Class Schedules

The Far Right in the United States has appropriated working class identities to produce an identity among the white working class. Donald Trump, for instance, intentionally portrays a large gap in highbrow and lowbrow to take jabs at privileged liberals (such as when he tweeted the "Hamberder" photo). This course observes what can be called the Far Right "theater of politics" in order to understand how liberals have left working class culture behind in ways that allowed the far right to fill the void by finding persuasive techniques in culture (country music, religion, church...) to articulate a political voice that some working class folks, especially whites, may find appealing. Some of the major questions of the course include: (1) How do political and economic elites produce class, gender, and racial divides and segmentations by aligning themselves with the cultural practices often associated with working class folks? (2) Can the left create a political culture that cultivates respect for organic cultural expressions that include religious expressions and pop-cultural themes like country music and sports (yes, even football!) into their fold  Reducing everything to class and asking all others to submit to its political logic is a limited vision. Instead, the course investigates whether it is possible to envision a political project that rather than privileging the concerns of upper-middle class whites produces a culture of resistance that can articulate working class subjects - straight, queer, white, black, binary, non-binary - into a populist left movement? One of the truly powerful features of the Left is that it is much more diverse than the Far Right. Is it possible to extend that diversity even further so that it can show a "little respect" for organic cultural producers to feel comfortable producing and living in multiple class, racial, gender, and sexual habitus?

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores historical and contemporary perspectives on racial and ethnic groups in American society, including African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, European Americans, and Americans of Middle Eastern descent. The goal is to develop an understanding of socio-historical forces that have shaped the lives of racial and ethnic groups in America.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Social scientists have many methodological approaches to choose from in their research toolkit ranging from qualitative to quantitative to comparative historical. Each of these approaches allows us to see and understand society from different perspectives, sometimes offering us complementary snapshots and other times presenting us with contradictory information. How, then, can we engage evidence to make claims about the social world? What even counts as evidence and who gets to speak for whom? Social Science Inquiry is part of a methods training sequence that emphasizes quantitative social science inquiry-that is, the approach to social science research that entails statistically analyzing relatively large datasets and emphasizes concerns such as measurement, replicability, objectivity, generalizability, and causal inference. However, this methodological approach is not without its critics. Therefore, this course begins by being in conversation with quantitative social science's critics, examining the abuse of quantitative knowledge in social science research and how quantitative social scientists have themselves been complicit in building many of the tools now at the center of contemporary ethical debates over online privacy, digitization, facial recognition, AI, and their use in policing, surveillance, and border enforcement. Taking the stance that quantitative methods are tools with the capacity to either build up or break down social structures, we will work with municipal data from the City of Minneapolis to explore how quantitative methods may be, in sociologist Ruha Benjamin's words, "retooled" to serve emancipatory and abolitionist purposes. Readings will focus on case studies from social science research and critical texts from science and technology studies. Methods-training content will specifically entail the use of R and will cover inferring population characteristics from survey samples, estimating causality and predicting outcomes using linear regression, the principles of probability and estimating statistical uncertainty, and how to critically read quantitative information presented via figures and tables.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Quantitative Thinking Q3

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is designed to engage students with the most sophisticated and useful schools of thought available in the social science disciplines. The course raises a number of questions: How can we best understand the complexities of self and society? Are these units of analysis useful in and of themselves? Are they contained in an essential body or polity that we can identify as some unitary entity called Jenny and John Doe, American, French, Arab/Jew, black/white, modern/primitive, developed/underdeveloped, Oriental/ Occidental, homo/heterosexual, male/female? Or are they socially produced units that have no essence in-of-themselves, produced and made real only through performance with the "Other"? Furthermore, is there something unique about modernity that has fundamentally transformed the notions of our selves, bodies, polities, races, and civilizations? If the answer to the last question is in the affirmative, how and why did this come to be the case, and what consequences does it hold for our understanding of the past and of the future? These are the kinds of questions that great figures in sociology have been asking since the nineteenth-century, including classic theorists like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, as well as more recent writers such as Ervin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Edward Said.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

