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: 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 Seven: Cells, Cyborgs, and Science Wars. How has the evolution of technology changed the organization of society and our understanding of identity? Do new forms of science and technology break down existing inequalities, reinforce them, or produce new forms of inequity? Is science “objective” or “socially constructed” and “politically interested”? This class awakens students’ sociological imagination by examining major sociological thinkers, perspectives, and concepts through the lens of science and technology. By using the theories of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, de Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Foucault, and other scholars to analyze contemporary scientific controversies around the globe, this course presses students to view social theory as tool for critical thinking. Contemporary topics may include debates surrounding genetic testing and manipulation, artificial intelligence and surveillance technologies, GM crops, climate science, the globalization of drug development, reproductive cell markets, the rise of robotics in manufacturing, and issues tied to pollution and environmental degradation. Abigail Coplin.  

Topic Eight: 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 explore the historical violence committed against black bodies from the killing of Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin. We examine the killing of black bodies utilizing major theorist in the field of sociology including Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Mills, and others. Topics explored include: gender and violence, race and violence, violence as a form of social control, and blackness as a mark of criminality. We examine the long-term psychological consequences of violence against black bodies for families, communities of color, and the larger society. Ruth Thompson-Miller.

Topic Nine: 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 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 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 also read works by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Octavia Butler, Barbara Ehrenreich, Judith Lorber, and Alondra Nelson among others. John Andrews.

Topic Ten: Privilege, Power, and Social Mobility. The objective of this course is to help students cultivate their sociological imagination, shifting their analytical perspective from individuals to societies, from “biographies” to “histories.” This course pairs classical and contemporary theory to explore issues of privilege, power, and social mobility. How is privilege reproduced? How is poverty an inter-generational trap? How does belief in meritocracy obfuscate structural inequalities? What would an equitable system look like? Throughout this course, students engage with classical/contemporary theorists, such as: Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, W.E.B. Dubois, C. Wright Mills, Pierre Bourdieu, and Herbert Marcuse. Students also apply sociological theory to analyze current debates and issues. For example, during the week on privilege and education, students bring into conversation Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital,” Shamus’s Privilege, and Anthony Jack’s The Privileged Poor. Catherine Tan.

Topic Eleven: Classical Theories in International Contexts. If Karl Marx walked into a Foxconn factory building iPhones in central China, what would he think? Does Foucault’s theory of biopolitics help us understand post-Chernobyl Ukraine? How would Durkheim explain the nationalist and populist movements spreading around the world? What is dramaturgical analysis and does it help us understand the dynamics of sex work in Vietnam? This class awakens students’ sociological imagination by examining major sociological thinkers, perspectives, and concepts through an international lens. By using the theories of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Goffman, Bourdieu, Foucault, and other scholars to analyze contemporary sociological problems and phenomena around the globe, this course cultivates students’ understanding of social theory as a tool for critical thinking. It presses students to take a comparative perspective in their analyses, ponder how ideas flow and practices throughout the globe, and probe whether theories developed in one context can be translated to others. Abigail Coplin.

Topic Twelve: Global and Transnational Perspective. This course invites you to insights, delights, challenges, and limits of sociological perspectives by reading both “classical” and  contemporary texts in the discipline of sociology. Using these readings as an intellectual tool necessary for thinking about, talking about, and analyzing our globalized and transnational societies and world, the course examines the following issues that are mundane but compelling: 1) student loans and the financialization of capitalism, 2) mobile phones and the making and remaking of the individual self, 3) social media and democracy, 4) celebrities as quasi-aristocrats, & 5) tyranny of convenience and climate change/crisis. In your reading, writing, and participation in class discussion, you are encouraged to see the forest of our own social worlds both locally and globally, as well as individual trees in them. Seungsook Moon.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS