Graduate

Examines the establishment of theory in the discipline of sociology. Introduces students to close readings and analysis of a core selection of social theory. Problematizes the construction, maintenance, and reproduction of a theoretical canon in sociology.

Intensive survey of major tendencies in modern social thought, including functionalism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, critical theory, structuralism, phenomenology, neo-Marxism, and feminist theory.

Approaches methods as a series of conscious and strategic choices for doing various kinds of research. Introduces students to the epistemological questions of method in social sciences; to key issues in technique, particularly control, reliability, and validity; and to good examples of social research.

Students are provided with intuitive explanation of fundamental concepts in statistics and learn how to use statistics to answer sociological questions. Experience and guidance in using computers to efficiently analyze data are provided.

Gives students first-hand experience doing fieldwork with an emphasis on participant observation and some interviewing. Students submit weekly field notes and a final project analysis. At seminar meetings, field experiences and relevant literature are examined.

Overview of research strategies and methods used in historical and social sciences. Students read works exemplifying a variety of analytical approaches. Written assignments cultivate critical skills, weighing of tradeoffs inherent in all methodological choices, and elaboration of hypothetical research designs.

Writing intensive course designed to facilitate the completion of the master's thesis, orals field statement, or the dissertation in sociology. The seminar is convened by a faculty member in conjunction with students and their adviser or appropriate committee chair. Students are expected to produce and present drafts of work completed in the seminar.

Examines material and symbolic forms such as media products, cultural artifacts, language, nonverbal communication and social practices using discourse, textual, content, interpretive, and conversation analyses as well as ethnography and different channels of communication. Theoretically, relies on cultural studies, communication studies, cultural sociology, film studies, and ethnomethodology.

Classical concepts and contemporary approaches in macrosociology, the study of large-scale, long term social change. Readings drawn primarily from the Marxian and Weberian traditions (new institutionalism, varieties of neo-Marxism, environmental history, state centrism) as they focus on agrarian and industrial structures and commodity chains; household, village, and neighborhood organization; social movements and revolutions; culture, ideology, and consciousness; policy analysis; comparative urban, national, and civilizational development.

A survey of major works and themes in the relationship of politics and society, with primary emphasis on the compatibilities and contradictions of pluralist, elite, and class perspectives on the state.

Advanced treatment of the dominant ideas of nature and the environment in the West and their relationship to the development of Western capitalism. Leading Western theories of environmental crisis and their relation with ideologies of environmentalism and environmental movements.

Examines the structures, processes, and movements associated with globalization processes. Reviews political economy theories, cultural theories systems, state industrial policies, and popular responses to globalization. Also assesses contribution of resistance movements informed by class, ethno-nationalism, religion, or gender.

Examines rudiments of historical materialism in light of advances in cultural and ecological Marxism. Basic categories of Marxist political economy. Thematic focus on the first and second contradictions of capitalism in world economy today.

Looks at several major themes in the sociology of the environment and asks how the works of environmental history address those themes. Includes reflections on how history as a method interrogates social questions. Possible themes include: sustainability; social justice; universalism vs. particularity; city and country; and social movements.

Focuses on the interaction of work restructuring and existing race/class/gender inequalities. Themes include: the labor process and theories of consent; labor market segmentation; job and occupational segregation; information technologies, flexible work, and post-industrialism; flexible employment relations; and low-wage service and labor markets.

Examines theoretical and methodological implications of Marxist theory for empirical social research. Analyzes how historians and social scientists apply Marxist method in explaining society, social change, globalization, culture, and late capitalism. Goal is to assist students to employ Marxist theory and method creatively in their research projects.

Explores recent theoretical and empirical studies of race, class, gender, and sexuality with an emphasis on the production of identities and their relationship to processes and structures of power in a postcolonial context.

Seminar examining theoretical and methodological issues in doing cross-national and cross-cultural research. In addition to a consideration of different research paradigms and approaches, representative works from each comparative tradition are examined.

Provides scholarly support to students doing feminist research. Examines issues concerning conceptualization of feminism and feminist research. Explores relation of feminist research to intersections of gender, class, and race; to the self; to power; and to transformative social praxis. Students present and are given assistance with their work, as well as listen to, read, and assist with the work of others.

A critical survey of the theoretical issues of persistence and change, public policy, and recent empirical studies in the field of race and ethnic relations. Readings introduce comparative race relations and a historical background of major theoretical paradigms in the field which purport to explain race and ethnic relations in general and race relations in America specifically.

Examination of shifts in 20th- and 21st-century feminist theory and epistemology. Explores the decentering of universalist feminist theories and asks what constitutes feminist theory after gender has been decentered. Considers various deconstructive challenges to second-wave feminist theory based on the politics of race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, and class. Focus changes regularly.

Analyzes impact of ethnicity, gender, and religion on the class situation of laboring people in a globalized economy by intensive reading and critique of classic studies, explaining how social movements reflect combinations of social relations and cultural practices.

