Courses

This course is a broad introduction to the field of sociology.  Course materials are designed to illustrate the distinctive features of the sociological perspective and to start you thinking sociologically about yourself and the broader social world.  To think sociologically is to recognize that being embedded in the world constrains behavior, and that individuals are both social actors and social products.  To think sociologically is also to recognize that our contemporary world, with its enduring cultural, political, and economic institutions, is as much a social product as we are.  We will begin by covering theoretical and methodological foundations of the sociological perspective.  We will go on to explore the concept of social stratification and will survey primary axes of social difference.  In the second half of the course we will look more closely at how individuals relate to each other, how social inequality is enacted and reinforced in everyday life, and at the way in which the organization of social life shapes individuals and groups, such as through social networks, residential neighborhoods, schooling, families, and on-line communication.

Full details for SOC 1101 - Introduction to Sociology

Population and Public Policy exposes students to the logic and skills of demographic research and policy analysis. The course emphasizes the nature, collection, and interpretation of demographic data, the application of demographic techniques, the major components (i.e., fertility, mortality, and migration) of national and global population change, and contemporary population problems (e.g., population aging, teen childbearing, the rise in non-marital childbearing, immigrant adaptation). The course also emphasizes public policies that can influence demographic change. The format primarily involves lectures and class discussion. Students are expected to attend each class and be prepared to discuss assigned materials.

Full details for SOC 2030 - Population and Public Policy

This course introduces some central ideas in the field of S&TS. It is aimed at students from any background who are challenged to think more critically about what counts as scientific knowledge and why, and how science and technology intervene in the wider world. It also serves as an introduction to majors in Biology and Society or in Science and Technology Studies. The course mixes lectures, discussions, writing, and other activities. The discussion sections are an integral part of the course and attendance is required. A series of take-home written assignments and quizzes throughout the semester comprise the majority of the grade.

Full details for SOC 2100 - What Is Science? An Introduction to the Social Studies of Science and Technology

Economic sociology extends the sociological approach to the study of economic life. The aim of the seminar is to understand the relationship between social structure, organizational form and economic action. We explore social processes embedded in economic exchange and knowledge spillover and economy. Why do individuals cooperate with strangers? Why is trust important in economic life. Why is social exchange the foundation of sustainable economic action? At the macro-level, the course addresses the question of why and how institutions enable, motivate and guide economic action; the social dynamics of institutional change; and explore the role of norms and networks in the capitalism of the United States and China.

Full details for SOC 2190 - Introduction to Economic Sociology

This course reviews contemporary approaches to understanding social inequality and the processes by which it comes to be seen as legitimate, natural, or desirable. We address questions of the following kind: what are the major forms of stratification in human history? Are inequality and poverty inevitable? How many social classes are there in advanced industrialism societies? Is there a "ruling class"? Are lifestyles, attitudes, and personalities shaped fundamentally by class membership? Can individuals born into poverty readily escape their class origins and move upward in the class structure? Are social contacts and "luck" important forces in matching individuals to jobs and class positions? What types of social processes serve to maintain and alter racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination in labor markets? Is there an "underclass"? These and other questions are addressed in light of classical and contemporary theory and research.

Full details for SOC 2208 - Social Inequality

The primary goal of this course is to understand the relationship between education and society, with an emphasis on exploring educational inequality. To accomplish this, we will ask questions such as: What is the purpose and product of schools? How do schools reproduce social class, racial, and gender inequality? What is the relationship between education and future success? How are schools structured? What factors increase educational success? To answer these, and related questions, we will use classical and contemporary sociological theory and research. The course culminates in a research project of each student's own choosing.

Full details for SOC 2250 - Schooling and Society

This course covers the social structural history of computer technology. While the course will focus on the American origins of information technology (IT) and the uses of IT in American institutional settings, global perspectives on the early history of mainframe computers, the globalization of computer equipment supply chains and the early history of the Internet are included in course readings. Modules of study across the semester will include: the sociological history of computer technology; the sociological process of innovation in IT in organizational settings; IT as a foundation for regional based economic revitalization; IT professions; and IT from the perspective of everyday life focusing on the sociological characteristics of gender, race, class, the family, education.  

Full details for SOC 2270 - The Computerization of the American Social System

This course is a blending of the Sociology of Education and Public Policy. Front and center in this course is the question of why consistent differential educational and economic outcomes exists in American society. We explore the broad sociological functions of schooling (socialization, sorting, caretaking, training) as well as local, state, and federal policies and court decisions.

Full details for SOC 2710 - America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education

This comparative course explores key approaches to understanding nationalism and how it interacts with questions of identity in contemporary societies. We will first consider different theoretical approaches to the historical emergence and contemporary relevance of nationalism and concepts used to analyze its different manifestations. In the second part of the course, we will focus on the Russian Federation and the US as case studies to explore the interplay of nationalism, identity and social change in ethnically and racially diverse contexts. In this part of the course, we will use a wide range of sources to consider the impact of nationalism on politics, media, culture and everyday life.

Full details for SOC 3170 - Nationalism and Identity

This course will examine how health disparities are defined and measured, sources of health disparities, and strategies to reduce health disparities. During the course students will learn of the complexities of factors that influence patterns of disease and health at multiple levels by analyzing studies of health outcomes, the social conditions that are related to the health of populations, and some of the mechanisms through which these patterns are produced.

Full details for SOC 3180 - Health Disparities

Humans have fraught relationships with the animals, plants, land, water—even geological processes—around us. We come together to revere, conserve, protect the things many call nature. We struggle over who gets to use what, which resources to use or to keep intact, which scientific claims are true and worthy of action. Every environmental concern is on some level a social concern, and more social concerns than we often realize are environmental concerns. In this course, we will examine how people make and respond to environmental change and how groups of people form, express, fight over, and work out environmental concerns. We will consider how population change, economic activity, government action, social movements, and changing ways of thinking shape human-environmental relationships. The fundamental goal of this course is to give you knowledge, analytical tools, and expressive skills that make you confident to address environmental concerns as a social scientist and a citizen. 

Full details for SOC 3240 - Environmental Sociology

This course offers a sociological understanding of social inequality and the social construction of difference. Designed from the perspective of comparative historical analysis, we will examine the ways in which class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and sexuality differences work across place and time within a shared set of global dynamics. The course will pay special attention to how difference is constructed, institutionalized, and experienced. Thus, the course will not only address inequality based on economic and labor relations, but also emphasize complicated notions of difference and identity to offer an analysis that links inequality to power and forms of rule.

Full details for SOC 3710 - Comparative Social Inequalities

Rates of chronic disease and other health conditions, including mental illness and substance use disorders, have surged over the past three decades, owing largely to structural factors associated with the fragmentation of national healthcare systems, diminished social support networks, and government subsidization of unhealthy foods and hazardous pharmaceuticals. These issues are especially amplified in ethnoracial communities: for example, Blacks and Latinos typically have higher rates of disease in comparison to their non-Black counterparts, even after adjusting for factors such as income and education level. This course investigates the complex political, economic and cultural forces which contribute to health inequities. Students will be exposed to case studies throughout various diasporas—from Harlem to Cape Town—to understand the intricate ways in which race and health interact.

Full details for SOC 4010 - Diasporic and Indigenous Health

This course examines how the social world gets "under the skin." We'll examine the associations between various aspects of social context – including stratification and inequality, social networks and support, and social environments – and physical health. There are two main components of this course. First, we'll read and discuss previous research on the health effects of social status, patient-physician interactions, employment/work, stress, social networks, social support, loneliness, culture and religion, and the neighborhood context. We'll consider both qualitative and quantitative research on social life and health, with an eye toward identifying the strengths and weaknesses of various methodological approaches and gaps in current knowledge. The second component of this course is focused on the development of your own research regarding the relationship between social context and health. You'll explore this using data from a population-based social survey. Class instruction for this portion of the course will cover research question development, the statistical analysis of survey data, and social scientific writing. Three research reports written during the semester will provide you with a foundation from which you will write and present a final paper that considers how health is shaped by the social world.

