Introduction to Sociology looks at the social forces--some strikingly obvious, some hidden yet powerful--that shape our lives and the world around us. Our choices as individuals are almost always enmeshed in deeper social structures, such as perceived racial categories, the geography of job opportunities, and who we know and don't know. Sociology gives us diverse conceptual and methodological tools to help us uncover these social structures and understand how they shape our lives. This course introduces some of sociology's best-known tools and insights they've revealed so far.

An introduction to the social bases of American politics and the political forces in the shaping of American society. This year's class will focus on racial, gender, and class divisions in contemporary America.

This course will examine different crises confronting cities in the 21st century. Topics will range from informal settlements, to immigration, terrorism, shrinking population, sprawl, rising seas, affordable housing, gentrification, smart cities. The range of cities will include Los Angles, New Orleans, Paris, Logos, Caracas, Havana, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai among others.

This course provides students an introduction to the study of social networks. In the first half of the course we will learn the core theories that describe the structure of networks and the processes through which things, such as information and disease, spread through networks. Then, in the second half of the course, we will see these theories applied in a variety of areas such as online filter bubbles, HIV/AIDS, and social fads.

By taking a comparative approach, this course examines the role of social, economic, and political factors in the emergence and transformation of modern cities in the United States and selected areas of Latin America. We consider the city in its dual image: both as a center of progress and as a redoubt of social problems, especially poverty. Attention is given to spatial processes that have resulted in the aggregation and desegregation of populations differentiated by social class and race.

This course seeks to provide a sociological account of crime and punishment. Why do people commit crime? How should we respond to crime? How has crime policy changed over the past several decades? What are the consequences of recent crime policy? By reading classic and contemporary sociological research, policy analysis, and media coverage, we will explore the themes of crime and punishment in contemporary society.

Who succeeds in school, and why? What do schools teach students, in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic? What is the role of schools in modern society? How do schools reproduce, interrupt, or legitimate the social order? In this course, you will apply sociological perspectives to the study of education.

This course will provide a scientifically informed understanding of how population processes shape society and how they are, in turn, shaped by social, economic, policy, and environmental context. Focusing on the four core demographic processes (fertility, nuptiality, mortality, and migration), readings and lectures demonstrate the demographic underpinnings of high-profile issues such as population decline, immigration, childlessness, population aging and social transfer programs, complex families, social inequality, and the impact of climate change. We will read and discuss treatment of these issues in academic outlets and the popular press.

Equal parts art, programming, and statistical reasoning, data visualization is critical for anyone who seeks to analyze data. Data analysis skills have become essential for those pursuing careers in policy evaluation, business consulting, and research in fields like public health, social science, or education. This course introduces students to the powerful R programming language and the basics of creating data-analysis graphics in R.

Technology and society are unthinkable without each other, each provides the means and framework in which the other develops. To explore this dynamic, this course investigates a wide array of questions on the interaction between technology, society, politics, and economics, emphasizing the themes such as innovation and regulation, risk and failure, ethics and expertise. Specific topics covered include nuclear power and disasters, green energy, the development and regulation of the Internet, medical expertise and controversy, intellectual property, the financial crisis, and the electric power grid.

This course is an introduction to the logic and practice of social science research. The goal is to provide methodological training that will enable students to design and execute successful independent research projects. We review a range of approaches used by sociologists to answer research questions, including field experiments, surveys, observation, in-depth interviews, and mixed method research.

Most research in sociology is quantitative, and it is important for students to be able to critically evaluate published quantitative research. Ideally, students should also be able to conduct empirical research involving statistical methods. This course provides the foundation for both goals. The course focuses specifically on how to determine, apply, and interpret statistical methods appropriate for answering a sociological research question given a particular set of data. Basic probability theory is introduced as a building block of statistical reasoning, and a variety of commonly-used statistical methods are covered in the course.

