36 courses with the subject SOCI BC, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
SOCI BC3015Digital Inequalities3.00
This course will analyze the ways in which social inequalities are produced and reinforced within the digital world. We will study the ways in which the digital media has shaped public discourse through a variety of media infrastructures like digital platforms, apps, and social media sites. The course will also highlight how the digital creates place-based inequalities, in terms of environmental degradation or surveillance, as well as the lack of access to basic resources like the internet
Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis
Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis
The COVID-19 pandemic has made the underlying health disparities that exist in the United States more apparent. The traditional biomedical model places the responsibility of these disparities on the choices that an individual makes. The model assumes that one’s smoking, eating and exercising habits are based on personal choice. Therefore, the prevalence of morbidities such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes is the result of an individual’s poor decisions. This course will explore how the conditions under which individuals live, work, play and pray impact their health outcomes. Collectively these conditions are referred to as the Social Drivers of Health (SDoH) and often they reveal the systemic inequalities that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. This course will also call upon the need for a paradigm shift from the "Social" "Determinants" of Health to the “Structural” "Drivers" of Health. This shift is in recognition that it is the underlying structures (laws, material infrastructure) that impact and drive health outcomes. The development of the SDoH has challenged health care providers to look beyond the biomedical model that stresses an individual’s behavior as the main predictor of adverse health conditions. Instead the SDoH focuses on an “upstream” approach that examines the underlying systemic and racial inequalities that impact communities of color and their health outcomes
Emphasizes foundations and development of black communities post-1940, and mechanisms in society that create and maintain racial inequality. Explores notions of identity and culture through lenses of gender, class and sexual orientation, and ideologies that form the foundation of black politics. Primarily lecture with some discussion
Examines the social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States from colonial period to present. Analyzes how capitalist interests, class differences, gender, immigration, and who “deserves” the full rights and privileges of citizenship, shape boundaries between and within racial and ethnic groups. Also considers how racism affects resource access inequities between racial groups in education, criminal justice, media, and other domains. Explores factors underpinning major social change with an eye toward discerning social conditions necessary to create and sustain just social systems
Arab New York introduces students to a little-known community with a long history in New York City dating back to the late 1800s. Students will explore where Arab American communities thrive in New York and learn about the history of these neighborhoods. Applying sociological theories of assimilation, we will assess how immigrants from the Arab world have fared over time in New York City
This course challenges students to read broadly and across disciplines to develop a robust understanding of the social world of the arts, engaging literatures across sub-fields of sociology, art history, cultural studies, law, policy, and economics to develop analytical strategies for understanding the complex landscape of art, artistic practice, and artistic engagement in the social universe
This course examines the social roots and impacts of environmental contamination and disasters, in order to understand how humans relate to nature in the context of global racial capitalism and the possibilities for creating a more sustainable world. We will also explore how racism is foundational to environmental exploitation and consider why global struggles for racial justice are crucial for protecting both people and the earth, paying particular attention to how environmental health inequalities are linked to race, class, gender, and nation. We will consider key theories, debates, and unresolved questions in the subfield of environmental sociology and discuss future directions for the sociological study of human/environment relations
SOCI BC3248Race, Ethnicity, and Education in the US3.00
This course explores the sociology and history of race and racism, ethnicity and ethnocentrism, and unequal access to education in the United States through readings, films, audio, and multimedia. Experiences of students in public and private K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and alternative and informal educational settings will be considered. Movements by students and communities to fight discrimination and injustice, demand equal opportunities and resources, and to realize the promise of education as a means of achieving personal and collective liberation will also be examined. Case studies may include: boarding schools for Indigenous children; Reconstruction-era public schools; the settlement house movement; Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement; the Black Panther Party’s educational initiatives; community-controlled schools; Black, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Ethnic Studies programs; urban educational reform, public school closures, and charter schools; the school-to-prison pipeline; standardized testing and advanced placement courses; and more
