Sociology (SOCL)
A one-semester introduction to the principles of sociological analysis. Through a critical examination of selected topics and themes, this course develops a sociological perspective for the interpretation and understanding of cultural differences, age and sex roles, discrimination, the family and the workplace, bureaucracies, stratification, and the problems of poverty.
Enrollment limited to 1st and 2nd year students only
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
An examination of 1) the emergence of race in modern societies, with special emphasis on the North American context; 2) the role of race in shaping power dynamics in the US historically; 3) contemporary consequences of racial power dynamics in the US today.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Annually
Examines American class structures,processes and the unequal distribution of resources, as well as aspects of institutionalization that contribute to such inequality. Course focuses on the various social, economic, and political indicators of an individual's position in society, including occupation, income, wealth, prestige, and power, as well as characteristics of life at different levels of the class hierarchy.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course asks what it means to be a good citizen, good consumer, and good corporation in light of contemporary social and environmental problems by focusing on the relationship between democracy and capitalism. It investigates the complexities of understanding and implementing social responsibility on the local, national, and global level.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course examines how laws embedded in the US criminal justice system exclude vast segments of the population from full citizenship rights by criminalizing the actions (and very existence) of people of color. Tracing the historical development of criminal policies targeting people of color while largely ignoring white collar criminals, students will encounter a wide range of topics related to policing, criminalization, and mass incarceration, their consequences for individuals, communities and racial inequality, and contemporary social movements seeking racial justice in these areas.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
An introduction to the sociological study of deviance, this course explores 1) key theoretical perspectives to deviance and social control, 2) how people come to view certain attitudes, conditions, and behaviors as odd, morally reprehensible, or illegal and 3) the identities and life chances of people who are labeled as "deviant." Pays close attention to the relationship between deviance, power and social inequality. One unit.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
As global responses to Black Lives Matter make clear, the struggle to end racism is not unique to the United States. This course will examine movements to end racism, racial violence, discrimination and structural disparity around the world. Issues of concern include memory, identity, justice, rights, social repair and politics, among others. Movements for justice include the Roma in Europe, indigenous and Afro-descent peoples in Latin America, the Dalits in India and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies
An introduction "doing sociology," this class covers the logic and techniques of social scientific research. Readings, lectures, and exercises are designed to help students experience the field and develop methodological skills first-hand. Students will learn how to conceptualize, operationalize and conduct sociological research projects, including constructing research questions, understanding the intersection between theory and data, composing questions and guides for both qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as collecting, entering, and analyzing data and reporting empirical findings.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101 and SOCL 226. This course is for SOCL majors only.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Annually
Students are introduced to both descriptive and inferential statistics (including confidence intervals, chi square, multivariate analysis of variance, and multiple regression). The (mis)use and interpretation of statistics is heavily stressed.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101. Students who have taken BIOL 275, ECON 249, MATH 220 or PSYC 200 may not enroll in this course. This course is for SOCL majors only.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Mathematical Science
Typically Offered: Annually
The course is divided into three major parts. In the first, we explore the historical context that informs modern inequities. In the second, we explore different mechanisms of violence. In the final component, we explore forms of protest, resistance and strategies for change. This course also invites you to explore social issues you are deeply passionate about. We will use this course to reflect on personal activism and the ability to impact change.
GPA units: 1
This course examines the interaction between human society and the natural environment, more specifically, the relationships between various environmental and social problems, as well as emphasizes current theory and research in environmental sociology aimed at understanding and addressing those problems. By discussing issues of science and technology, popular culture, disasters, urbanization, racial and gender relations, domination and violence, as well as social movements, and by engaging in issues from a diversity of disciplines including anthropology, biology, economics, geography, psychology, and history, this course will reach a broad understanding of environmental issues. One unit.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
This course will explore the processes, policies, and programs that have shaped and affected the relationship between cities and the environment in the United States. Students will be exposed to a number of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to the study of urban areas and the environment.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Environmental Racism was coined by environmental justice activists to describe situations where communities of color face disproportionate environmental ills and lack environmental privilege. In this course we look at the history of environmental racism, its relationship with capitalism, and several areas where environmental racism is most obvious, including, but not limited to: food, disasters, and the environmental movement itself.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
A descriptive and critical study of the 19th- and early 20th-century social thought which informs contemporary sociological theory. Some attention is given to historical influences on emerging sociological theory. Emphasis is placed on four major theorists: Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Simmel and on the 20th-century developments in functionalism, symbolic interactionism and the sociology of knowledge.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101. This course is for SOCL majors only.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
This course investigates the evolving role of television in shaping our understanding of the world as it relates to democracy, consumerism, human relationships, and how we make sense of our own lives. More specifically, the course examines the nature of entertainment, advertising, news, and the institutions that create television programming.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Examines the social science literature pertaining to girls both as victims and as perpetrators, as well as structures influencing personal experiences and interpersonal dynamics. In addition to theory related both to gender and violence, topics covered include bullying and relational aggression, sexual harassment, gangs, child sexual abuse, trafficking, and living in a war-torn society.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course examines how individual bodies, hearts and minds are social phenomena. Topics include language, self, and what it means to be human; the sociology of emotion; the presentation of self in everyday life; micro-social order, disruption, and ontological security; and the micro-politics of interaction. Draws strongly from the symbolic interactionist, dramaturgical, and interpretive traditions.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
A thorough introduction to the sociological study of people's experience of late life. Strives to increase awareness of the social, cultural, and historical affects on aging by examining people's accounts of late life and aging, their social and psychological compensations, and the bearing of late life experiences on end-of-life decisions.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course is organized around three general themes: (1) an introductory overview of the topic of violence, including theoretical background and structural factors; (2) an analysis of violence-related issues, including family, street, and school-based causes and consequences; and (3) consideration of prevention and intervention strategies and relevant policy implications.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
An analysis of religion as a socio-cultural product. Emphasis on the interrelationship between religion and society in a cross-cultural perspective. Major topics include the social functions of religion, the organization of religious practice, and the impact of social change on religion.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
A critical study of the institution of modern medicine. Special attention is paid to socio-cultural and political factors influencing susceptibility, diagnosis and treatment. Topics include the social meaning of disease, patienthood, the medical profession, and the organization of medical care.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Annually
A critical examination of education in the U.S., with a special emphasis on public schooling. This course considers how the functions and goals of education have changed over time, factors leading to the current crisis in education, and controversial programs for fixing the problems such as vouchers, charter schools, and multicultural education.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
Examination of patterns in American family behavior. Strives to increase awareness of the social, cultural, and psychological facets of family life by examining kinship relations, child socialization, dating behavior, patterns of sexual activity, parental decisions, family development, divorce, violence in the family.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Annually
On women's and men's gendered experiences at the individual, interactional, and institutional levels; how gendered experiences vary by race/ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and other ways.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course will examine the way social identities and everyday cultural practices are linked to global circulations of capital, taste, fashion, and power. Through a comparative analysis of representations of globalization, cultural products such as McDonald's and Sesame Street, mega-events such as the Olympics, virtual cultures and technologies, and leisure and consumption practices such as shopping, eating, and international tourism, students will gain a critical understanding of the debates surrounding cultural imperialism, cultural homogenization, and the hybridization of culture.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course focuses on the relationship between tourism and social life by considering how tourist practices are socially shaped and made meaningful within social contexts. This course explores tourism as a lens through which we can understand many of the features of contemporary social life, including modernity, late capitalism, and postcolonial legacies, consumption and cultural commodification, gender and sexual politics, and life in a risk society, especially in the wake of a global pandemic.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101 or MONT 102C from Fall 2021 or MONT 103C from Spring 2022.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Social Science
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
The course explores Indias caste system, an ancient hierarchical system that imposed roles, status and responsibilities on the basis of birth, family and community, touching on almost every form of human interaction. Though many claim that caste is a thing of the past, evidence is strong that it plays an ongoing role in social life today.This course explores the systems origins and theoretical foundations, its development over time, its characteristics and practices, and attempts at eradicating it.
GPA units: 1
In this course, we will conduct an intensive analysis of the lower levels of the socioeconomic status hierarchy in the U.S. Overall, we seek to understand the ways in which a person's place in the social system is related to personal growth and development, especially for those who are less fortunate. Our study is rooted in Mills' notion of the "sociological imagination," in that we will analyze the structures influencing personal experiences and interpersonal dynamics. In other words, we go beyond individual-level explanations in order to identify and analyze systemic issues.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
In this course, students will study the dynamics of social change by investigating a series of historical manifestos highlighting the active role that marginal but ascendant social groups have played in shaping society. At once analytic and prescriptive, manifestos both describe and have also sometimes helped to initiate periods of significant social change, from the fall of monarchies and the rise of democracies to the growth of new movements against inequality. Following the conventions of the manifesto, this course will focus on: i) how opportunities for social change are identified, ii) how collective actors are constituted, and iii) how the tasks assigned to these actors are conceived in relation both to objective conditions and to other players within the social field. By the end of the course, students will have composed a manifesto of their own to address a contemporary social problem.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Taking the lead from Angela Y. Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?, this class questions the utility of prisons from their inception to now, focusing on the concept of violence. Interpersonal, structural, and symbolic violence surrounds us. This course creates space to collectively question what we consider violent and the origins of how these ideas first manifested. Using sociology, interdisciplinary prison studies, and Black feminist literature allows us to explore how prisons affect every single one of us as individuals, knowingly or not.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Modern Cities, Modern Selves. In this sociology course, we will explore the relationship between space, structure, and self. Taking Georg Simmels elaboration on the simultaneity of modern urbanization and modern expressions of individuality as our starting point, we spend the semester thinking about the subjectivities cities make possible and how cities, and the people residing within them, change over time.
GPA units: 1
The Anthropocene marks the current geological epoch in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change. While the proposed term is contentious and still being debated, this course will focus on theorizations and critiques of the Anthropocene and its implications for social justice. Debates on nomenclature raise important questions regarding which geopolitical groups bear disproportionate responsibility for environmental crises, and which groups bear the brunt of their consequences. Scholars have proposed alternative terms such as the Capitalocene, Plantationocene, and Chthulucene to highlight the class, race, and gender injustices that are obscured by the term. Drawing on decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist scholarship, course readings encompass intersectional theorizing, political manifestos, and creative visual work from the Global South and Global North alongside case studies on the effects of climate change, social justice movements and activism in this geohistorical era, and the forging of transnational solidarities around alternative visions to the Anthropocene. Through in-class discussions, collaborative group activities, and creative activist projects, students will apply this knowledge towards a critical intersectional praxis that is relevant for our times.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Spring
Course Description: In this course, we will be drawing from classic and current sociological texts to critically examine the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of contemporary cities and urban life. We will begin by learning about the processes of urbanization that shape how and where modern cities emerge. We will then look at the transformation of cities that occur through and alongside deindustrialization. The focus of this course is cities and urban life from the mid-1960s through today. Throughout the semester, we will be exploring the changing nature of community in relation to the unfolding processes of urbanization, the ways in which social inequalities are experienced and reproduced in urban contexts, and the rights and regulations of people in urban spaces.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Our current food system is predicated on food insecurity, rooted in racial capitalism. The most precarious populations have always been the primary producers of Americas food. Our course begins with the agrarian origins of American capitalism which has its origins in slavery and the dispossession of composite farmers in Appalachia. Here we look at how profit seeking behavior and market practices created a dependence on cash and credit and fractured the ecological balance that existed between land, food, and a peasant way of life. We move on to looking at the history of agricultural labor and migrants--including todays processing facilities and slaughter houses. We will also look at the environmental effects of our neoliberal food system, namely how we have created an ecologically and economically unsustainable system; and also, how we relate to nonhumans. Finally, from a community-based perspective we trace the development of food apartheid in the US and its outcomes--racialized health and economic precarity. Using critical race studies, indigenous studies, urban studies, environmental studies, gender studies, community-based studies, and social justice as lenses students will leave the course with a broad understanding of the failure of the American food system. As an activist oriented course, students will work with local organizations on food justice efforts. Food justice is racial justice!
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Spring
This senior-level course centers the actions, worldviews, and experiences of colonized peoples as they negotiated freedoms and unfreedoms during the pre-colonial and colonial eras and wrestle with these legacies for today and into the future as we consider abolition, decolonization, and appropriate reparations for this history. Throughout the semester, we will address the histories of colonialism, capitalism, enslaving, and their relationship to contemporary racisms and decolonial movements in the US and abroad. A course project will enable to students to develop concrete understandings of decolonial praxes rooted in indigenous worldviews, knowledges, and actions and the ways in which colonized peoples seek, demand, and maintain their freedom in the face of multiply manifest unfreedoms. This course will change topically each semester depending on current events and student interests, to focus on national and international coloniality and decoloniality.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101; SOCL 223 recommended.
GPA units: 1
Precarious work" refers to forms of employment that are insecure (Kalleberg 2007, 2009). In this seminar course, we will attempt to answer a number of questions that should be not only intellectually interesting, but also personally relevant as you enter the labor market yourself: How do economic conditions, labor market regulations, and employers' decisions shape the availability of jobs? How do sociological factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and cultural factors shape who gets a job and what type of job one gets? What are the psychological and health consequences of having a good versus a bad job? What does the future of work hold, given technological and other changes?
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This course examines first-person accounts of living with various illnesses, including the subjective experiences of illnesses that are mental/physical, acute/chronic, curable/fatal and age-related. Comparisons will be made across both historical and cultural contexts to highlight the socially constructed nature of health and aging. The class will engage the role of labeling theory, postmodern conceptions of health, and differences according to race, class, gender, sexual orientation and age.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Annually
This course examines how people experience and cope with negative events such as illness, death, separation or divorce, unemployment, natural disaster and war. Delving into topics that are usually the purview of psychology, our investigations highlight the social nature of self, cognition, emotion and identity. Readings will focus on particular cases of trouble, the roles of religion, psychology and medicine in helping people to cope with tragedy, and cultural and historical variability in how humans make sense of suffering.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
This is a student-led seminar in the sociology of death and dying. During,the first few weeks of the term, readings will offer a broad overview of what it is like to die and care for people who are dying in the contemporary United States. After a brief introduction to how sociologists approach and understand this landscape, students will participate in theselection of topics and readings. For the remainder of the term, students will learn and educate one another about the lines of inquiry in this subfield that interest them the most.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
This seminar examines some of the most pressing social issues of our present by deconstructing fictional accounts of our imagined futures. Through a selection of science fiction (literature, television, and film), students analyze how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age are resolved, exacerbated, or ignored in each narrative.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Alternate Years
This advanced seminar aimed at returning study abroad students explores the related concepts of home, belonging and citizenship in light of globalization and mobility. In addition to reflecting on personal experiences of home and mobility, we study narrative accounts by refugees, migrants, tourists and expatriates to think in new ways about global citizenship.
Prerequisite: SOCL 101 and study abroad experience
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course involves a tripartite analysis of the role of documentary film in addressing socio-environmental issues. In one part of the course, we will consider how documentaries bring the socio-ecological imagination to life by watching environmental documentaries. Here we will examine how well the format of documentary film links socio-environmental issues with personal biography, advocacy, and historical context. A second part involves the workshop-nature of the course in which, with a partner, students submit a proposal for a short documentary film. Subsequent to approval of the proposal students will produce the documentary over the course of the semester. Students must be willing to offer assistance and feedback on each others developing projects in class. The course will culminate in a public presentation of the finished projects (likely to correspond with the Academic Annual Conference) (additionally, no prior experience or coursework in video or audio production is required). The final part of the course will be attendance (and perhaps some assistance) at the first Environmental Studies Film Series at the College. For approximately nine weeks we will host the rest of the campus, colleagues, filmmakers, and (permitting) visitors for ten different socio-environmental documentaries (these will be the films that we discuss in class). Class sessions will combine lecture and discussion of relevant concepts, viewing and analysis of documentaries, technical instruction on equipment, and critique of projects and at each stage of completion,
GPA units: 1
Embracing the maxim advanced by the journal Race Traitor (19922005) that Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity, this course offers students an opportunity to pursue a critical study of whiteness from an anti-racist perspective. By engaging and assessing key contributions to the field of critical whiteness studies, students will familiarize themselves with the historical origins, epistemological characteristics, and practical effects of whiteness as a sociological phenomenon. By considering themes including racial formation, culture, privilege, and the role of allies in anti-racist struggle, students will work to denaturalize whiteness and reflect upon what its abolition might mean both for white people and for communities impacted by white supremacy. Combining lectures, case analyses, and interactive dialogue, this course requires careful reading, active participation, and ongoing reflection.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
The Black Feminist Sociology seminar centers on recently released edited volume of the same name, asking students to explore what we consider Black feminist work and why. Per Routledge, "Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the books key themes.
Enrollment limited to SOCL Majors
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Social Science
Typically Offered: Spring
This seminar introduces students to the mobilities turn in the social sciences through the lens of local and global food cultures. The course begins with sociological theories from mobilities studies, a paradigm that sees the movement of people, capital, images, ideas, and material objects, including food and foodways, as central to the patterning of social life and our individual and collective identities. We will then apply these theories to some of the junctures where food and mobility intersect: culinary tourism, fast food and the Slow Food movement, immigration and culinary practices, the globalization and decolonization of food systems, and the overlaps between food sovereignty and mobility justice. These topics will open onto critical questions about global and local power relations, the politics of belonging, and our obligations to one another and to the planet. Through examples drawn from Worcester and around the world, we will deepen our understanding of how food and mobility shape who we are and the future we hope to build together.
GPA units: 1
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
The Honors Colloquium will cover topics such as: strategies for thesis work, writing an intro to the thesis, IRB application and approval process, ways to write a review of the literature chapter, ethics in research, writing workshops for the students, practice sessions for the formal oral presentations for the April conferences, publication possibilities, etc. The colloquium will also feature guest speakers who will discuss aspects of graduate studies, professional issues, job market issues, and their own research. Department honors students will continue to be mentored by their individual honors thesis advisor.
GPA units: 0.5
Typically Offered: Fall
The Honors Colloquium is required for students enrolled in the department Honors Program. The colloquium meets biweekly to cover various research topics related to research design, implementation, and dissemination and to help students prepare for their culminating presentations at the Academic Conference. The colloquium is offered on a pass/no pass basis.
GPA units: 0.5
Typically Offered: Spring
Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.
GPA units: 0
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Honors students undertake a research project under the direction of a department faculty member. The results are presented in the form of a thesis and two semesters credit, granted at end of second semester. Candidates selected from invited applicants to the Department Honors Committee.
GPA units: 2
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology majors.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Students may undertake independent research projects under the direct supervision of a faculty member. Individuals contemplating a research project should make inquiries during their third year, since the project is usually initiated by the beginning of the fourth year. Preference for sociology majors.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
An individualized reading program addressing a topic in sociology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of a sociology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to sociology majors.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
An individualized reading program addressing a topic in sociology not covered in course offerings. Reading tutorials are under the supervision of a sociology faculty member, usually limited to the fourth year students, and arranged on an individual basis. Preference to sociology majors.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Program for individual students who wish to pursue supervised independent study on a selected topic or an advanced research project. Ordinarily projects are approved for one semester. Open to selected third- and fourth-year students with preference to sociology majors. Each project must be supervised by a faculty member.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring