| SOCI 110-01 |
Social Analysis
Instructor: Yalcin Ozkan
Course Description:
Selected topics in the empirical study of the ways in which people's character and life choices are affected by variations in the organization of their society and of the activities by which social arrangements varying in their adequacy to human needs are perpetuated or changed.
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09:30 AM-10:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 104 |
| 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 211 |
| SOCI 227-01 |
Political Economy of Gender
Instructor: Ebru Kongar
Course Description:
Cross-listed with ECON 230-01 and WGSS 202-01. Political Economy of Gender adopts a gender-aware perspective to examine how people secure their livelihoods through labor market and nonmarket work. The course examines the nature of labor market inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity and other social categories, how they are integrated with non-market activities, their wellbeing effects, their role in the macroeconomy, and the impact of macroeconomic policies on these work inequalities. These questions are examined from the perspective of feminist economics that has emerged since the early 1990s as a heterodox economics discourse, critical of both mainstream and gender-blind heterodox economics. While we will pay special attention to the US economy, our starting point is that there is one world economy with connections between the global South and the North, in spite of the structural differences between (and within) these regions.For ECON 230: ECON 111 (ECON 112 recommended); For SOCI 227: SOCI 110 or ECON 111; For WGSS 202: none (ECON 111 recommended). This course is cross-listed as ECON 230 & WGSS 202.
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09:00 AM-10:15 AM, TR
ALTHSE 206 |
| SOCI 230-01 |
Law and Society
Instructor: Yalcin Ozkan
Course Description:
Cross-listed with LAWP 290-02. 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 laws 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 laws ideological underpinnings as on how people resort to the law to envision and demand systemic change.
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03:00 PM-04:15 PM, MR
DENNY 110 |
| SOCI 233-01 |
Asian American Communities
Instructor: Helene Lee
Course Description:
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.
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11:30 AM-12:20 PM, MWF
DENNY 304 |
| SOCI 236-01 |
Inequalities in the U.S.
Instructor: Erik Love
Course Description:
This course takes a critical look at the layers of American society that shape, construct, and inhibit the basic pursuit for equality of opportunity. Students will be asked to examine how the three most fundamental elements of social stratification (race, class, gender) function both separately and in tandem to organize systems of inequality. The course uses theoretical and practical applications of stratification to evaluate how social constructions of difference influence the institutions and social policy. Additionally, class discussions will also consider how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism impact the attainment of basic needs, such as wages, health care and housing. Offered every year.
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10:30 AM-11:20 AM, MWF
DENNY 103 |
| SOCI 244-01 |
Quantitative Research Methods
Instructor: Cathy Maurer
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-02:45 PM, TF
DENNY 112
03:00 PM-04:15 PM, TF
DENNY 112 |
| 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, MR
DENNY 211 |
| SOCI 400-01 |
Home and Belonging as Immigrants in the US
Instructor: Helene Lee
Course Description:
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?
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01:30 PM-04:30 PM, R
DENNY 204 |
| SOCI 550-01 |
Sociological Analysis of Polarization
Instructor: Helene Lee
Course Description:
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