SOCIETY SECTOR (ALL CLASSES)

Sociology provides a unique way to look at human behavior and the world.  Sociology is the systematic study of the groups and societies in which people live.  In this introductory course, we examine and analyze how social structures and cultures are created, maintained, and most importantly, how they affect behavior.  The course deconstructs our taken for granted world of social interactions and behaviors and examines what theory and research can tell about human social behavior.

Course Professor:
Tamara Nopper

This course will focus on some of the most pressing social problems in contemporary American society, discussing the role of social science in defining, identifying, investigation, and addressing these issues.  More specifically, we will examine the characteristics of social problems, the process by which issues come to be seen as social problems and the possible causes and consequences of such problems.  Further, we will investigate the means that society has at its disposal for addressing social problems, and discuss the process of evaluation the success of these solutions.  Throughout the course, we will craw on both sociological theory and contemporary evidence to discuss issues like poverty and inequality, crime, immigration, school reform, environmental degradation, health and medicine.  The overall goal of the course is to help students to more critically think about, write about, and assess social problems in contemporary American society.

Course Professor:
Jessica McCrory

Note on registering for LPS Courses:
Courses offered through the College of liberal and Professional Studies are open to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, but LPS imposes some restrictions on registration.  During the pre-registration period, most in LPS classes are reserved for LPS students.  Once all of the non-reserved places are filled, College students will find that they cannot register without permission.  Please be aware that the Sociology Department cannot grant permission and/or override the restrictions LPS has imposed.  These registration restrictions will be lifted on the second day of classes.  At that time, College students will be able to register for any LPS courses that still have openings but must go through LPS to do this.
LPS’S phone number is 215-898-7326.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR LEC, REC
COLLEGE QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS REQ.
SOCIETY SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: GSOC-004
 

This introduction to the sociology of the family explores historical, economic, and cultural changes that have shaped the past and present form of the American kinship system. It will also compare demographic and social trends and consequences of family patterns across societies, providing a perspective on differences and similarities between the U.S. family system and other nations. Students will have an opportunity to engage in research on topics of special interest.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR LEC, REC
COLLEGE QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS REQ.
SOCIETY SECTOR
 

This course examines the family through a sociological lens.  Although it might seem to be a private entity, the family is a social institution which is influenced, and also influences, other social institutions.  Throughout the semester, we will examine both sociological theories and methods utilized to understand the family.  We will look at demographic trends in the family and pay particular attention to the ways in which position in the social structure and government policies impact family life in the United States.  Students will also have the opportunity to conduct their own quantitative and qualitative research.

Course Professor:
Laura Napolitano 

Please Note: Courses offered through the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) are open to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, but LPS imposes some restrictions on registration. During the pre-registration period, most seats in LPS classes are reserved for LPS students. Once all of the non-reserved places are filled, College students will find that they cannot register without permission. Please be aware that the Sociology Department cannot grant permission and/or override the restrictions LPS has imposed. These registration restrictions will be lifted on the second day of classes. At that time, College students will be able to register for any LPS courses that still have openings but must go through LPS to do this. LPS’S phone number is 215-898-7326.

SOCIETY SECTOR
CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN US

The American Dream highlights opportunity for individuals to achieve success based on their own ability and initiative.  How well does our society live up to this ideal?  Who gets ahead, and who falls behind?  Topics include factors that affect life chances in contemporary society: education, social class, race, ethnicity and gender.

Course Professor:
Stephen Viscelli

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN US
CROSS LISTED: URBS-112

This course is a comprehensive introduction to the sociological study of urban cities.  This includes more general topics such as the rise of cities and theories urbanism, as well as more specific areas of inquiry, including American urbanism, segregation, urban poverty, suburbanization and sprawl, neighborhoods and crime, and immigrant ghettos.  The course will also devote significant attention to globalization and the process of urbanization in less developed countries.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN US
HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: AFRC-001

The aim of this course is to provide an interdisciplinary examination of the complex array of African American and other African Diaspora social practices and experiences.  This class will focus on both classic texts and modern works that provide an introduction to the dynamics of African American and African Diaspora thought and practice.  Topics covered will include: What is Afro-American Studies?; The History Before 1492; Creating the African Diaspora After 1500; The Challenge of Freedom; Race and Class in the 20th Century; From Black Studies to Africana Studies: The Future of Afro-American Studies.

