Global Arc

The goal of this course is to examine how the constructs of race, class, and gender develop and change over time and by place. We will discuss various theories of race, gender, and class. In addition, we will consider how coexisting social hierarchies shape identities, determine life chances, establish relationships of marginality and privilege, and generate social stability and conflict. Racial formation, intersectionality, black feminist thought, and symbolic boundaries will be among the theoretical approaches discussed.

This course investigates poverty in America in historical and contemporary perspective. We will explore central aspects of poverty, including low-wage work and joblessness, housing and neighborhoods, crime and punishment, and survival and protest. Along the way, we will examine the cause and consequences of poverty; study the lived experience of severe deprivation and material hardship; evaluate large-scale anti-poverty programs with an eye toward what worked and what didn¿t; and engage with normative debates about the right to housing, living wages, just punishment, and other matters pertaining to American life below the poverty line.

Examines a wide range of issues regarding race, ethnicity and nationalism in Latin America. We will explore the basic sociological, political and cultural concepts of nation, race and ethnicity, emphasizing how they are used in the region. Race and ethnicity have taken on special meanings in Latin America that are disctinct from other regions. Much of the course will focus on how that came about and how race is manifested. We will emphasize comparisons to the U.S. as well as across countries within Latin America. The course will cover populations of African and indigenous origins.

A survey of past and present perspectives on the origin, development and social consequences of capitalism, covering various aspects including classical political economy and sociology theories, long-term cycles, revolutions, state actors, the welfare state, imperialism, international trade, international finance, labor relations, consumerism, ecology, neoliberalism and the future of capitalism.

In this course, we focus not on ethnoracial groups, but on particular cases which illustrate how race is used as a means to divide, sort, and rank human beings. Readings include sociological, historical, and anthropological studies of ethnoracial dynamics in the U.S., Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. We examine key conceptual and epistemological issues in comparative research on race; and compare how different societies have constructed ethnoracial boundaries. We conclude by considering the possible future(s) of the U.S. racial order by discussing ethnoracial attitudes, multiraciality, immigration, and 'Latin Americanization.'

In this course, students will develop a broad understanding of how Japanese society functions today by focusing on several key institutions and social domains: politics, the economy, education, employment, family, media, and the larger population. This understanding of contemporary Japanese society (1980s-present) will come through reading of Japan scholars in a range of fields, reading recent media portrayals of Japan, attending lectures designed to supplement and extend the readings, engaging in classroom discussion based on student-generated questions, and writing a research paper on a topic of student's choice.

The American Dream is built around the idea that children born into poor families can enter the middle and upper classes as adults. Yet recent research shows that this process happens more often in some cities than others; for instance, poor children born in San Jose are three times as likely to enter the upper class as those born in Charlotte. What might be driving these geographic differences in opportunities for low-income youth? We will work together as a class to answer this question using new survey data. Students will learn the basics of statistical thinking and develop the computational skills needed to put these ideas into practice.

In this course, we'll examine the changing landscape of science from a sociological perspective. We'll explore professionalization, public participation in science, the erosion of professions, emerging forms of amateur science organizations, and factors that shape these new organizations. We will discuss cultural authority, boundary-work, the democratization of science, the nature expertise, and the role of networks, adjacent organizations, and identity in creating new science organizations. Although do-it-yourself biology will be an ongoing focus, we will also discuss case studies in medicine, journalism, art, technology, and other sciences.

Intellectuals--a group defined in various ways, but consisting at its core of those individuals occupationally specialized in the production of knowledge and ideas--play key parts in modern society. This seminar examines sociological research on intellectuals, with a particular focus on academic intellectuals in the human sciences.

This course seeks to expose students to the recent social science literature on contemporary immigration of black individuals from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa to the United States. In addition to gaining an understanding of the degree of diversity that exists within the black immigrant population, students will explore the long-term effects of contemporary black immigration on American society, with a particular focus on understanding the roles of race, selective migration, and culture in explaining disparate social outcomes between U.S.-born and foreign-born blacks in the United States.