Course	SOC 101 Introduction to Sociology
Professor	Amy Ansell
CRN	95156
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30 -2:50 pm ASP 302
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross listed: American Studies, Environmental Studies

The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the sociological perspective. Its goal is to illuminate the way in which social forces impinge on our individual lives and affect human society. The course is organized into four main parts. In the first, key sociological concepts and methods will be introduced via the study of the ‘fathers’ of sociology: Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. In the second part, we will examine the significance of various forms of social inequality, particularly those based on class, race, and gender. We will then survey several important social institutions: the family, the economic order, and education. The fourth and final part of the course will focus on the inter-related issues of social movements and social change.

Course	SOC 125 Sociology of Marriage and Family
Professor	Yuval Elmelech
CRN	95468
Schedule	Tu Th 12:00 -1:20 pm OLIN 201
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

Cross listed: American Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies

How do we choose the people we date and eventually marry? Why do people divorce and remarry? What effect does marital separation have upon the success of children later in life? This course uses sociological literature to study these questions. Focusing primarily on family patterns in the United States, the course examines the processes of partner selection, the configuration of gender and family roles, and the interrelationships among family and household members. Topics include explanations of religious and racial/ethnic inter-marriage; household and work roles; divorce and remarriage; parenthood and single parenthood; intergenerational relationships.

Course	SOC 203 The History of Sociological Thought
Professor	Michael Donnelly
CRN	95157
Schedule	Mon Wed 10:30 -11:50 am OLIN 205
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross-listed: Human Rights

This course retraces the origins of modern social theory in the aftermath of the democratic revolutions in America and France and the capitalist Industrial Revolution in Britain. Readings are drawn in particular from the major works of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel. The course thereby introduces many of the enduring themes of sociology: alienation and anomie; social disorganization and community; class conflict and solidarity; secularization and the decline of traditional religion; bureaucracy, division of labor, and professional expertise. The course aims to assess both the contributions of classical sociologists to subsequent social science, and their political or ethical aspirations to criticize, reform, or revolutionize modern society.

Course	SOC / HR 252 The Workplace as Civic Space
Professor	Nathan Newman
CRN	95159
Schedule	Mon 10:30 –11:50 am OLIN 201 Wed 10:30 – 11:50 am ALBEE 106
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross-listed: Human Rights

This course will explore the workplace as a site for civic action in our society. Starting with the debate over Wal-Mart and criticisms of its workplace practices, we will discuss some of the strategies being debated for mobilizing workers and community allies to action, both here in the United States and around the developing world in the factories where Wal-Mart buys its products. The initial questions we will ask are what are the structural economic and cultural factors acting as a barrier to organizing in workplaces like Wal-Mart. We will than ask what is and should be the role of workplace organizations in our economic and civic life? We will look at the rise of different organizations in the workplace in history, from worker cooperatives to labor unions. The goal of the course is to give students both the theoretical and practical tools to analyze the limits on labor power and options for expanding the civic role of workplace action in our society.

Course	SOC 255 Rights, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship
Professor	Amy Ansell
CRN	95259
Schedule	Tu Th 1:00 -2:20 pm OLIN 204
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Human Rights, and SRE

Related interest: Global & Int’l Studies

The course is intended to introduce students to current debates and controversies about the changing boundaries of rights and citizenship in multicultural societies. It begins with an exploration of the origins and development of ideas about multiculturalism. We then move on to consider the implications of multiculturalism for contemporary political and policy agendas. Special attention is paid to problems concerning the implementation of multicultural policies and to critical evaluation of their impact. Drawing on conceptual debates as well as trends and developments in specific societies (primarily the United States, Britain, the European Union and South Africa), the course aims to increase appreciation for the divergent perspectives that have emerged in relation to issues of cultural diversity in different parts of the world. The course concludes with reflection on the question of what kind of agendas need to be developed in future to deal with the dilemmas of multiculturalism policy and practice identified throughout the semester.

Course	HIST / SOC 258 Jews in American Society, 1880 to the present
Professor	Joel Perlmann
CRN	95307
Schedule	Tu Th 4:30 -5:50 pm OLIN 204
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: HISTORY / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

Cross list: American Studies, Jewish Studies, SRE

The great waves of east-European Jewish migration west after 1880 constitute a major event in the modern history of the Jews and of the United States, creating a large and important American social group.   This course examines Jewish social and cultural transformations during the succeeding century.  We will  keep in mind  throughout  two (overlapping) questions.   First, what major developments are shared with other immigrant and ethnic groups and what is distinctive to the Jews (as a people, civilization or religion)?   And second, what meanings does ‘Jewishness’ have for American Jews as their social conditions, and the wider culture, change across generations?   Substantively, the course will consider such major themes as 1) the pattern of migration and cultural amalgam of the ‘Yiddish’ immigrant generation 2) the rapid upward mobility of American Jews as well as their concentration on the political left and explanations for both patterns 3) concern with antisemitism and American Jewish behavior during the European Holocaust, 4) the meaning of intermarriage to couples, their children and the culture of the group and 5) evolving attitudes towards Israel over the past half century, and their impact on American foreign policy.   A term paper will be the major writing assignment in a seminar-discussion context.