SOCIETY SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: STSC-003

From the colonial period to the present, Americans have relied on technology to shape their lives, landscapes and society.  This unique, abiding and often tumultuous relationship is one of the defining elements of the American experience.  From factory floor to suburban kitchens, from eccentric inventors to student demonstrators, from Model T to iMacs, the diversity of American technological developments reflects -- and has helped define -- the most crucial developments in American history.  This course will provide an historical understanding of the role that technology has played in American society from the late 19th century to the present day.  The underlying assumptions are that technology is simultaneously a reflection and cultural values, and a factor (one of many) in shaping the continuous development of those values.            

Course Professor:
Nathan Ensmenger

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SEMINARS
FRESHMAN SEMINAR

The purpose of Soc 041 is to provide a basic understanding of some rather ubiquitous social phenomena: mistakes, accidents and disasters. We will look at these misfirings across a number of institutional domains: aviation, nuclear power plants, and medicine. Our goal is to understand how organizations “think” about these phenomena, how they develop strategies of prevention, how these strategies of prevention create new vulnerabilities to different sorts of mishaps, how organizations respond when things go awry, and how they plan for disasters.

At the same time we will be concerned with certain tensions in the sociological view of accidents, mistakes and disasters at the organizational level and at the level of the individual.  Accidents, mistakes and disasters are embedded in organizational complexities; as such, they are no one’s fault. At the same time, as we seek explanations for these adverse events, we seek out whom to blame and whom to punish. We will explore throughout the semester the tension between a view that sees adverse events as the result of flawed organizational processes versus a view that sees these events as a result of flawed individuals.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR LEC, REC
CROSS LISTED: HSOC-100

We all live in the social world, so it stands to reason that we have “a leg up” when it comes to understanding how the social world works.  To some extent, it’s true.  But it is also the case that, stuck in our own skins as we are, we need some help in seeing “the big picture.”  This gives rise to the idea of systemization in social research: to *methods*.

Methods of social research are the way in which we link certain principles of observation to the ways in which we put together images of the social world.  They are ideas in service to an ever-changing cause, not commandments handed down from some higher power.

Thus as we learn about the logic of comparison, the experimental model, inference from small, finite samples to the characteristics of far larger populations, the role of statistics in social science research, and the advantages and disadvantages of semi-structured observation (both participant and non-participant), we will be less learning a collection of “off-the-shelf” “tricks” than attempting to structure the way we investigated and make sense of the social world.  The perspective of the text will be inclusive and balance; that of the instructor, perhaps a little less so, if comprehensive all the same.

Students will be expected to participate in course activities, to do some assignments, and to take a few short examinations at scheduled times.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR LEC, REC
CROSS LISTED: HSOC-102

Bioethics is intended to introduce students to the complex issues that confront medicine and biotechnology in this time of rapid change.  The first part of the course will be devoted to an overview of the standard principles of academic bioethics.  We will then consider several clinical topics to which the principles may be applied, including neonatal medicine, death and dying, abortion, and the ethics of human experiments.  The last part of the course will address certain ”cutting edge” issues including genetics, cloning, stem cells and cloning, biodefense, and neuroscience in relation to national security.  These subjects will be addressed using the tolls and methods of history, sociology, philosophy and law.

Course Professor:
J Moreno

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN US
CROSS LISTED: ASAM-001

This class will introduce you to sociological research of Asian American and engage in the “model minority” stereotype.  We begin by a brief introduction to U.S. immigration history and sociological theories about assimilation and racial stratification.  The class will also cover research on racial and ethnic identity, educational stratification, mass media images, interracial marriage, multiracials, transracial adoption, and the viability of an Asian American panethnic identity.  We will also examine the similarities and differences of Asian Americans relative to other minority groups.

Course Professor:
Diana Khuu

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR LEC, REC
COLLEGE QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS REQ.

This course offers an introduction to the application and interpretation of statistical analysis in sociology.  Upon completion, you should be familiar with a variety of basic statistical techniques that allow examination of interesting social questions.  We begin by learning to describe the characteristics of groups, followed by discussion of how to examine and generalize about relationships between characteristics of groups.  Emphasis is placed on the understanding and interpretation of statistics used to describe and make generalizations about group characteristics.  In addition to hand calculation, you will also become familiar with using PCs to run statistical tests.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN US
SOCIETY SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: GSOC-122

Gender is an organizing principle of society, shaping social structures, cultural understandings, processes of interaction, and identities in ways that have profound consequences.  It affects every aspect of people’s lives, from their intimate relationships to their participation in work, family, government, and other social institutions and their place in the stratification system.  Yet gender is such a taken for granted basis for differences among people that it can be hard to see the underlying social structures and cultural forces that reinforce or weaken the social boundaries that define gender.  Differences in behavior, power, and experience are often seen as the result of biological imperatives or of individual choice.  A sociological view of gender, in contrast, emphasizes how gender is socially constructed and how structural constraints limit choice.