During the last three decades, a global indigenous rights movement has taken shape within the United nations and other international bodies, challenging and reformulating international law and global cultural understandings of indigenous rights. The recognition of indigenous peoples' rights in international law invokes the tensions between sovereignty and human rights, but also challenges the dominant international understandings of both principles. In this course, we examine indigenous peoples' movements by placing them in a global context and sociologically informed theoretical framework. By beginning with a set of influential theoretical statements from social science, we will then use indigenous peoples' movements as case studies to examine the extent to which these theoretical perspectives explain and are challenged by case studies. We will then analyze various aspects of indigenous peoples' movements and the extent to which these aspects of the movement are shaped by global processes.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course delves into the topic of suburbanization, exploring a wide range of themes and issues that have converged in the suburbs as arguably the most important spatial form of the 20th century for observing major shifts in American culture, politics, and economic activity. Broadly, we will study the complex and multifaceted relationship between suburbs and cities, analyzing the theoretical underpinnings that have shaped the dynamic between them. Additionally, we will explore: the allure and deceit of the American Dream, scrutinizing how this ideal has been both a driving force and a source of disillusionment for many suburbanites; the spatial and possessive logics of whiteness, examining how suburbanization has been intimately tied to the construction and maintenance of racial hierarchies; and the political importance of the suburban homeowner as a voting bloc, looking into how this group has wielded significant influence in local, state, and national elections. Moreover, through decoding suburban architecture and its surrounding built environment, we will also think through the gendered, sexual, and social control functions of the single-family home, the highway, and the shopping mall as normalizing structures designed to regulate and shape our behavior and values. Finally, thinking critically about what it means to participate in placemaking within these broader themes, we will close by theorizing together about the significance of rejecting the “cruel optimism” of the suburbs amidst the recapture of city centers by the forces of financial capital. What does it mean to be in place and in community in a world where space has become increasingly territorialized, privatized, and hoarded?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Differently positioned groups and individuals in society experience and understand historical occurrences from distinct vantage points. What becomes the accepted account of what has transpired in our collective lives? How do we as a society remember and make sense of the past? What types of knowledge get produced when only certain accounts of history make their way into official repositories? How is the past ordered and tamed in the service of maintaining systems of domination, exploitation, and perverse forms of inclusion? These questions orient us toward the study of “collective memory,” a concept coined by early sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1925 to refer to how memory becomes socially significant once taken up in a collective context. With a focus on placing the United States in global perspective, we will examine material such as video testimonies, museum displays, archival collections, public monuments, and news coverage to consider the relationship between power and knowledge, the place of history in contemporary political struggles, and the role of technology in historical preservation. Moreover, this course emphasizes how collective memory is also an ongoing project and practice that holds the capacity for transformative social change. Taking a community-engaged approach, we will close by considering the possible futures available to us if we reckon with the past and engage in critical-creative heritage practices in the present.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Law is omnipresent in contemporary social life. How should we understand this development and its consequences? How does law operate to the advantage or disadvantage of various members of society? Can law be the source of significant social change? This course examines the development of a formal, legal system and the ways in which such a system connects to other parts of society. We begin by focusing on individual experiences and understandings of law and what these tell us about how law fits into the larger social order. We then evaluate explanations about the connections between social and legal development. We also consider how the "law in action" operates by examining empirical studies of legal institutions and the limits and potential of law as a source for social change.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Feminism means both understanding the construction of gender and sexuality in society and challenging the oppressive structures that constrain people of all genders. This class will focus on feminisms (theory and praxis) in the Americas, their histories, politics of liberation and resistance, struggles, and transnational collaborations and solidarity from the 2000s onwards. We will pay particular attention to their fight against gender-based violence. We will engage with memoirs, academic scholarship, and activist production. We will read Brenny Mendoza, Sara Ahmed, Rita Segato, Ochi Curiel, María Lugones, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, among others. The central questions we will address are: What constitutes transnational feminism(s)? How do members of communities in the Americas understand and articulate their relationships to feminism and feminist organizing? How do activists in specific cultural contexts resist multiple forms of gender-based violence?

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The course introduces students to the sociological imagination, or "the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of individual and society, of biography and history, of self and the world," as C. Wright Mills described it. The enduring value of a sociological imagination is to help students situate peoples' lives and important events in broader social contexts by understanding how political, economic, and cultural forces constitute social life. Sociology explores minute aspects of social life (microsociology) as well as global social processes and structures (macrosociology). Topics covered vary from semester to semester, but may include: socialization, suburbanization and housing, culture, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class stratification, deviance and crime, economic and global inequality, families and intimate relationships, education, religion, and globalization.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

