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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
