Graduate Studies
Courses
Required Courses | Elective Courses
Required Courses
2102 Sociological Theory 2: Postclassical
This required graduate course in sociological theory begins with readings and discussions of key theorists in the postclassical phase (roughly from mid-century to about 1975). It also covers the most recent phase, attending to important theoretical developments in sociology that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. The course continues the dual focus of the first course in that readings and discussions deal both with key theoretical ideas and with skills and standards that are intrinsic to the creation and evaluation of theoretical explanations in sociology. Because it follows upon the classical phase, such readings and discussions also aim to deal with the issue of how later theoretical efforts built upon and extended and/or challenged and revised classical ideas.
2202 Quantitative Methods
Complementing courses on qualitative methods, research design, computer methods and statistics, this course will provide an overview of quantitative research methods in the social sciences. Topics will include specification of researchable questions as well as experimental and quasi-experimental research. The course will concentrate on survey research issues such as sampling, measurement, questionnaire construction and item writing, and collection and organization of data. The issues will be illustrated by sociological literature. Students will be trained in analyzing social data.
2203 Qualitative Methods
This course will offer an overview of qualitative research methods in the social sciences. It will emphasize interpretive approaches to social research, and cover the empirical research process from the beginning to end. Key topics include issues inherent in many types of research such as conceptualization, operationalization, data collection, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and theory construction. Problems of doing research in natural settings will be addressed. The uses of triangulation and combining qualitative and quantitative research will also be considered. Students will carry out their own empirical projects using specific qualitative techniques, such as the interview and participant observation. Graduate students in the PhD program are required to take both Qualitative Methods and Quantitative Methods.
Elective Courses
2103 Sociological Theory 3: Recent
This course mainly involves discussion of the work of sociological theorists whose writings have gained prominence since the early 1970s. Although it considers these recent developments against the background of two previous major phases in the production of sociological theory—namely, the classical phase, which ended around 1920, and the phase that lasted from the late 1930s until the late 1970s. Both original writings and analyses of leading recent sociological theorists will be used.
3192 Topics in Theoretical Sociology: Theories of Social Inequality
This course is an introduction to neo-classical theoretical sociology with a special focus on theories of social inequality. A background in classical sociological theory is presupposed. The course has two parts. Part one, Neo-classical Theoretical Sociology, examines a selection of theoretical perspectives that continue the classical tradition in sociology. Part two, Theories of Durable Inequality, is an examination of theories of social inequality of theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Charles Tilly.
3193 Feminist Theory
This seminar focuses on "special topics" in feminist theory introducing students to a broad range of perspectives and substantive work. Special interest is paid to the areas of race, class, and sexual preference.
2223 Simulation of Social Processes
Increasingly, the formal analysis and theory construction of social processes is based on computational methods. This course examines the recent developments in computer simulation of social processes. The course also covers the simulation modeling methods used by researchers in the field, including continuous process modeling, time equilibrium methods, discrete event methods, and multi-process methods.
2230 Comparative Research
The course provides an introduction to systematic comparative research in sociology. This seminar will consider some aspects of methods and generalizations related to cross-cultural inquiries in contrast to area studies. Topics will include individual and society, work and organization, socialization, and aging. The overview will cover both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
2240 Seminar in Population
The seminar introduces theories and methods of demographic research. Part A concerns the theoretical and conceptual literature on fertility, mortality and migration. Readings and lectures stress the relationships between demographic behavior and social change in developing countries. Part B concerns the sources of demographic data and the methods of estimating fertility, mortality and migration rates.
2303 Political Sociology
The variety of political arrangements in the twentieth century presents a number of puzzles that will make up the subject matter of this course. Are the differing mechanisms of governments to be explained by levels of economic development, institutional histories, the intentions of social movements, transnational constraints, or slow-changing national political cultures? Is the state an autonomous actor or the creature of other social forces? Are regime changes consequences of some sort of "structural" change, or are they simply consequences of rulers' stupidity?
2304 Modernization
Focusing on a variety of institutions, such as the economy, the polity, stratification, family, and religion, this course examines modernizing social change in comparative-institutional perspective within societies, cross-cultural perspectives, and in terms of inter-societal relations.
