Race, Gender, and Ethnicity: Soc 106
How do race, gender, class, and ethnicity influence us? How do they influence they people around us? What effects do they have on the world in which we live? Why do they have these impacts? How can we change their effects, and should we? What are race, gender, class, and ethnicity, anyway? From a sociological perspective, the answers to each of these questions are intertwined: Race, gender, class, and ethnicity are systems of power. As such, they impact the distribution of resources, the arrangement and rules of social institutions, the differential influence various groups have, the way that people relate to and interact with one another, and the ways in which we each individually perceive the world. The core of this perspective on race, gender, class, and ethnicity is the relationship between societal hierarchies and the individual, between large-scale patterns and personal interactions, between historically developed forces and subjective choices, between social arrangements and lived experience. This course is therefore designed to foster understanding of the relationship between these systems of power in the abstract, throughout history, and through people’s individual lived experiences. It meets two General Education requirements: SB (Social and Behavioral Sciences) goals to introduce you to what and how we know about individual and social life, that human individuals and social lives are constantly changing, and that individual and social lives have systematic structural forces that shape them; and DU (Social and Cultural Diversity in the United States) goals to help you to understand that people live different lives because of the different ways that social forces impact individuals, see ways in which people are different, and through understanding these differences, become receptive to multiple perspectives in our complex world. Through practice approaching different perspectives and analyzing their relationship to social forces, this course provides knowledge and cognitive skills that are important for civic education and sociological majors, that are useful to careers in law, marketing, social work, and teaching, and that are crucial for being a good social citizen.
Social Class & Inequality: Soc 224
As sociologists, we all observe every day how family members, classmates, and others strive for desirable jobs, incomes, housing, health care, childcare, education, and other resources. Yet, life chances are not equally distributed: they depend deeply on systematic, societal-level patterns in social class and other hierarchies like race, gender, or sexuality. All too often, when people seek to make sense of their successes and failures, they offer explanations rooted in individual choices. Similarly, politicians, pundits, and even humorists who dominate civic discourse about social stratification promote solutions based on changing individuals’ beliefs or behaviors. As C. Wright Mills argued, a “sociological imagination” allows us to make sense of stratification in a different way. A sociological imagination is the cognitive ability to grasp the interplay of biography and history, of self and social structure, of private troubles and public issues. It involves a critical perspective toward personal outcomes in relation to social dynamics, toward the links between micro-level interactions and macro-level structures, and—perhaps most of all— toward ourselves, our own thoughts and actions, and their relations to society. To analyze inequality through a sociological imagination requires constant reflection and critical engagement with personal biases and the world around us. This course is therefore designed to foster understanding of contemporary inequality through a mutual cultivation of our sociological imaginations. It meets two General Ed requirements: SB (Social and Behavioral Sciences) goals to introduce you to what and how we know about individual and social life, that human individuals and social lives are constantly changing, and that individual and social lives have systematic structural forces that shape them; and U (Social and Cultural Diversity) goals to help you to understand that people live very different lives because of the different ways that society impacts individuals, see ways in which people are different, and through understanding these differences, become receptive to multiple perspectives in our very complex world. Through cultivation of a sociological imagination and practice using it to understand patterns in social class and inequality, this course provides knowledge and cognitive skills that are crucial for civic education and sociological majors, and that are useful to careers in law, marketing, social work, and teaching.
Criminology: Soc 241
Crime seems a straightforward topic. We already know all about it: we’ve heard about it constantly from parents and teachers, seen it countless times in news and politics, been enthralled by it in movies and books, and even been tempted to try it ourselves. We also know very well what to do about it: find its root causes and translate them into crime control policy. Many kinds of criminology (and criminology courses) attempt just that, walking methodically through various theories of what causes crime to analyze their strengths, their flaws, and ways to combine them, always searching for that just-out-of-reach solution to finally alleviate crime rates. This course takes another approach. Criminological thought does build on centuries of research on crime, crime control, and criminality—and all of us do enter the subject with a corpus of useful knowledge. But perhaps we need certain tools to make use of all that knowledge. As sociologist Howard Becker suggests below, we all interpret the same picture through our own perspectives, and the picture itself invites both certain perspectives and certain interpretations. So too does the picture of crime and criminality. This course therefore introduces you to those topics through a reflexive lens, a practice of seeing and questioning the subject matter, the landscape around it, its framing, the angles of other viewers, and the angle of your own viewpoint. Put less metaphorically, this course aims to engage you in the practice of reflecting on the political, historical, social, and personal contexts surrounding criminological knowledge and the evidence used to support it. Every theoretical and empirical claim about crime, criminalized people, or punishment rests on a worldview shaped by those contexts. As such, any evaluation of criminological theory, evidence, and practice—whether it seeks objective truth or subjective understanding—must begin by identifying and deconstructing those assumptions. This course therefore demands attention to those analytic skills and repeated practice using them. It is not a course designed simply to impart uncontested facts, but rather one that expects you to engage actively and routinely in a collective analysis of criminological theory, history, and practice.
Social Inequality & pUnishment: Soc 797E
This course will examine social inequality in society through the lens of crime, criminality, and punishment. It will analyze criminalization and punishment both as a means to measure social stratification according to race, social class, gender, and other axes of inequality, and as a distinct ground for social stratification. Topics will include theoretical and empirical approaches to studying social inequality and punishment; key domains in which penal inequality manifests and is produced, such as the labor market, politics, educational institutions, healthcare,
and families; and contemporary political and academic debates around punishment, criminality, and inequality.
Professional Writing & Publishing: Soc 797W
Academic writing is a complex and intimidating process, full of joy, engagement, fear, imposter syndrome, confusion, epiphany, rejection, and success. This seminar examines the academic writing and publication process in sociology, with particular emphasis toward peer-reviewed articles as the central writing format of the field. We will give particular emphasis to the work of motivating an article and using a theoretical “review” of the literature to do so, as well as building methods, results, and conclusions sections to support the motivating questions. We will also use these ideas to explore other kinds of academic writing (e.g., books and grants) and other parts of the writing process (e.g., selecting journals and finding collaborative support for your work). Though it can be magnificently fulfilling and enjoyable, writing is personal and fraught with challenges, embarrassment, self-doubt, and idiosyncratic issues of all kinds. Writing bears our own ideas, and so it can put
our entire self-images on the line. In addition to focusing on the structure of academic and sociological articles, we will also begin and end by addressing the process of writing and all of the perils within—for all of us. This will involve some disclosure and vulnerability, and it will ultimately highlight how universal our challenges with writing are. The immediate goal of the course is for you to submit an article for publication following the guidelines of the course. The more long-term goals is for you to develop your professional writing skills, a
broader understanding of what constitutes sociological writing and effective writing habits, and your collaborative skills in helping others do the same. The seminar is intended for advanced graduate students who have already written a paper that is ready to be developed for submission to a peer-reviewed sociological journal. This includes having all of the data collected and coded for the paper you are writing. You should have either already carried out the key analyses of your data or be in the final process of doing so. During the semester, we will revise those drafts into article form through reading assignments and workshopping exercises structured to facilitate collaborative understanding of professional writing norms and processes, constructive review and feedback, mutual challenges in the writing process, and revisions of the articles themselves. If you are unsure if your paper is ready for this course, please consult your primary advisor and the instructor.