This course takes a close look at the foundational texts and critical concepts in the discipline of sociology, focusing on classical theorists. The primary goal of the class is to help students understand theories of society and the organization of human communities. Key authors include Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Dubois, Burke, Hobbes, Locke, Tocqueville, and Arendt. We will put these authors in their historical contexts, explore how they can be used now to understand the social world, and examine how they might be deployed in empirical research contexts.

Would universal health insurance improve the health of the poor? Do patterns of arrests in US cities show evidence of racial profiling? What accounts for who votes and their choice of candidates? This course will teach students how to address these and other social science questions by analyzing quantitative data. The course introduces basic principles of statistical inference and programming skills for data analysis. The goal is to provide students with the foundation necessary to analyze data in their own research and to become critical consumers of statistical claims made in the news media, in policy reports, and in academic research.

Sexuality is fundamental to the organization of society -- both in the U.S. and across the world. Though sexuality carries important personal significance, the understanding of why and how it influences our lives is inextricably woven into a complex, global fabric. The aim of this course is to unravel this fabric and reveal the deeply globalized nature of sexuality in the modern era and how this shapes understandings of sexuality, the sexual identities available to us, and how the state regulates it -- especially from a global, comparative perspective.

Analyzes the historical construction of race as a concept in American society, how and why this concept was institutionalized publicly and privately in various arenas of U.S. public life at different historical junctures, and the progress that has been made in dismantling racialized institutions since the civil rights era.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? Drawing on history, social-scientific research, and reporting, this seminar will attempt to unravel this question. Weekly, we will discuss a topic central to understanding the causes and consequences of, and solutions to, American poverty. We will take field trips, welcome guests, and collaborate on projects to abolish poverty.

Introduction to communications policy and law, covering classical dilemmas and current controversies over the media, including such topics as freedom of the press, libel and privacy, the precarious economics of journalism, communications regulation, power of the giant tech platforms, and disinformation.

This course examines economic phenomena from a sociological perspective. We first consider conceptual tools that sociologists have used to understand economic life and connections between economy and society. We then apply these concepts to a rich array of topics including labor markets, worklife, firms, commodification and consumption, credit and finance, social stratification and inequality, and contemporary transformations of capitalism

This class examines the history of urban and suburban housing in the twentieth century US. We will examine the relationship between postwar suburban development as a corollary to the "underdevelopment" of American cities contributing to what scholars have described as the "urban crisis" of the 1960s. Housing choice and location were largely shaped by discriminatory practices in the real estate market, thus, the course explores the consequences of the relationship between public policy and private institutions in shaping the metropolitan area including after the passage of federal anti-housing discrimination legislation in the late 1960s.

This course explores how race, class, and power shape today's market economy. It draws from economic sociology to unpack how race and class hierarchies define economic lives and structures. It attends explicitly to the construction of money and its role in producing economic and financial inequalities. Class discussions and writing assignments address various topical matters, including housing, credit, banking, the financial services industry, wealth management, and social finance.

Examines the cultures of classes within American society and asks to what extent people's identities, relationships, or chances for social mobility are shaped by their class culture. Looks at high and popular culture as well as mass media, paying attention to patterns of cultural consumption ("taste") and asks how these patterns work to reproduce the class structure.

This seminar focuses on the structural and institutional foundations of racial discrimination in the United States. It emphasizes the contributions of sociologists, some of whom will participate as invited guests. The course gives a historical overview followed by an investigation of key legislative actions and economic factors inhibiting racial equality. Subsequent topics include migration and immigration; urban development; and residential segregation. The end of the course reviews resistance movements and policies aimed at addressing systemic racism, including restorative justice and reparations.

Why do people love Broadway musicals? How do audiences engage with musicals and their stars? How have fan practices changed since the 1950s alongside economic and artistic changes in New York and on Broadway? In what ways does "fan of" constitute a social identity? How do fans perform their devotion to a show, to particular performers, and to each other? This class examines the social forms co-created by performers and audiences, both during a performance and in the wider culture. Students will practice research methods including archival research, ethnographic observation, in-depth interviewing, and textual and performance analysis.

This seminar, taught at University of Tokyo offers an opportunity to understand contemporary Japanese society through lectures, readings, discussions, and field trips in both urban and rural Japan. In the six weeks, we will cover six important topics in six modules. For each module, we will have a combination of a lecture, a guest lecture, readings, student presentations, and class discussions.

This seminar introduces the study of gentrification, with a focus on mapping projects using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software. Readings, films, and site visits will situate the topic, as the course examines how racial landscapes of gentrification, culture and politics have been influenced by and helped drive urban change. Tutorials in ArcGIS will allow students to convert observations of urban life into fresh data and work with existing datasets. Learn to read maps critically, undertake multifaceted spatial analysis, and master new cartographic practices associated with emerging scholarship in the Digital and Urban Humanities.

For the first time, most people now live in cities. One in seven humans lives in an urban slum. We analyze the political, economic, and social dynamics that both create and arise from urbanization, informality, and attempts to govern our contemporary urban world. We ask how formal and informal institutions change inequalities of shelter, work, race, and other social identities, across urban space. We investigate the links between the processes of urbanization and climate change, and how they shape the politics of cities. We draw from cases across the globe and the US, along with a range of social science methods and theoretical perspectives.

Does where you live determine your destiny? This seminar will engage students in a rich dialogue about these questions and more, drawing from the best social science evidence to date from the social sciences. In the first half of the course, we will consider research conducted on neighborhood-level (census tract) differences in big cities. In the second half, we will consider research focusing on differences between communities across the entire U.S., including rural America. Student presentations are a significant part of this course.

The course examines the gendered racialization of Asian American women. It identifies and interrogates experiences of everyday violence, looking at their hypersexualization, labor market precarity, intimate partner violence, and poverty. It situates the discussion in the law, family, workplace, and campus community.

This course will analyze and evaluate the social, psychological and cultural underpinnings of long-standing "everyday" experiences common to Asian Americans (e.g., navigating biculturalism, microaggressions and model minority stereotypes) that may impact identity and mental health, as well as the psychosocial causes and consequences of significant current events that impact different Asian groups in the U.S., such as affirmative action.

This seminar explores Ireland's journey towards reproductive justice & its global implications. Through the lenses of sociology, anthropology, political science, & history, students consider the past, present & future of reproduction in Ireland. Key themes include the impact of cultural norms, beliefs and values on abortion access, the intersection of state, church & medicine, the relationship between law & practice, the role of activism and art in social change, and the weight of the past in the present. Excursions will focus on the history of reproduction in Ireland, experiences of Irish women, & reproductive justice activism in Ireland.

This is an advanced Seminar meant to deepen understanding of central themes in American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latino/a Studies.The Seminar concentrates on historical trajectories, social and economic evolution, and cultural contributions to nation making on the part of Asian Americans and Latino/as. We will investigate colonial antecedents and processes of exclusion/stigmatization but also acts of resistance and claims on citizenship that have consistently identified the trajectory of immigrants and their descendants throughout American history.

Sociology has always been engaged in the study of law and, in this course, we will study law with the tools of sociology. In the first half of the course, we will examine how law makes society, focusing on the way that legal ideas create institutions like courts, citizenship and money; social practices like marriage, criminality, free-lancing and inequality; and even identities like race, ethnicity, sex and sexuality. In the second half, we will consider how people interact with legal institutions, voluntarily to achieve their goals and involuntarily to be disciplined by others. We will use both US and international examples.

Sociology as a discipline was not institutionalized until the early 20th century, but sociological thinking predates the discipline by at least a century. In this course, we examine the development of social thought through the writings of sociology's founders as they developed the idea of the social and its relationship to the development of the individual and to economic and political transformation. While the course lingers on Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel, it also explores their intellectual contexts, their interlocutors and their legacies up through the middle of the 20th century.