Introduces the student to the recent literature on race and class. Covers several different theoretical perspectives including internal colonialism, labor market segmentation theories, racial formation, and neo-gramscian cultural analyses. In addition to study of theory, also compares theoretical perspectives to the historical experience of minority groups, in particular, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

Focuses on the role feminist discourses play in contemporary cultural politics with the main focus on the politics of sex, sexuality, and sex work. Begins with considerations of (mis)representations of feminisms in popular cultures; considers the relationship between academic and popular feminisms; and interrogates the meaning of terms post-feminism and third-wave feminism.

A professional training seminar devoted to the philosophical, conceptual, and practical issues of course design, pedagogy, and grant writing. Topics covered: institutional contexts; curriculum (including syllabi, course content, assignments, evaluation); pedagogy; teaching as work/labor process; grant writing; budgets.

Examines classic and contemporary theories and concepts that play a major role in sociological studies of identity, symbolic and social interaction, and the sociology of emotions. Examines how cultural forms, rules, and rituals define, structure, and mediate emotions and how identities are situated within social institutions.

An introduction to comparative and historical analyses of relations between race and the criminal justice system. Specific topics include defining race/ethnicity, sentencing disparities, jury nullification, jury selection and decisions, prosecutorial misconduct, government's charging and investigative discretions, and other racially biased law enforcement practices and criminal court processes. Also covers a number of highly publicized trials that involved unmistakable elements of race and racism such as Chin, King, Simpson, and Unabomber cases. Students are also exposed to World Wide Web (Internet) to learn how to do research in the field of criminal justice.

Examines feminist and ethnic studies production, appropriation, and transformation of cultural studies theories and methodologies. Considers the utility of various theoretical apparatuses and methodological strategies employed in the interdisciplinary site that combines feminist, ethnic, and cultural studies.

Introduction to core writings and key theoretical pardigms in urban sociology. Examines the history and contemporary conditions of cities in the U.S. and the urban experience. Urbanization, suburbanization, community, social inequality, urban politics, relationship between the built environment and human behavior.

Examines colonialism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and legal remedies, and the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC); traces the history of colonial expansionism, starting from the Roman Empire to the present American imperial dominance in global politics.

Introduces historical analysis of lay justice participation. Examines global exploration of the use of lay judge institutions in citizen's movements and the assumption that juries are a derivative institution of democratic ideals. Focuses on corporate media creation of anti-jury sentiment.

Brings together the fields of sociology and geography to explore the complex and multiple ways of thinking together space and social difference. Course texts examine the co-constitution of space with bodies, subjectivities, and social formations.

An introduction to theoretical approaches and exemplary studies of culture, knowledge, and power which critically interrogate the relationship between cultural formations and the production, circulation, and meaning of knowledges, materials, artifacts, and symbolic forms. Explores the concrete ways that power is organized and operates through different forms and sites, how it interpolates with other forms of power, and examines knowledges and culture as specific forms of power and sites of political struggle.

Explores three main issues: the social determination of knowledge, including natural science; the character of intellectual labor and intellectuals as a social group; the role of organized knowledge and knowledge industries in contemporary social change. Texts examined include class-based theories (Lukacs, Mannheim, Gramsci), feminist standpoint analysis (Smith, Harding, etc.), and theories of postmodern culture (Lyotard, Harvey, etc.).

Examines contemporary debates about the role of mass produced expressive symbols in modern industrial societies, and the circumstances of cultural production for its impact on the creation, organization, and use of cultural artifacts. Concern with the use and experience of popular symbols for the ways that their use involves the creation of meanings and the role of such meanings in the social organization of society.

Considers the cultural turn and the turn to difference in understanding relations of power and struggles over representation in studies of race, media, and culture. Examines national identity, difference, subjectivity, and authenticity, especially as they bear on quests to create new identifications, alignments, and efforts to protect existing identities.

Explores social and cultural perspectives on science, technology, and medicine. Analyzes theoretical approaches that open up black boxes of scientific and biomedical knowledge, including the politics of bodies, objects, and health/illness. Links are made to medical sociology.

Considers the practical and epistemological necessity of collaborative research in the development of new sciences and technologies that are attentive to questions of ethics and justice. Enrollment is by permission of instructor. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Provides in-depth instruction in conducting collaborative interdisciplinary research. Students produce a final research project that explores how this training might generate research that is more responsive to the links between questions of knowledge and questions of justice. Prerequisite(s): Sociology 268A, Biomolecular Engineering 268A, Feminist Studies 268A, or Anthropology 267A. Enrollment is by permission of instructor. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Policy research. Covers a variety of theoretical perspectives found in policy studies. Surveys various methodological approaches used in policy research. Theories and methods linked to research agendas on the various phases of the policy life cycle. Students are required to design a research proposal.

The topics to be analyzed each year vary with the instructor but focus upon a specific research area. Enrollment restricted to graduate students by consent of the instructor.

A seminar devoted to the practical problems of securing a job as a professional sociologist. Topics covered: researching colleges, universities, and public and private organizations that employ sociologists; designing a curriculum vitae; writing an application letter; preparing a job talk; handling questions during the interview process; the etiquette of visiting (and its aftermath); finding out about them; and the terms of employment: what is negotiable and what is not.

Seminar on the genres of social science writing, and the problems of starting and finishing a publishable thesis, book, or article. For advanced graduate students working on the composition of their dissertations and journal articles.

Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.