Introduction to Sociology
	Course Number: SOC 101			CRN Number: 92112	Class cap: 22	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Jussara dos Santos Raxlen
	Schedule/Location:		Mon  Wed     10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Olin 203
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	American & Indigenous Studies

Sociology is the systematic study of social life, social groups, and social relations. The discipline views the individual in context of the larger society, and sheds light on how social structures constrain and enable our choices and actions. Sociologists study topics as varied as race, gender, class, religion, the birth of capitalism, democracy, education, crime and prisons, the environment, and inequality. At its most basic, the course will teach students how to read social science texts and evaluate their arguments. Conceptually, students will learn basic sociological themes and become familiar with how sociologists ask and answer questions. Most importantly, students will come away from the course with a new understanding of how to think sociologically about the world around them, their position in society, and how their actions both affect and are affected by the social structures in which we all live. 

 

Sociology of Race & Ethnicity
	Course Number: SOC 122			CRN Number: 92113	Class cap: 22	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Jomaira Salas Pujols
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM – 2:50 PM Olin 202
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	Africana Studies; American & Indigenous Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

The Movement for Black Lives, the rise of white nationalist groups, and U.S. racial demographic changes have put issues of race and racism at the forefront of national conversations, but what is race and how did it become so important? This course introduces students to sociological approaches to race and ethnicity. We will examine race as a socially constructed category by engaging with multiple sociological theories and accounts of contemporary racial problems. We will answer questions such as, what is meant when we say race is socially constructed and not biological? What are the sociohistorical processes that have cemented racial stratification? And how does the lived experience of being racialized intersect with other social categories such as gender, immigration status, and socioeconomic class? Together, we will also tackle the task of defining, deconstructing, and connecting concepts such as racism, discrimination, anti-Blackness, and intersectionality. At the end of the course, students will discuss the consequences of race and ethnicity and consider alternatives for social change.

 

Introduction to Urban Sociology
	Course Number: SOC 138			CRN Number: 92114	Class cap: 18	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Peter Klein
	Schedule/Location:		Mon  Wed     11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin 201
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	American & Indigenous Studies; Architecture; Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies

More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. Thus, the study of social and political dynamics in urban centers is crucial if we are to understand and address the pressing issues of the contemporary world. This course will allow students to explore these dynamics through an introduction to urban sociology: the study of social relations, processes, and changes in the urban context. We will begin by reading perspectives on the development of cities, followed by an examination of how the city and its socio-spatial configuration affect and are affected by social interactions, particularly across gender, race, and class lines. The course will consider the relationship between globalization and the modern city and include examples of how citizens address the challenges in their communities. Throughout, we will explore the diverse methods that social scientists use to understand these dynamics, and students will have the opportunity to utilize some of these methods in an investigation of a local “urban community.”

 

Introduction to Research Methods
	Course Number: SOC 205			CRN Number: 92117	Class cap: 15	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Yuval Elmelech
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Henderson Comp. Center 106
	Distributional Area:		MC  Mathematics and Computing
	Crosslists:	American & Indigenous Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

The aim of this course is to enable students to understand and use the various research methods developed in the social sciences, with an emphasis on quantitative methods. The course will be concerned with the theory and rationale upon which social research is based, as well as the practical aspects of research and the problems the researcher is likely to encounter. The course is divided into two parts. In the first, we will learn how to formulate research questions and hypotheses, how to choose the appropriate research method for the problem, and how to maximize chances for valid and reliable findings. In the second part, we will learn how to perform simple data analysis and how to interpret and present findings in a written report. For a final paper, students use data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) to study public attitudes toward issues such as abortion, immigration, inequality and welfare, affirmative action, gender roles, religion, the media, and gun laws.  By the end of the semester, students will have the necessary skills for designing and conducting independent research for term papers and senior projects, as well as for non-academic enterprises.  Admission by permission of the instructor.