Full details for SOC 4120 - Health and Social Context

This course explores poverty and inequality in American society through the lens of ethnographic and other field-based research. We will read classic and contemporary texts which have shaped our understanding of how social inequality and exclusion constrain people's daily lives and how groups develop innovative responses to these constraints.

Full details for SOC 4160 - The Ethnography of Poverty and Inequality

Evaluation is a pervasive feature of contemporary life. Professors, doctors, countries, hotels, pollution, books, intelligence: there is hardly anything that is not subject to some form of review, rating, or ranking these days. This senior seminar examines the practices, cultures, and technologies of evaluation and asks how value is established, maintained, compared, subverted, resisted, and institutionalized in a range of different settings. Topics include user reviews, institutional audit, ranking and commensuration, algorithmic evaluation, tasting, gossip, and awards. Drawing on case studies from science, technology, culture, accounting, art, environment, and everyday life, we shall explore how evaluation comes to order our lives – and why it is so difficult to resist.

Full details for SOC 4560 - Evaluation and Society

This is for undergraduates who wish to obtain research experience or to do extensive reading on a special topic.

Full details for SOC 4910 - Independent Study

Students choose a sociology faculty member to work with on research to write an honors thesis. Candidates for honors must maintain a cumulative GPA at least an A- in all sociology classes.

Full details for SOC 4950 - Honors Research

Continuation of SOC 4950.  Continue to work with honors supervisor and work on and write an honors thesis.

Full details for SOC 4960 - Honors Thesis: Senior Year

This engaged learning course offers students the opportunity to integrate and apply knowledge and skills by addressing a real-world question presented by a community partner. Students will work collaboratively on an applied research project, produce a professional report, and brief community members on the outcomes and recommendations of their research.

Full details for SOC 4980 - Engaged Learning Capstone

Continuation of SOC 5010. Emphasis is on the logical analysis of theoretical perspectives, theories, and theoretical research programs shaping current sociological research. The course includes an introduction to basic concepts used in the logical analysis of theories and examines their application to specific theories and theoretical research programs. Theoretical perspectives include functionalism, social exchange, and interactionism.

Full details for SOC 5020 - Basic Problems in Sociology II

This course provides a forum in which students and others can present, discuss, and receive instant feedback on their inequality-related research. Its primary goals is to help students advance their own research; its secondary goal is to introduce selected debates in the contemporary inequality literature in a more comprehensive fashion that is possible in the introductory graduate-level seminar on inequality.

Full details for SOC 5190 - Workshop on Social Inequality

Examines the goals, roles, inputs, and outcomes of schooling in American society, and the policy environment in which schools operate. Analyzes controversies and tensions (e.g., equity, market forces, state control) surrounding public education at local, state, and federal levels. Includes current and historical, urban, and rural issues and problems.

Full details for SOC 5710 - America's Promise: Social and Political Context of American Education

This course covers the basic epistemology for social sciences research, integrating an explicit focus on applied mixed methods approaches (quantitative and qualitative) for conducting original "real world" research on humans. While these cognates will be approached theoretically, the course's concentration will be on the praxis of quantifying and contextualizing the experiences, attitudes, and outcomes of historically marginalized and "hidden" populations, including people who are Black, Latinx and indigenous, LGBTQ+,  and individuals with a mental illness or substance use disorder, with an intersectional lens. While not offering an exhaustive review of individual quantitative and qualitative methodologies, students will learn the fundamentals of curating a research framework on marginalized and hidden populations, engaging and recruiting people into their studies, collecting and analyzing data, and disseminating research findings.

