformations across time and place, and to understand manifestations of racism and struggles against it across a range of geopolitical contexts.
This class bridges the constructivism/science divide. It discusses theoretical and methodological tools for conducting scientific constructivist research.
This course is motivated by the assumption that knowledge and technology have become central to the social, cultural, political, and material organization of modern societies. The fundamental goal of the course is to develop intellectual tools to understand not merely the social organization of knowledge, science, and technology but also the technoscientific dimensions of social life. Although much of the course content concerns science and technology, the theoretical and analytical frameworks developed in this course are intended to apply to any domain involving knowledge, expertise, technologies, or formalized techniques. How might sociology as a field of study benefit from closer engagement both with epistemic concerns and with the material aspects of our technosocial world? We will examine: why we believe what we believe (the politics of knowledge production, circulation, and reception); the impact and uptake of technologies and the assessment of technological risks; the character of life in expert-driven “knowledge societies”; the resolution of conflicts around knowledge and technology (and the use of knowledge and technology in conflict resolution); the encounters between and across different knowledge systems, ways of knowing, and epistemic cultures, both locally and globally; the use of technologies to tell us “who we are” and “where we belong”; the social and technological reproduction of inequalities, including those related to social class, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, location in global hierarchies, etc.; the relations between activists and experts, and the tensions between expertise and democracy; the roles of social movements when intervening in debates about knowledge, science, and technology, as well as the use of knowledge and technology by social movements; and the nature of governance in technologically sophisticated societies—including the character of collective decision-making about knowledge and technology, as well as the uses of knowledge and technology to arrive at such decisions. A lot (but not all) of the course content focuses on the United States, though we will try whenever possible to place developments in a global context and we will benefit from comparative and postcolonial approaches to STS. While much of the scholarship we will consider is broadly sociological, some of it is drawn from other fields, and part of the goal of the course is to suggest the interdisciplinary character of STS. Students from other disciplines are welcome.
Much of the social world is stored in digital text. Such textual traces include social media posts, email correspondences, party manifestos, blogs, novels, newspaper articles, press releases, medical records, academic articles, and much more. Not only are archival data increasingly available in electronic form, but more and more human communication and interaction occurs natively through digital text. These vast amounts of data can be a treasure trove for social science – but to make them useful for our purposes, we need natural language processing and machine learning methods.
This class offers an overview of text analytical tools currently used in social science research. You will be introduced to a set of methods and provided with examples of how they are applied to answer concrete social science research questions. Beyond surveying approaches, we will explore some of the methods ourselves, and you will learn how to use them for your own work. In this class, we will use R. Therefore, some coding experience (or exceptional motivation to attain it independently alongside the class) is expected.
This course presents sociological approaches to understanding the social side of college and how it matters for students’ lived experiences, academic engagement, identities, politics, and meaning-making. The course will explore a range of topics, from how race and racism operate within different educational contexts to how the organization of higher education matters for sexual violence.
This seminar is designed to expose students to the realm of sociological research (and research in other disciplines, notably history) that addresses how we think about and memorialize the past. How is history constructed? How are historical events shaped and made socially meaningful? Who are the shapers and who are the shaped?
This graduate seminar will survey the recent sociological literature on immigration. We will focus on a range of topics that include: the evolution of sociological immigration theories; the social construction of immigrants and “expats,” as well as the tension between these two categories; the social construction of refugees and asylum seekers; the structural factors that propel and hinder transnational migration; the entrenchment of international borders in the era of globalization; the shifting understandings of immigrant incorporation in host societies; the emergence of transnationalism as a framework for understanding the links that immigrants maintain with their home countries; and the effects of shifting attitudes on immigration policies. We will link transnational migration to a wide range of related sociological issues, including gender, sexuality, race, economics, nationalism, nativism, culture, religion, crime, and social stratification and inequality.
SOCIOL 476-0 Computational Techniques for Social Research
Social scientists use computers for every step of the research process, but seldom take advantage of their full potential. This course equips social scientists with computational principles and habits for making the research process more efficient, flexible, and reproducible. It is designed for early stage graduate students using *any* research method (statistical, ethnographic, historical comparative, etc.) with little specialized background in computational techniques. Most techniques taught in this course require substantial labor (learning, installing, and customizing) but offer exponential gains in efficiency and peace of mind over one's research career. This course aims to provide structured time for this initial adoption.
Introduction to the department, faculty, and adjunct faculty. Faculty discuss their research and teaching interests. Mandatory two-quarter weekly seminar for first-year study.
This course guides second-year Ph.D. students in the Sociology department in preparing a draft of their second-year paper. A series of exercises leads in incremental steps to a full draft, and feedback is provided from the professor as well as from other students.
This seminar offers a space for graduate students to discuss topics related to college TAing and teaching. The course covers the following topics: practical skills and strategies to be an effective and efficient teaching assistant, particular TAing/teaching challenges for women, minority, international, and LGBT instructors, leading discussion sections and lecturing, how to create inclusive classrooms, how to construct a syllabus, defining your teaching philosophy, and perspectives on student evaluations.