 

Sexualities
	Course Number: SOC 262			CRN Number: 92119	Class cap: 20	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Allison McKim
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin 101
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	American & Indigenous Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human Rights

Although sexuality is often considered to be inherently private and individual, this course examines sexuality as a social phenomenon. It looks at the social organization of sexuality and at how these arrangements shape people’s experiences and identities. We consider why/how patterns of sexuality have changed over time, how the social control of sex operates, and how new categories of sexuality emerge. We ask how people use sexuality to define themselves, challenge or reinforce social hierarchies, mark moral boundaries, and produce communities. The course begins with an introduction to theories of sexuality, including the historical construction of sexuality as a form of identity, its relationship to gender, and the role of power and inequality. We unpack these theoretical questions through the history of sexuality in the United States. The course pays special attention to sexuality’s relationship to gender, race, and class; to changing economic and social structures; and to state governance. This provides a basis for looking at contemporary sexual politics, medicalization, notions of selfhood, hook-up culture, and feminist debates about prostitution and pornography.

 

Global Inequality and Development
	Course Number: SOC 269			CRN Number: 92120	Class cap: 18	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Peter Klein
	Schedule/Location:		Mon  Wed     10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Olin 307
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

One of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century is understanding and advancing social, economic, and political development in marginalized places. Why does global inequality persist and why does a large share of the world’s population continue to live in abject poverty, despite tremendous efforts made over the last half-century? Through the lens of specific topics, such as unequal impacts of environmental change, informal urban settlements and economies, and growing energy demands, this course examines such questions from two perspectives. First, we look at globalization and other structural forces that create and perpetuate global inequality. Second, we examine the goals and practices promoted by governments, development agencies, non-governmental organizations, and communities. This course will push students to think critically about the meanings and consequences of development, as well as about the challenges and possibilities we face in addressing some of the major social problems of our time.

 

Ethno-religious identity and politics in the Middle East and South Asia
	Course Number: SOC 277			CRN Number: 92469	Class cap: 25	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Karen Barkey
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    8:30 AM – 9:50 AM OSUN Course
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis
	Crosslists:	Global & International Studies; Historical Studies; Politics; Study of Religions

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduates. It is a comparative course intended to bridge areas and disciplines in the social sciences. It brings expertise in sociology, political science and history together, but beyond the fields we will also bring together different methodological approaches to the comparisons between regions and cases. Both the Middle East and South Asia are areas of democratization and conflict around issues of ethnic, religious and communal organization.  The pull and push of democratic politics and conflict along communal dimensions can be studied from an historical as well as comparative perspective. The course looks at India and Pakistan in South Asia and Turkey, and Egypt (as well as Syria and Iraq as the particular contemporary dynamics necessitate) to understand the historical legacies of communalisms in imperial and colonial contexts, but to also understand the particular impact of religious and ethnic politics as they developed in the post democratic era. Different cleavages have become important in each setting and we analyze the manner in which these cleavages have both been partly created and influenced by state policies. This is an OSUN Online Class, taught online and open to Bard students and students from OSUN partner institutions.

 

Children, Youth, & Society
	Course Number: SOC 281			CRN Number: 92121	Class cap: 22	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Jomaira Salas Pujols
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM – 4:50 PM Hegeman 308
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	Africana Studies; American & Indigenous Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies

While we tend to think of childhood and adulthood as distinct social categories, the idea of childhood has not always existed. This course uses sociological insights to examine the emergence of childhood as a social category and its contemporary manifestations. It asks, what does it mean to be a child or youth? Who has access to childhood? And how do social contexts shape the childhood experience? We will use an interdisciplinary lens to examine how the idea of childhood has changed over time and across different cultural contexts. We will also pay special attention to how inequality shapes children and youths’ lives, analyzing its intersections with race, gender, citizenship, and socioeconomic class. At the end of the course, we will consider how children shape their own worlds, positioning them as active agents who do not just learn to understand their environments but also shape them.

 

Religious Pluralism, Religious Freedom and Interfaith Dialogue
	Course Number: SOC 289			CRN Number: 92116	Class cap: 22	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Karen Barkey
	Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:30 PM Olin 203
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	Asian Studies; Middle Eastern Studies; Study of Religions

As religion persists despite secular predictions of its downturn or demise, the modern world’s various inheritances (of colonialism and empire), the centrality of the nation-state, the paradoxes of legal dispensations, etc., make religion come alive through state and society in conflicting rather than cohesive ways. This course allows the student to understand religion and its collisions as they are filtered through the history and politics of nations and their various priorities. This course examines the solutions the modern world has devised to arrest and minimize religious conflict by exploring the ideas around secularism/secularization, tolerance, pluralism, and religious freedom. Through unpacking these concepts, their aspirations, and shortcomings, the course allows students to work through some recent controversies of religious conflict and cases where conflicts are managed better. The course ends by looking at dialogue to ask if, indeed, the modern world allows for inter and intra-religious dialogue, who initiates and engages in it, and how to assess the ethical framework within which this task is undertaken towards goals of building understanding and mutuality through religion for the self and community. 

 

Sociology of Knowledge
	Course Number: SOC 373			CRN Number: 92122	Class cap: 15	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Jussara dos Santos Raxlen
	Schedule/Location:		Tue      3:10 PM – 5:30 PM Olin 304
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis
	Crosslists:	Science, Technology, Society

Is climate change a hoax? Was the Coronavirus one nation’s biological weapon that went wrong? Does one learn more going to Harvard than to a community college? What must one know to become an informed citizen, a successful entrepreneur, or a renowned expert in any field? In this course, we explore practices and processes of knowledge production and dissemination through which some knowledge claims become legitimate, authoritative, and consequential within society. Beginning with the classical sociology of knowledge (i.e., Durkheim, Marx, and Mannheim, whose work focused on religious and political knowledge), we then investigate the role of science, expertise, and “subjugated” knowledges in (un)settling debates about what is fact or belief, true or false, and why knowing matters. Topics covered include theories about knowledge formation and case studies across various social institutions (e.g., state agencies, healthcare and tech industries, social media, schools, academia, scientists’ laboratories, and AI companies, among others). Through these studies, we critically analyze knowledge in action – forms of knowing and knowers in context – to understand its impact on our world. While we may not find “Truth,” we will better recognize what is at stake for social, political, and economic life in the 21^st century.

 

Senior Project Colloquium
	Course Number: SOC 403			CRN Number: 92123	Class cap: 15	Credits: 0
	Professor:	Allison McKim
	Schedule/Location:		Fri   12:30 PM – 2:50 PM Olin 304
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis

The Senior Colloquium is required of all sociology seniors registered for SOC 401, the first semester of Senior Project. This course will guide you through developing your senior project topic, setting up your research, and beginning writing. It will focus on guiding you through the initial stages of starting this year-long research project: moving from an initial interest to a productive and researchable question, choosing an appropriate research method to answer your question, designing your study (including writing interview questions, selecting sites, finding sources, etc.), and finding and synthesizing the relevant scholarship on your topic. As part of this, the course will support students through the process of submitting to the IRB for research ethics review. Students will present their work in progress, workshop ideas, and offer each other support and feedback at each of these stages. The goal is for students to benefit from the process of collaborative learning as they work on the senior project. The colloquium does not replace individual meetings with your senior project advisor.  All students will be graded P/D/F, based on their attendance and active participation in the colloquium.

 

Cross-listed Courses:

 

Human Rights at the Border
	Course Number: HR 307			CRN Number: 92403	Class cap: 16	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Peter Rosenblum and Danielle Riou
	Schedule/Location:		Thurs    10:50 AM – 1:10 PM Reem Kayden Center 111
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis  D+J Difference and Justice
	Crosslists:	American & Indigenous Studies; Global & International Studies; Politics; Sociology

 

Social Psychology
	Course Number: PSY 220			CRN Number: 91950	Class cap: 22	Credits: 4
	Professor:	Kristin Lane
	Schedule/Location:		Tue   Fri   1:30 PM – 2:50 PM Reem Kayden Center 103
	Distributional Area:		SA  Social Analysis
	Crosslists:	Gender and Sexuality Studies; Sociology