Full details for SOC 6000 - Doing Research With Marginalized Populations

This course provides the second part of a two-semester introduction to quantitative methods in sociological research. It is designed for first-year graduate students in sociology. The course covers intermediate topics in linear regression, and provides an introduction to models for categorical and count data, the analysis of time data, and longitudinal data. We'll also discuss data-related issues such as missing data and weighting, and data that are complicated by issues of non-random design. While statistical modeling is the focus of the course, we proceed with the assumption that models are only as good as the theoretical and substantive knowledge behind them. Thus, in covering the technical material, we will spend considerable time discussing the link between substantive knowledge and statistical practice.

Full details for SOC 6020 - Intermediate Statistics for Sociological Research

This course extends the study of quantitative methods beyond the required, two-semester graduate methods sequence. We will begin with an in-depth focus on graphical analysis, model uncertainty, techniques for analyzing big data and treating missing data, and issues of causal identification. We will then turn to discussions of specific models selected to complement those covered in existing graduate methods courses for social scientists. The core learning goal is crystal-clear intuitive understanding of these research methods and how they can be put into the service of learning about the social world. Students should have already taken SOC 6010 and SOC 6020 or their equivalents before enrolling in this class.

Full details for SOC 6040 - Advanced Statistics for Sociological Research

Discussion of the current state of sociology and of the research interests of members of the graduate field; taught by all members of the field.

Full details for SOC 6080 - Proseminar in Sociology

This course will explore the relationship between popular belief, political action, and the institutional deployment of social power. The class will be roughly divided in three parts, opening with a discussion of how the material world influences the culture of a society. The middle section will connect culture to political ideology, including symbolism and the construction of group identity. The last part of the course will consider ways in which cultural symbols and ideology can be manipulated in order to legitimate government authority. We will then, coming full circle, trace how political regimes can influence the social practices from which culture originates.

Full details for SOC 6200 - Political Culture

This seminar focuses on the social causes and consequences of religion, using the frameworks and methods of social science to understand religion and non-religion and their implications for social life. It will introduce basic ideas in the sociology of religion and survey the social landscape of religion in the United States and around the world. This seminar, while covering a number of key texts and core topics, will put particular attention on the ways religion intersects with inequality and politics. We will be less concerned with religion for its own sake than for its substantial social implications. Religion has been one of the most powerful and pervasive forces throughout history and remains so today. Without an understanding of religion, a central part of the lives of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world, you cannot fully understand American society or world politics.

Full details for SOC 6270 - Sociology of Religion

This graduate seminar explores changes in family behaviors and household relationships from a demographic perspective. It focuses centrally on contemporary trends in the U.S., considering (often competing) interpretations of the causes and consequences of family change and variation. Emphasis will be placed on critically evaluating research in this area, including assessments of data quality, research design, and causal inference. Topics include cohabitation and marriage, divorce, fertility, family structure, and the intersection of work and family.

Full details for SOC 6280 - Family Demography

In this Graduate seminar we will discuss the nature, politics and basic assumptions underlying qualitative research. We will examine a selection of qualitative methods ranging from interviewing, oral history, ethnography, participant observation, archival research and visual methods. We will also discuss the relationship between theory and method. All stages of a research project will be discussed - choice of research topic and appropriate methods; human subject concerns and permissions; issues regarding doing research; as well as the process of writing up and publishing research findings.

Full details for SOC 6310 - Qualitative Research Methods for Studying Science

For graduates who wish to obtain research experience or to do extensive reading on a special topic. Permission to enroll for independent study is granted only to students who present an acceptable prospectus and secure the agreement of a faculty member to serve as supervisor for the project throughout the semester.

Full details for SOC 6910 - Independent Study

Work with a faculty member on a project that is related to your dissertation work.

Full details for SOC 8920 - Graduate Research

Work with chair of your committee on your dissertation work.

Full details for SOC 8960 - Thesis Research