This course examines how differences based on gender are created and sustained, with particular attention to how other important bases of personal identity and social inequality-race and class-interact with patterns of gender relations.  We will also seek to understand how social change happens and how gender inequality might be reduced.

A review of theoretical perspectives developed since the second half of the 20th century. Includes micro-sociological perspectives of phenomenology, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, and neo-Durkheimian interaction ritual theory; social behaviorism and exchange theory; neo-Weberian and neo-Marxian perspectives on power, conflict, and class; and attempts at synthesis by Habermas, Luhmann and Giddens.  Recurring themes include the micro-macro connection, the relationship between subjectivity and behavior, and the structure-agency problem.

SOCIETY SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: NURS-134

Health and Social Policy is an interdisciplinary course examining health care and social policy from domestic and international perspectives.  This course is designed to engage students in critical thinking about social determinants of health, the organization and outcomes of health care systems and institutions, global health priorities and challenges, and the implications for public policy.  Topics include social inequalities and health; how the organizational context of health care impacts outcomes; management of human resources in health nationally and globally; analysis of medical error, its causes, and consequences; review and critique of public policies in U.S. health care; and global health priorities and international health policy.  Issues of current public debate in health and health care will provide a context for learning.  There are no prerequisites.  The course is intended for generalists as well as for those planning careers in health care.

After introducing students to the major theoretical concepts concerning law and society, significant controversial societal issues that deal with law and the legal systems both domestically and internationally will be examined. Class discussions will focus on issues involving civil liberties, the organization of courts, legislatures, the legal profession and administrative agencies. Although the focus will be on law in the United States, law and society in other countries of Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America will be covered in a comparative context. Readings included research reports, statutes and cases.

Please Note:
Courses offered through the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) are open to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, but LPS imposes some restrictions on registration. During the pre-registration period, most seats in LPS classes are reserved for LPS students. Once all of the non-reserved places are filled, College students will find that they cannot register without permission. Please be aware that the Sociology Department cannot grant permission and/or override the restrictions LPS has imposed. These registration restrictions will be lifted on the second day of classes. At that time, College students will be able to register for any LPS courses that still have openings but must go through LPS to do this. LPS’S phone number is 215-898-7326.

SOCIETY SECTOR

This course relies on a variety of sociological perspectives to examine the role of media and popular culture in everyday life, with a particular emphasis on the organization of the mass media industry, the relationship between cultural consumption and status, and the social significance of leisure activities from sports to shopping.  Specific course topics will include the marketing of Starbucks, how consumers experience urban nightlife, the rise of aesthetics and style in everyday life and the role of new media technology in popular culture.

Course Professor:
Keri Monahan

Please Note:
Courses offered through the College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS) are open to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, but LPS imposes some restrictions on registration. During the pre-registration period, most seats in LPS classes are reserved for LPS students. Once all of the non-reserved places are filled, College students will find that they cannot register without permission. Please be aware that the Sociology Department cannot grant permission and/or override the restrictions LPS has imposed. These registration restrictions will be lifted on the second day of classes. At that time, College students will be able to register for any LPS courses that still have openings but must go through LPS to do this. LPS’S phone number is 215-898-7326.

SOCIETY SECTOR
CROSS LISTED: CRIM-200

This course examines the causes and consequences of the millions of decisions made annually by the legally empowered decision-makers of the criminal justice system.  The course places students in the role of one decision-maker after another, emphasizing the decisions they would make with all the scientific research on these decisions at their disposal.  Research on 15 different decision-makers is examined, from crime victims to police, prosecutors, jurors, judges, wardens, and probation and parole officers.  Using a medical mode of evidence-based practice, the course asks students to consider how the results of criminal justice could more effectively reduce the sum of human misery.

Course Professor:
John MacDonald

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of survey research.  Students will learn about questionnaire design and formatting; sample design and selection; interviewing techniques; data base design and data entry; and elementary data analysis and report preparation.

These objectives will be achieved through student involvement in the design of a sample survey of the connection between migration and health.  We will also examine and discuss general sample surveys widely used in the social and biomedical sciences.  This course will address three fundamental issues in sample survey design: validity, reliability, and representativeness.  In addition, this course will enhance students; analytical skills and prepare them for conduction quantitative analyses.