This class will examine the social phenomenon of exclusion. Attempts to understand the social behavior of creating insiders and outsiders is a hallmark in Sociology. How does it happen? What purpose does it serve? Who decides who is in and who is out? While some forms of social closure, like segregation, are more well known, there are numerous mechanisms of social exclusion people and groups employ in the social world. Additionally, forms of exclusion do not always come from the top down as a form of domination, but sometimes from the bottom up, with the goal of resource redistribution. We will study these different forms of exclusion along with the theorized aims these forms of closure seek to achieve to get a more comprehensive picture of how social exclusion is used in the social world
SOCI BC3750HOW RACE GETS UNDER OUR SKIN: THE SOCIOLOGY OF RACE, HEALTH, AND BIOMEDICINE4.00
One of the glaring forms of inequalities that persists today is the race-based gap in access to health care, quality of care, and health outcomes. This course examines how institutionalized racism and the structure of health care contributes to the neglect and sometimes abuse of racial and ethnic minorities. Quite literally, how does race affect one’s life chances? This course covers a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in health outcomes, biases in medical institutions, immigration status and health, racial profiling in medicine, and race in the genomic era
Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric
SOCI BC3913Inequalities: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in U.S. Law and Society4
This class will examine the historical roots and ongoing persistence of social, economic, and political inequality and the continuing role that it plays in U.S. society by examining how such issues have been addressed both in social science and in law. Spanish and Latin American Cultures (Barnard)
The rise of crossover culture: racially segregated markets and genres; organizational environments and the rise of independent labels; the creative process and black-white conflict and connection; the emergence of rock as a white genre; civil rights, Black Power, and the politics of soul; cultural borrowing and the postracial ethos
Critical exploration of contemporary US families. Analyzes the ways gendered forces structure relations between and among family members. Investigates changes over time in roles and expectation for family members. Topics include social class differences, LGBT families, transnational families, parent-child relationships, domestic violence, racial/ethnic variation in men’s experiences.
This research and writing-intensive seminar is designed for senior majors with a background and interest in the sociology of gender and sexuality. The goal of the seminar is to facilitate completion of the senior requirement (a 25-30 page paper) based on ;hands on; research with original qualitative data. Since the seminar will be restricted to students with prior academic training in the subfield, students will be able to receive intensive research training and guidance through every step of the research process, from choosing a research question to conducting original ethnographic and interview-based research, to analyzing and interpreting ones findings. The final goal of the course will be the production of an original paper of standard journal-article length. Students who choose to pursue their projects over the course of a second semester will have the option of revisiting their articles further for submission and publications
SOCI BC3922Race, Nation, and American Food Culture4
Uses theories of race, ethnicity, and nation to ask questions about boundaries, categories, and distinctions about the American food system. Addresses the following questions: How are race, ethnicity, and national identity shaped by patterns of migration? How do processes like multiculturalism, panethnicity, and blending change the meanings and salience of these terms? How do symbols and systems of authenticity shape meaning-making around ethnoracial and national inequality? What does food have to do with race/ethnicity/nation? How are cultural products, like cuisine, markers of broader systems of inequality? How do these systems of inequality affect access to food, what we eat, the workplace, and racialized bodies? How does food serve as a marker of distinction in terms of race, ethnicity, nation, class, and gender? This course encourages students to read broadly in literatures of race, ethnicity, nation, migration and engage theories and ideas in conversation and debate across literatures to develop analytical strategies for understanding the complex landscape of ethnoracial and national inequality in the United States. By focusing analysis on cultural themes and specifically the case of American food culture, students are encouraged to question the utility and applicability of the abstract theories we encounter as well as the contributions and complications of each theory in relation to the others we discuss through a common language of cultural products, most specifically, the accessible discourse of food in American life.
