2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

FYSM 100 First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will: - Critically analyze information and ideas - Examine issues from multiple perspectives - Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason - Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and - Create clear academic writing The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

SOCI 233 Asian American Communities
This class is designed to move from theoretical understandings of “race,” and racial identity as it operates in our everyday lives to larger, structural determinants of race with special attention to the unique position of Asian Americans in U.S. race relations. This course focuses on social relations, political identities and activism, immigration and labor experiences to explore the ways Asian Americans have contributed to our larger histories as Americans. Broken down into three sections, this class analyzes the position of Asian Americans in the following interconnected contexts: (a) Asian Americans in relation to dominant society, (b) Asian Americans in relation to other communities of color, and (c) pan-Asian relations. Offered every year.

SOCI 400 Home & Belong as Immig in US
Immigration flows have risen around the globe and include educational migrants, temporary workers, professional migrants, refugees, permanent residents and undocumented migrants (those without legal documentation). In the U.S. between 1990 and 2000, Portes & Rumbaut (2006) estimate that immigrants and their children constituted nearly 70% of overall population growth. Today, nearly 20% of Americans 18 years and younger today are immigrants or the children of immigrants. As these numbers continue to rise, how are ideas of nationality and citizenship shaped by the political, economic and social factors both within and outside of nation-state borders? How do these shifting demographics impact ideologies of race, ethnicity and nationality and what it means to be a citizen in the contemporary context? The objective of this course is to engage with the theoretical debates on immigration and processes of incorporation and assimilation to gain a better understanding of its impact on the everyday realities of growing numbers of immigrants. Some key concepts we will consider are the roles of citizenship and nation-states in regulating the flows of migrant and immigrant populations. What new cultural forms arise from the constant influx of immigrants and how does this impact the lived experience of people located “betwixt and between” national borders?

SOCI 550 Independent Research