Academic Courses & Programs
Other Sociology Courses
Aging and Society
This course is an introduction to the sociological study of aging. During the semester we will deconstruct stereotypes of the aged, analyze the changes we face as we grow older and how individuals adapt to such change, analyze family relationships which include caregiving relationships, discuss health and financial security issues, and analyze how government policy will be affected by changes in the age structure of our society. All of the topics above will be placed in an historical and cross-cultural context • College of Mount Saint Mary-Newburgh, NY • University of North Florida
Autobiography, Memoir and The Sociology of The Self
State University of New York-College at Potsdam
Social Problems
State University of New York-Orange, NY • Available as an On-Line Course
Organizational Sociology
University of Denver
Practical/ity Matters
This is a course about all of the sociological work that happens, (and, sometimes, becomes published), outside of the academy. That is, all the work people do in industrialized places to care for and protect their fellow citizens, which is more practical than scientific, more hands on than theoretical. The course starts in the United Kingdom, in the late nineteenth century with the work of Florence Nightingale, a heroic field nurse who also did pioneering work in modern social statistics and demography, two disciplines which became important methods and subfields of academic sociology and other social scientific disciplines. It then shifts to the United States and the early part of the twentieth century and the South Side of Chicago where police officers, detectives and young graduate students at the University of Chicago collaborated to create elaborate ethnographic maps of the city to try and understand the culture of its subterranean and criminal communities. There were also newspaper reporters and social workers working in the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago in those days and their work is also explored here as a way to lay the foundation for the courses final areas of inquiry: First, the rise of first person newspaper reporting (i.e., what is often called New Journalism) in the postwar and civil rights era. And, finally, the life and times of the most globally known social worker of the twentieth century, Mother Teresa. Throughout the duration of the course emphasis will be placed upon the kinds of sociological thinking these practical sociologists came to use, as well as the kinds of methods they used to document people's lives. Students will also try their hand at actually using these methods themselves. • University of Denver • College of Mount Saint Vincent-Riverdale, NYC • Available as an On-Line Course
Sociology of Death and Mourning, The
University of Denver
Sociology of Marriage and Family, The
In this course we will explore both the social fantasy and reality of marriage and family. We will start by reading the stories of three women who made their way to the United States from Japan, Brazil and India by accepting proposals of marriage in, respectively, the early nineteenth century, the 1950s and early in 2000. Their stories will help us understand the sociology of marriage and family in both a global, as well as historical context, as well as help us start to interrogate the social meaning of platonic friendship, courtship, love, hate, bloodlines, ancestry and familial names. We will then shift our gaze to the United States and study the socio-history of marriage, adoption and divorce laws and governmental policies since the early 1900s to the present exploring specifically the civil torte of adultery; three famous radio and TV families, including but not limited to Ozzie and Harriet, The Brady Bunch and The Gosselins; how specific advances in science and medicine have dramatically changed the ways people fall in love, as well as enter into legal sexual and familial partnerships; and finally, three notorious love stories, which didn't result in marriage or family. • State University of New York-Orange, NY • Available as an On-Line Course
Sociology of Law, The
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Stories That Could Be True, The Sociology of Truth and Fiction
In this course, students explore two key questions: First, how life is lived like a story and then second, how sociologists document these stories in sounds and images. Students are required to learn how to think sociologically, that is, they are required to think in an objective, unbiased way about other people's lives, especially the lives of those different from themselves. In addition, they are also required to try and figure out what distinguishes sociological stories from other kinds of true-life stories, namely stories told by novelists, audio documentary makers, anthropologists, photo journalists, documentary filmmakers, tabloid journalists and the producers of reality TV shows. The lives they study are specifically: North Americans living in the borderlands of places; a working-class American family living in San Francisco's Chinatown; two Amish American teenagers; a man intent on achieving the American dream; a very rich woman and a very poor man; and a man who is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Emphasis is placed upon the ways these people are both officially and unofficially recognized as citizens of the United States, as well as members of five distinct regional communities, namely, Potsdam, New York; Queen's, New York; Amish Country, Indiana; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New York City's Upper West Side and Angola Prison, Louisiana. The authors of these true-life stories will include but not be limited to one sociologist, Charles Lemert, as well as a photographer, Dorthea Lange, a documentary filmmaker, Chris Smith and me, a sociologist turned written/audio documentary maker. • Edgewood College-Madison, WI • University of Denver • College of Mount Saint Mary-Newburgh, NY • State University of New York-Orange, NY
Junior Sociology Seminar - Writing A Senior Thesis
See also Academic Advising Page • Purchase College-State University of New York