Global Arc

This course examines the social impact of driverless cars, a rapidly evolving technology that promises to revolutionize the way we travel. Through a sociological lens, we will explore how driverless cars are expected to affect safety, accessibility, employment, urban planning, and environment, as well as privacy and data security. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, we will analyze the benefits and drawbacks of driverless cars from a sociological perspective. Through readings, discussions, and projects, students will develop a critical understanding of the social impact of driverless cars and the future of transportation.

The combined deployment of digital systems, massive data collection and computer code have reshaped the basic rules of social life: how people communicate, work, exchange and associate; how they relate to one another, themselves, and the world around them; how institutions, public and private, frame and pursue their social mission and economic purpose; and how they sort, slot, and know populations and individuals. This course will analyze the specificity and power of digital technology as a driver of capital accumulation, a technique of government, an engine of social difference, and a cultural force with its own politics and moral lexicon.

This course will introduce you to the basic concepts, theories, and methods used in social demography. We will apply a comparative approach that highlights country differences with a special emphasis the US Israel comparison. In the first half of this class we will review basic demographic concepts. In the second half of the class we will focus on demography of the family. We will ask how fertility, marriage and divorce differ for different population groups in different countries. We will also learn how demographic processes may be related to the reproduction of poverty, and inequality.

Does where you live determine your destiny? This seminar will engage students in a rich dialogue about these questions and more, drawing from the best social science evidence to date from the social sciences. In the first half of the course, we will consider research conducted on neighborhood-level (census tract) differences in big cities. In the second half, we will consider research focusing on differences between communities across the entire U.S., including rural America. Student presentations are a significant part of this course.

The course examines the gendered racialization of Asian American women. It identifies and interrogates experiences of everyday violence, looking at their hypersexualization, labor market precarity, intimate partner violence, and poverty. It situates the discussion in the law, family, workplace, and campus community.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.

This course will provide a scientifically informed understanding of how population processes shape society and how they are, in turn, shaped by social, economic, policy, and environmental context. Focusing on the four core demographic processes (fertility, nuptiality, mortality, and migration), readings and lectures demonstrate the demographic underpinnings of high-profile issues such as population decline, immigration, childlessness, population aging and social transfer programs, complex families, social inequality, and the impact of climate change. We will read and discuss treatment of these issues in academic outlets and the popular press.

This course will analyze and evaluate the social, psychological and cultural underpinnings of long-standing "everyday" experiences common to Asian Americans (e.g., navigating biculturalism, microaggressions and model minority stereotypes) that may impact identity and mental health, as well as the psychosocial causes and consequences of significant current events that impact different Asian groups in the U.S., such as affirmative action.

This course will introduce you to the conservative tradition in sociology. The course does not deal with conservative movements. Our focus, instead, is on an intellectual tradition: styles of thought and ways of understanding the social world. We will explore this from the late 19th century through today. Our course is centered around five main themes: (1) Conservatism within the classical sociological tradition; (2) a focus on the case of "The Ghetto" and the experiences of Black Americans in urban America; (3) the conservative embrace of and concerns about capitalism; (4) the sociology of the family; (5) religion in social life.