2306 Sociology of Revolution
An inquiry into various theories, frameworks, and models elaborated by social scientist to explain the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of this most complex matrix of social change.
2307 Nationality and Citizenship
This course deals with changing conceptions of nationhood and citizenship. It considers citizenship comparatively and historically in the context of shifts in the meaning of the nation. The literature on the development of citizenship is considered in reference to current ideas about post-national citizenship. The notion of post-national citizenship rests on observations of a trend that has resulted in immigrants to certain countries being granted voting and other rights without obtaining national citizenship.
2316 Collective Memory
This is a seminar on collective memories of defeat in the two nations vanquished in World War II, Japan and Germany. It will explore the transformation of the moral order following the defeat in the two nations. We will critique the theoretical perspectives on collective memory, examine how memories are transmitted to the next generation and, how the new generation, in turn, reconstructs the past and defines the meaning of the legacy. We will also discuss their social, cultural, and political implications today.
2340 World Systems: Theory and Research
A world-system is a self-contained social system with networks extending across many societies. The course will convey sociological theories and methods for describing world systems. Theories will be reviewed about world-systemic phenomena such as the international division of labor, dependency, center-periphery formation, modernization, and globalization. Theoretically grounded hypotheses will be tested by computer analyses of data on world-spanning networks. National development and transnational networks in the polity, economy, technology, science, education, and culture will be examined.
2341 Social Movements
Various theories and models to study social movements are examined. Emphasis is placed on structural conditions that contributed to the emergence of the movements, their development over time and what changes, if any, are brought about to the social system in which the movements occurred.
2405 Economic Sociology
This course is primarily concerned with the sociology of economic actions and institutions that reflect an increasing interest in economic life and the relationships between the disciplines of economics and sociology on the part of sociologists. The treatment of the economic factor in the early crystallization of sociology and the current state of the sociology of economic life will be reviewed in reference to contemporary economic developments.
2407 Knowledge and Global Networks
This course examines knowledge as cultivated in social institutions, notably in education as transmission of existing knowledge, in science as creation of new public knowledge, and in technology as invention of new private knowledge. We consider international regimes regulating cultivation, e.g. regulating education and studying abroad, promoting science and diffusion of discoveries, and governing technology and appropriation of inventions. We analyze data on cultivation of knowledge and map the global networks of student exchanges, scientific collaboration, and patenting of technological inventions.
2408 Space, Power, and Inequality
This course examines the intersections of spatiality, power, and social inequality. Place will be examined as a site of social interaction and the exercise of power. Topics will range from considerations of the micro-scale of personal life and the body, to mid-scale questions about group boundaries and the negotiation of spatial dimensions of social life, to macro-scale issues of built environments, territorial organization, ecosystems, and the global economic-political order.
2426 Historical/Sociological Perspectives of Public Health
This seminar examines, through assigned readings and discussions, both historical and sociological influences on specific topics within the broad field of public health. Particular attention will be placed on the impact of five general themes on the evolution and current status of public health, the role of government, urbanization, industrialization, religion, and advances in science and technology.
2429 Women in Society
This course examines the multiple ways in which the social category "woman" is created from the biological given of female sex. We focus on how the various social institutions and the dominant ideologies interact with the socialization process to produce a "feminine" character. Contemporary research on women is explored, as are current issues in feminist research methods. The goal is to produce an understanding of women's experiences in American society as they are shaped by the intersection of sex, race, class, and sexual preference.
2430 Comparative Social Policies
Cross-national perspectives add an important dimension to political sociology. This seminar in feminist studies of states and social policies uses in-depth reading and critical discussion of current research to create the conceptual, empirical, and methodological foundations for comparative scholarship in social policy. Students will present research proposals, theoretical analyses, critical literature reviews, or works-in-progress. Topics will vary but will be on the politics of gender differentiation as they play out in state institutions.
2442 Deviance
This seminar explores changes in the definition of behavior which lead the same behaviors to be considered "sins," "crimes," "illnesses," or "alternative lifestyles." Materials focus on the relative influence of different social origins/sources, correlates and consequences of deviant behavior. Particular attention will be paid to conflicts among various social-control institutions over the definition, management, and disposition of deviance.