| SOCI 225-01 |
Race and Ethnicity
Instructor: Erik Love
Course Description:
This course explores the historical and contemporary significance of race and ethnicity in the United States. Students will examine how racial inequality has become a pervasive aspect of U.S. society and why it continues to impact our life chances. We will address race and ethnicity as socio-historical concepts and consider how these social fictions (in collusion with gender, class, and sexuality) produce very real material conditions in everyday life. We will develop a theoretical vocabulary for discussing racial stratification by examining concepts such as prejudice, discrimination, systemic/institutional racism, racial formations, and racial hegemony. We will then look closely at colorblind racism, and examine how this dominant ideology naturalizes social inequality. With this framework in place, students will investigate racial stratification in relation to schools, the labor market, the criminal justice system, neighborhood segregation, immigration, etc. Finally, we will discuss strategies of anti-racism that seek to eliminate enduring racial hierarchies. Offered every two years.
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10:30 AM-11:45 AM, TR
DENNY 311 |
| SOCI 230-01 |
Law and Society
Instructor: Yalcin Ozkan
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 290-01. This course is designed as an introduction to law and society scholarship. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates over law in everyday life, law and social inequality, and the politics of law, we will focus on the law's social, cultural, and political dimensions. Most notably, this course is organized around three major themes. The first topic concerns the theories and methods scholars deploy to account for the affinities between law and social life. We will consider how legal pronouncements and institutions shape and are shaped by our social norms, values, and relationships through the concepts of, among others, "legality," "legal consciousness," and "legal pluralism." The second part deals with the gap between the law on the books and the law in action. We will discuss when and how the law reinforces class, gender, and race-based inequalities despite its ever-present promise of justice. The final section examines the law as constitutive of the status quo and social change by calling attention to politics within and through the law. Thus, we will put as much emphasis on the law's ideological underpinnings as on how people resort to the law to envision and demand systemic change.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| SOCI 237-01 |
Global Inequality
Instructor: Helene Lee
Course Description:
Exploring the relationship between globalization and inequality, this course examines the complex forces driving the integration of ideas, people, societies and economies worldwide. This inquiry into global disparities will consider the complexities of growth, poverty reduction, and the roles of international organizations. Among the global issues under scrutiny, will be environmental degradation; debt forgiveness; land distribution; sweatshops, labor practices and standards; slavery in the global economy; and the vulnerability of the world's children. Under specific investigation will be the social construction and processes of marginalization, disenfranchisement and the effects of globalization that have reinforced the division between the world's rich and poor. Offered every year.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
DENNY 203 |
| SOCI 244-01 |
Quantitative Research Methods
Instructor: Chloe Craig
Course Description:
Quantitative Research Methods introduces students to basic principles of sociological research methodologies and statistical analysis. Students learn to conceptualize a research question, operationalize key concepts, identify relevant literature, and form research hypotheses. Then, using elementary tools of descriptive and inferential statistics, they choose appropriate statistical methods, analyze data, and draw meaningful conclusions. Special emphasis is given to interpreting numbers with clear, persuasive language, in both oral and written formats. Students will become proficient in using quantitative software for data analysis. Two and a half hours classroom and three hours laboratory a week. Prerequisite: 110.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, W
DENNY 112
11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 110 |
| SOCI 272-01 |
Islam and the West
Instructor: Erik Love
Course Description:
Cross-listed with MEST 272-01. This course examines the contemporary relationship between the Islamic world and the Western world. In recent years, many interpretations of this relationship have developed, with some claiming a clash of civilizations is underway. The course critically engages the rapidly growing literature on this topic, while providing an introduction to the sociology of religion, an examination of so-called Western values and their Islamic counterparts, an analysis of key moments in recent history, and finally a survey of minority Muslim communities in the West. This course is cross-listed as MEST 272. Offered every year.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 304 |
| SOCI 313-02 |
Foucault
Instructor: Dan Schubert
Course Description:
Cross-listed with EDST 391-01, LAWP 290-02, PHIL 261-02, and WGSS 302-01. Michel Foucault was perhaps the most influential social thinker of the late 20th century. His arguments about the panopticon, historical epistemes, the medical gaze, governmentality, sexuality, and power now permeate the social sciences and humanities. He once wrote, "Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." These words will inform our semester of reading and discussing a variety of his primary works, including Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, v.1, as well as some of his lectures and interviews. While our primary focus in this WID course will be Foucault's work itself, we will read a small selection of secondary literature that explicates and critiques some of his arguments.
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01:30 PM-02:45 PM, MR
DENNY 204 |
| SOCI 330-01 |
Classical Sociological Theory
Instructor: Yalcin Ozkan
Course Description:
This course will examine alternative ways of understanding the human being, society, and culture as they have been presented in classical sociological theory (through 1925). It will focus on the theoretical logic of accounting for simple and complex forms of social life, interactions between social processes and individual and group identities, major and minor changes in society and culture, and the linkages between intimate and large-scale human experience. Prerequisite: 110 and one additional course in sociology, or permission of instructor. Offered every fall.
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09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 204 |
| SOCI 400-01 |
Immigration in the US
Instructor: Helene Lee
Course Description:
A specialized seminar, intended to relate a broad area of theoretical concern to the problems and procedures of current research. Regularly offered topics: Measuring Race and Racism; Women, Culture, and Development; Sociology of Violence; Language and Power: Foucault and Bourdieu; American Society; Race and Ethnic Theory; Sexualities; Postmodernism, Culture, and Communication. Prerequisite:110 and at least one from the list of required courses (SOCI 236, SOCI 240, SOCI 244, SOCI 330, or SOCI 331). Offered every fall.
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, T
DENNY 211 |