The use of imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment is only about as old at the United States. Currently, 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison or jail. How should we understand the growth of this form of criminal punishment? How is it similar to other methods to react to and to attempt to control unwanted behavior? What are the social consequences of these formal institutions of social control? In this course, we examine these developments in the processes and organization of social control, paying particular attention to criminal behavior and formal, legal responses to crime. We study and evaluate sociological theories of criminal behavior to understand how social forces influence levels of crimes. We examine recent criminal justice policies in the United States and their connections to inequality, examining the processes that account for expanding criminalization. Finally, we compare the development of formal, bureaucratic systems of social control and informal methods of social control, paying attention to the social and political implications of these developments.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of childhood studies. We will question taken-for-granted assumptions about the child as we explore how understandings, representations, and experiences of childhood vary across historical, cultural, and geographical contexts. Examining the significance of race and ethnicity, social class, gender, gender identity, sexuality, and disability within children’s lives, we will consider the diverse experiences of childhood. Core themes include the social construction of childhood, children’s agency, and debates surrounding children’s rights in a global context. We will consider various case studies of contemporary children’s and youth issues, including growing up trans and what that reveals about society’s ideas about gender identity more broadly; how children cope and recover following disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and wildfires; and how children and youth can participate and lead in electoral politics and social movements. Finally, we will discuss contemporary research on how, why, and with what consequences the transition to adulthood has become stratified, scrambled, or only partially realized because of systems of oppression and privilege. These systems shape people’s opportunities in higher education, paid work, partnering, parenting, and living independently. Assignments will enable you to bring a critical perspective to images and narratives of childhood.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

According to the International Organization for Migration (OIM), in 2019, the United States had the largest foreign-born population in the world. During the same year, immigrants represented 15% of the United States population while 53% of the foreign-born migrants came from Latin America. At the same time, we are observing the securitization of the US-Mexico border that is resulting in the removal of undocumented individuals from the U.S. in large numbers, specifically Latino men. The course examines recent U.S. immigration as part of a global (historical) phenomenon to understand how we got to where we are. While we will become familiar with immigration policies, we will pay attention to the experiences of immigrants, particularly those coming from Latin America. We will explore questions such as: What motivates people to migrate? How does migration reconfigure social relations, such as parental and community relations? This is a discussion-based course and includes guest speakers and a civic engagement project with a local organization.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This class introduces students to the methodologies and analytic techniques of fieldwork and ethnography: participant observation, interviewing, and the use of documents. Students will read exemplary, book-length studies and will conduct an extensive field research for their final project. Prerequisite(s): For declared Sociology majors only; all others require permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Why are there large-scale health inequalities? While many popular accounts emphasize differences in individual bodies or behavior, this course examines how social processes affect individuals, populations, and their health, placing special emphasis on stigma and discrimination. We study theories that account for the ways that stigma and discrimination can act as social determinants of health, examine research that seeks to isolate the ways that stigma and discrimination can affect health and health disparities, and use this material to think creatively about potential solutions to health inequalities. There are no prerequisites for this course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Historically, scholars have generally agreed that authoritarianism and the rule of law cannot coexist. In recent years, new research has argued that differences in legal environments between democracies and authoritarian states are not as clear as once thought. Prosperity, public discourse, media messaging, and careful use of legal procedures have created opportunities for a new "rule by law" to take hold in places once thought to be immune to authoritarian tendencies. As societies face a global trend of democratic decline, institutions and processes foundational to the rule of law and liberal democracy have become tools to constrain dissent while augmenting discretionary political power. This course will examine global trends and current case studies of authoritarian legal regimes around the world, which includes turning a lens on the United States to explore recent changes in the American regulatory environment and what they tell us about the durability of democracy now and into the future.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course, we will study contemporary food issues, ranging in scale from the global food system to family dinners. We will use food and foodways as a vehicle for exploring systemic, institutional, and interpersonal power as expressed through the production, distribution, and consumption of food, with a focus on the United States. The course provides an overview of the conventional food system, then moves into examining key contemporary debates around food related to human health, social class and consumption, gender and carework, race and food production, and the broader social and environmental ramifications of how we eat. By better understanding the relationships between power, privilege, and food, we can learn to recognize how people come to produce, consume, and identify with various aspects of food systems. Throughout the course, we will explore how people are working to address food system issues in pursuit of the values of justice and sustainability through investigating lesser-known food cooperatives of the past and interrogating visions of possible food futures.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This senior seminar serves as the capstone experience for sociology majors. This class provides students with an opportunity to develop a synthetic understanding of their sociology course work and to conduct prospective research that may culminate in honors projects.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials