Sociology Graduate Courses

This course provides an introduction to the discipline and profession of Sociology. Each week different guests discuss and field questions on topics ranging from how to read academic work, mentoring and collaboration with professors, strategies for time management and workflow, and many others.

This course seeks to provide comprehensive understanding of the ideas of “classical” theorists whose work has been foundational for sociology, including Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber and George Herbert Mead. The course emphasizes concepts, arguments and broader paradigms associated with these theorists, as well as the consequences of their ideas for the social world. Additional authors may be covered, including but not restricted to: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Herbert Spencer, Auguste Compte, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Toennies, Vilfredo Pareto, Marianne Weber, Thorstein Veblen, Chester Barnard, Talcott Parsons, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, Frederick Hayek, Edward Shils, and W.E.B. DuBois.

Examination of the works of recent and contemporary sociological theorists such as Pareto, Parsons, and Merton, and of major theorists in related disciplines such as Marx, Freud, and Malinowski. Includes an examination of major "schools" or frames of reference such as ecology, structural-functionalism.

This course provides an intermediate­level examination of research designs, measurement, and sampling with an emphasis on issues of problem formulation and the logic and application of methodological procedures.

This course covers univariate and bivariate descriptive and inferential statistics in addition to a preliminary treatment of linear regression models with a focus on social science applications. The course also introduces students to statistical programming in Stata.

This course covers two areas: (1) an advanced treatment of linear regression including diagnostics, mediation, and moderation and (2) an introduction to other regression techniques that appear in top sociology journals (e.g., models for categorical outcomes, fixed effects models, multilevel and longitudinal models). The course also provides instruction in Stata programming.

This course provides a survey of qualitative research methods that includes methods of data collection and data analysis, analyzing and drawing conclusions from qualitative data, and writing about qualitative research findings. In addition, the course includes a critical examination of perspectives, assumptions, and issues that arise with qualitative methods. Students will conduct research projects and write papers using techniques learned in class.

An advanced quantitative methodology course on a selected topic. Course topic varies from semester to semester. Some commonly offered topics include: multilevel and longitudinal data analysis, experimental methods, causal inference, and latent variable modeling.

Using cost, quality, and access to care as core concepts, this course explores healthcare in comparative context. Special topics are health and gender, the environment, epidemics, long-term care, technology, and rationing, among others.

Focuses on sociological theory and research related to social conflicts over the delivery of healthcare in the U.S. Considers social issues pertaining to abortion, AIDS, human experimentation, reproductive technologies, euthanasia, and others.

Look for updates Spring 2019.

This seminar examines how early life experiences shape health status in adulthood and later life. Readings are drawn principally from medical sociology, sociology of aging, and life course epidemiology.

An interdisciplinary seminar examining recent research on aging and the responsible conduct of research. Emphasis is given to professional development in gerontology and related fields.

This course focuses on understanding the relationships among social structural factors, family relationships, and well-being in the middle and later years. Many of the substantive issues that are covered are central to the sociology of the family across adult the life course (for example, explaining the quality of family relationships and the effects of family relationships on well-being). Other topics are specific to later-life families, such as family caregiving.

This course examines the relationship between paid work and other activities, especially family life. It considers how work and family have changed over time, how they conflict with or support each other, and how people attempt to fulfill the demands of paid work and their personal/family lives. The course also examines how and why contemporary work-life experiences vary (by gender, race, class, religion, etc.), how work-life experiences are related to health and well-being, and what changes might help all people achieve optimal work-life outcomes.

Look for updates Spring 2019.

The course examines key theoretical approaches to the sociological study of gender. The course will take a global approach to understanding the role gender plays in creating and maintaining systems of inequality. Special attention will be paid to the social construction of gender through processes of socialization, interactions, and institutionalization. Course topics will emphasize the intersections of sex and gender with other social locations such as race, class, sexuality, age, and ethnicity.

This graduate seminar provides an overview of sociological research on inequality based on race and ethnicity, in both the United States and other societies. This is an ambitious undertaking as sociologists have examined racial and ethnic inequality for many decades. In many ways, the formation of sociology as a discipline within the United States was based on questions of race and ethnicity, particularly as they relate to stratification and difference. While sociologists usually agree that race and ethnicity are social constructs, there is much variation in how these concepts are conceptualized, measured, applied, and understood. We will begin by tracing how sociologists have approached the study of race, ethnicity, and inequality, as well as how we got to our present societal stratification based on race and ethnicity. We will then address dominant theories and perspectives on racial and ethnic inequality, as well as racial and ethnic inequality across different domains, including the state and the nation; international migration; culture and symbolic boundaries; criminal justice; and race and place.

Survey of major approaches (functional, status attainment, labor market, class, culture) to the sociological study of inequality, including qualitative and quantitative, historical and comparative studies. Students will be asked to complete a project analyzing inequality, which might provide the basis for a publishable paper.

This course provides a broad, graduate-level introduction to the sociology of law, focusing on the ways that legal ideas, actions and institutions shape and are shaped by their economic political, social and cultural context. The course explores various conceptualizations of law, including law as social control, law as institutionalized doctrine, law as schema, law as resource, law as power, and law as legality. Topics covered include law, punishment and collateral consequences, law and inequality, law and rights, law and organizations, law, politics and the state, law and social movements, law and social change, legal culture and legal consciousness, law and legitimacy, and the legal profession and lawyers’ careers.

Intensive consideration of a selected topic or set of topics in political sociology such as political socialization, political movements, comparative political analysis, political ideology in the industrialized West.

Examines topics of traditional or emerging interest in the sociology of religion. Topics covered depend on the theoretical research interests of participating faculty and students.

"Social networks" is the description of a diverse body of research and theory based upon the premise that "relationships," in contrast with "individual characteristics," are useful for understanding social structure and social behavior. This course focuses on identifying basic principles of causes and consequences of patterns in social networks, with the goal of helping us to anticipate and control relevant outcomes for individuals, groups, and societies. Social network approaches are used within diverse substantive areas, including communications, epidemiology, community, social psychology, stratification, deviance, collective behavior, organizations, family, and education.

Acquaints students with the literature on teaching sociology and its issues and provides practice instruction through videotaped microteaching, syllabus and examination construction, etc. A theoretical or research paper is required.