SOCI 151 - Introductory Sociology

Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)

Although the content of each section varies; this course may not be repeated for credit.

Topic One: Classical traditions for contemporary social issues. This section explores the significance and relevance of foundational thinkers of sociology to the understanding and analysis of contemporary social issues and problems. Examples include consumerism, teenage suicide, Occupy Wall Street, and race/ethnicity in colleges; housing, education, immigration, and childhood. Lastly, this course also examines the works of marginalized social thinkers within the classical tradition and considers why they have been silenced, erased and how they can help us to better understand many contemporary social issues. Carlos Alamo, Seungsook Moon, Eréndira Rueda.

Topic Two: Cooked! Food and Society. The flavor of this class will come from the impact of the classical debates on the current discourse of sociology, specifically debates on social problems and interpretations of our everyday life. To examine diverse and contentious voices, we will explore theoretical works with a focus on past, present and future of theory and how it reflects the transformation of society, and ask how can we propose a critical debate for our future to realize theory’s promise? Our special focus will be the challenges of food production and consumption in the 21st century. Pinar Batur.

Topic Three: Just Add Water!: Water and Society. The flow of this class will be from the impact of the classical debates on the current discourse of sociology, specifically the debate on social problems and the interpretations of our everyday life. To examine diverse and contentious voices, we will explore theoretical works with a focus on past, present and future of theory and how it reflects the transformation of society, and ask how can we propose a critical debate for our future to realize theory’s promise? Our special focus will be the challenges of water consumption and distribution in the 21st century. Pinar Batur.

Topic Four: Other Voices: Sociology from the Margins. Ideas about society that we value usually come from the European, the heterosexual, the male or the fully-abled. In this course we will examine sociological ideas from those who may be overlooked, excluded, othered, minimized or dismissed. This may include Ibn Khaldun, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mother Jones, Marcus Garvey, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Horace Cayton and Malcolm X. Diane Harriford.

Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.

Topic Five: Race/Class/Gender.  An introduction to key questions, ideas, and methods used by sociologists to make sense of human interaction and the social world. We use classical and contemporary texts to uncover and examine the forces and structures outside of the individual that shape and are shaped by us. Sociology has a long history of concern with inequality; this course pays special attention to how inequalities are structured, experienced, maintained and challenged along the lines of race, class, gender and their intersections. Light Carruyo.

Topic Six: A Social Justice Approach. This course aims to introduce you to a sociological perspective through an exploration of social justice. We will begin with an analysis of what a sociological perspective entails, including an understanding of the structural and cultural forces that shape our lives and those of the people around us and how, in turn, individuals make choices and influence social change. Social justice delineates and describes injustices such as economic inequality, racism, sexism, and homophobia and, by definition, addresses solutions and alternative social systems. Sociology has a long tradition of commitment to social justice issues and we will consider a wide variety of them including: issues of power, how social advantages and disadvantages are distributed, the relationship between social location and inequality, and the practice of reducing the gap between them at the local, national, and global levels. Social justice is a perspective for understanding and for action. Eileen Leonard.

Topic Seven: Sociology of Everyday Life. This section introduces sociology as a perspective that highlights the connections between individuals and the broader social contexts in which they live. We focus a sociological eye on the activities and routines of daily life, seeking to illuminate the social foundations of everyday behavior that we often take for granted. Reading both classical and contemporary texts, we build a sociological imagination and apply sociological theory as we focus our inquiry on issues such as the persistence of inequality, changing patterns of family life, new workplace dynamics, and the power of social networks. William Hoynes, Leonard Nevarez.

Topic Eight: No Place Like Home. No matter how much we move, explore, escape, or migrate, there is no place like home. At the threshold of the domestic and the political we encounter a matrix of social forces ranging from issues of personal safety, to public housing, to Homeland Security. This section of Introductory Sociology maps the place of the home through the lens of the sociological imagination. It immerses students in the foundations of social theory, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel. We center histories of migration, displacement and settlement in the United States, while employing various forms of research, diverse analytic understandings and approaches to the overlapping social problems of privacy, housing, homelessness, domestic labor and domestic violence that organize our imaginations of home in history and towards issues of justice. Jasmine Syedullah.

Topic Nine: Renegade and Revolutionary Traditions. In this class, we explore the classic 19^th century texts of the discipline from the perspective of renegades and revolutionaries to the established order. As an introductory course, our collective task is to cultivate a wide-ranging global understanding of theories and practices which emerged in opposition to and at times in alliance with the words and works of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber.  Many of the scholars, guerrillas, and working people we interrogate were not located in the lofty towers of academia or in the institutions of power in western world. The praxis of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, Steve Biko, Winnie Mandela, Abdullah Öcalan, Subcomandante Marcos, Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Alicia Garza, Queen Latifah, Kendrick Lamar and others guide us in thinking through how some marginalized peoples believed societies across the world were to be studied, organized, and reorganized. Their positionality as sufferers under imperialism, colonialism, and capitalist expansion armed them with the ability to understand racism, class struggle, sexism, and homophobia more deeply than Euro-North American men who dominate the canon on classical sociological thought.  Our class also keeps an eye on contemporary events and discourses through music, spoken word poetry, and impromptu class discussions. If we are successful this class enriches our sociological imagination, enhance our critical reading/writing/comprehensive skills, and improve our confidence in verbal discussion. Toivo Asheeke.

Topic Ten: Killing the Black Body. In 2016, a study revealed, In the United States, 3 out of 5 black families know of someone that has been treated unfairly by the police. In this class, we will explore the historical violence committed against black bodies from the killing of Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin. We will examine the killing of black bodies utilizing major theorist in the field of sociology including Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Mills, and others. Topics explored will include: gender and violence, race and violence, violence as a form of social control, and blackness as a mark of criminality. We will examine the long-term psychological consequences of violence against black bodies for families, communities of color, and the larger society.  Ruth Thompson-Miller

Topic Eleven: Mind, Body, Soul. We tend to think of the mind, body, and soul as personal and individual, best understood through the lenses of psychology, biology, and religion. And yet, our minds, bodies, and souls are fundamentally social and cultural in so far as they are molded by institutions such as the family, church, media, economy, and state – and indeed re-shaped increasingly by technologies of medicine, communication, security, and surveillance. In this introductory course, we will engage sociological perspectives to analyze: how we become self-aware, conscious subjects; how our bodies produce and consume, and how they come to bear inscriptions of class, race, gender, and sexuality; and finally how our identities and most deeply held beliefs develop and change over time.  As we read classic sociological texts alongside more contemporary thinkers and popular culture, we will consider topics such as the performance of online selves; genres of dystopia; food culture and politics; gender and sports; race and genetic testing; and social movements including #metoo and Black Lives Matter. In addition to classic texts by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, DuBois, and Freud we will also read works by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Octavia Butler, Barbara Ehrenreich, Judith Lorber, and Alondra Nelson among others. John Andrews.  The Department.

Two 75-minute periods.