Course	SOC / PS 260 Punishment, Politics and Culture
Professor	Austin Sarat / Daniel Karpowitz
CRN	95161
Schedule	Wed Fri 12:00 – 1:20 pm OLIN 201
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross-listed: Human Rights

Other than war, punishment is the most dramatic manifestation of state power. Whom a society punishes and how it punishes are key political questions as well as indicators of its character. This course considers connections between punishment and politics in the contemporary United States. We will ask whether we punish too much and too severely, or too little and too leniently. We will consider the politicization and racialization of punishment and examine particular modalities through which the state dispenses its penal power, e.g. maximum-security prisons, torture, the death penalty. Among the questions to be discussed are: Does punishment express our noblest aspirations for justice of our basest desires for vengeance? Can it ever be an adequate expression of, or response to, the pain of the victims of crime? When is it appropriate to forgive rather than punish? We will consider these questions in the context of arguments about the right way to deal with drug offenders, sexual predators, and terrorists. In addition, we will examine the treatment of punishment in constitutional law, e.g. the prohibition of double jeopardy and of cruel and unusual punishment. Throughout we will try to understand the meaning of punishment by examining the way it is represented in politics and popular culture.

Course	SOC 304 Contemporary Sociological Theory
Professor	Michael Donnelly
CRN	95160
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 -4:20 pm OLIN 307
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross-listed: Human Rights

A critical investigation into the development of modern sociological theories in the United States and Europe. The course will examine, among other schools and traditions, functionalism, conflict theory, exchange and rational choice theory, symbolic interactionism, feminist theory, and critical theory. Readings include works by Talcott Parsons, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jon Elster, George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Dorothy Smith, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas.

Prerequisite: Sociology 203 or permission of the instructor.

Course	SOC / HIST 322 Sociological Classics: Middletown and Ethnic Communities in America
Professor	Joel Perlmann
CRN	95308
Schedule	Wed 4:00 -6:20 pm OLIN 310
Distribution	OLD: C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE / RETHINKING DIFFERENCE

The course will first undertake a close reading of Robert and Helen Lynd's Middletown. It was the product of a research team that lived for months in the 'typical' American community of Middletown in the 1920s (they returned in the Great Depression). The work tries to understand all that is interesting in the social life of the community -- notably class structure and class relations; politics; courtship, family, child raising and schooling; entertainment, religion and other aspects of cultural life. The study has proven very durable, both in serving as a modal that other community studies must confront and in providing an understanding of American society and culture in the twenties and thirties.   But one goal of the study was to zero in on a community that had not been changed by immigration and ethnicity; accordingly later in the course we will turn to several other classic community studies of the period that sought to describe ethnic communities.   Students will write a term paper based on these and other American community studies or on some aspect of America in the twenties and thirties highlighted by the works read in the seminar.

Course	SOC 335 Law and Society: The Impact of Law and Legal Institutions on the Economy, Social Organization and Social Movements
Professor	Nathan Newman
CRN	95162
Schedule	Mon 1:30 – 3:50 pm OLIN 303
Distribution	OLD: A/C	NEW: SOCIAL SCIENCE

Cross-listed: Human Rights

Many analysts treat the law as an outgrowth of existing institutions, whether reflecting existing class power in Marxist formulations or the balance of interest groups in pluralistic conceptions of government. This course, however, will reverse the causal arrow to understand how the existence of particular legal structures reshape economic institutions and limit the options for peaceful social change. Starting with core texts on the sociology of law, including Max Weber and Jurgen Habermas, the class will ask what law is and what law’s role in society should be, including the nature of bureaucracy created under those legal structures. We will then turn to writers who detail competing conceptions of why and whether courts should be given independent power separate from democratic institutions, both at common law and through constitutional review. The course will then examine three major themes of the effect of law on society: the structure of the economy, race and racism, and the role of women in society. A strong emphasis in the course will be understanding not just the static effects of the law but also the constraints put on the ability of social movements to effect democratic change to contest those legal structures.