Global Arc

This seminar focuses on the structural and institutional foundations of racial discrimination in the United States. It emphasizes the contributions of sociologists, some of whom will participate as invited guests. The course gives a historical overview followed by an investigation of key legislative actions and economic factors inhibiting racial equality. Subsequent topics include migration and immigration; urban development; and residential segregation. The end of the course reviews resistance movements and policies aimed at addressing systemic racism, including restorative justice and reparations.

This course examines economic phenomena from a sociological perspective. We first consider conceptual tools that sociologists have used to understand economic life and connections between economy and society. We then apply these concepts to an array of topics including labor markets, work, firms, commodification and consumption, credit and finance, social stratification and inequality, and transformations in 21st century capitalism.

This course will examine our individual and collective identities -- especially as they relate to sexuality, race, gender, and class. We will specifically focus on the social processes that produce these identities, how identities change over time, and the individual and collective anxieties that occur when identities become destabilized. This course will also focus on how power, privilege, and oppression intersect with our identities.

In 2022, the Supreme Court took up two cases on affirmative action in higher education admissions, and hence on the meaning of merit ---one involving Harvard, the other the University of North Carolina. Meanwhile, in 2021, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel advised German Social Democratic chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz to use the anti-meritocratic campaign theme of respect that helped him get elected. What is meritocracy and where did it come from? Is it a good way to organize society? What does the future of meritocracy look like? This class will explore the myth and reality of meritocracy to answer these questions.

This course seeks to help students understanding the basic elements of the ethnographic method and how it can be applied to the analysis of various public policy settings. We will focus on the suitability of ethnography for addressing at least three basic issues: (1) how people on the ground are affected by public policies; (2) the unintended consequences of public policy; (3) the co-production of public services, particularly the interaction between front line bureaucrats and their clients.

An introduction to basic concepts in probability and statistics with applications to social science research. We cover descriptive statistics, sampling distributions, statistical inference (including point estimation, confidence intervals and tests of hypotheses), the comparison of two or more groups, linear regression, and designs for causal inference. Throughout the course we use the open-source statistical package R to illustrate and apply the techniques. The course is intended to prepare students to take Advanced Social Statistics the following term.

Introduces theories of inference underlying most statistical methods and how new approaches are developed. The first half of the course covers maximum likelihood estimation and generalized linear models. The second half covers a number of topics useful for applied work including missing data, matching for causal inference and hierarchical models. The course concludes with a project replicating and extending a piece of work in the scholarly literature.

Sociology has always been engaged in the study of law and, in this course, we will examine law with the tools of sociology. In Segment I, The Building Blocks of Social Life, we will explore the ways in which law provides a crucial basis for social organization at the micro-, mid-level, and macro- levels of society. We will also explore the relationship between legal norms and the moral commitments of societies and social elites. In Segment II: The Legal Organization of Social Sectors, the course takes up the legal construction of race, gender and class, and explores the legal basis for the creation of crime, money, citizenship and terrorism.

This course provides a critical analysis of the social contours of intimacy around the world. The course is divided into three units: romantic love, sexuality, and marriage. Within each unit, we will delve into specific topics with readings providing both a U.S. perspective and international comparisons. Sample topics include: romantic love and masculinity, sexuality and labor, and marriage and inequality. The course will emphasize critical reading and reflection of original empirical studies from sociology, anthropology, history, and gender studies, as well as active and student-led discussion.

This course looks at the crisis of liberalism from its beginning at the turn of the twentieth century to the founding of post-WW II world order. Critical liberal intellectuals in Great Britain, Continental Europe, and the United States, who observed that liberalism was unable to offer constructive answers to the problems of the world it had created, worked for a reform of liberalism based on a self-questioning analysis of what had gone wrong. The course will look at those responses to the crisis of liberalism, the critique of the dominant liberalism, and arguments for reform