This course considers how gender shapes the action within different organizations, reflecting and reproducing broader social systems of inequality, identity, violence, and power in the United States. We will address current issues centered on the gendered nature of institutions and organizations, including the work/family debate, bodies at work, sexual harassment, service work, sex work, and sexual violence to illuminate the mechanisms by which systems of gender inequality shape the meanings and practices of individuals and groups within and across organizations and institutions
The course will focus on a single topic within US law-and-society scholarship: either the profession of lawyering or the criminalization of immigration. We will critically examine existing research, and then create our own. With the support of their peers and instructor, students will design and complete substantial independent research projects. Limited to sociology majors with senior standing (except in exceptional circumstances), and having taken SOCI UN3217 Law and Society is strongly preferred. Fulfills the Research Paper Option for the senior requirement in sociology at Barnard
Examines processes of immigrant incorporation in the U.S. and other advanced democracies, with a focus on how immigration intersects with categorical inequalities (such as citizenship, social class, race, ethnicity, gender, and religion) in major institutional realms. Under instructor's supervision, students conduct a substantial research project related to course themes
Research and writing intensive seminar on civic and political engagement in contemporary American society, along with critical evaluation of methods used to collect and analyze data on political and social life. Requirements include a final research paper based on independent data collection and analysis. Seminar limited to sociology majors with senior standing (except in exceptional circumstances). Fulfills the Research Paper Option for the senior requirement in sociology at Barnard
Discusses theories of race and ethnicity, distinctions between prejudice, discrimination, and racism, and the intersectionality paradigm. Under instructors guidance students design a research proposal, conduct their own fieldwork and write a research paper on a sociological question relating to race and/or ethnicity
This seminar examines the ways in which the body is discursively constituted, and itself serves as the substratum for social life. Key questions include: How are distinctions made between normal and pathological bodies, and between the psychic and somatic realms? How do historical forces shape bodily experience? How do bodies that are racialized, gendered, and classed offer resistance to social categorization?
This seminar will investigate efforts to coordinate, justify, and understand global activism through lenses of internationalism, solidarity, and universal human rights. We will also study transformations in the global institutional landscape – comprising international finance, supranational unions, and non-governmental organizations – which is itself the contradictory outcome of prior cycles of contestation. We will survey historical precedents, analyze contemporary manifestations, and speculate on the future prospects of global activism. Students will explore cases and concepts by reading scholarly literature and by considering the political practices, texts, and media created by movements themselves
This course examines the sociological features of organizations through a gender lens. We will analyze how gender, race, class, and sexuality matter for individuals and groups within a variety of organizational contexts. The course is grounded in the sociological literatures on gender and organizations.
SOCI BC3939Housing Equity and the American Dream4.00
The American Dream of owning a home has long represented an ideal of American equity. The ideal screams of opportunity and meritocracy: no matter how poor one begins life, as long as they work and save, they can enjoy the security and safety of home. To many, this ideal gives them hope, for they can see possibility for their achievement. To others, the ideal feels like a farce, for they rightly anticipate facing countless barriers to achieving that dream. This course examines challenges, contradictions, and ironies of American housing equity. We study ways in which the ideal of single-family home ownership has directly led to excluding large portions of the population from secure housing. We examine why and how many Americans can be deeply committed to equality and freedom and still perpetuate inequalities in their housing choices. We examine how people at the bottom who understand well the barriers they face still manage to survive, invent, and struggle to achieve dignity and equity in their housing. The course examines core issues of housing equity in America historically and in the present. The course primarily offers a sociological perspective on housing. But we will also read work and bring in perspectives from geography, history, urban planners, and others. In addition, we will also engage with work by journalists, which represents one way that the multi-disciplinary issues of housing are connected in narratives intended for a wider audience than more scholarly products. While we draw on work from various perspectives, we will focus on developing a sociological lens to understand housing
This seminar explores how broad trends that shape contemporary Latin American societies intertwine with the specificities of people’s multilayered local realities. Through ethnographic narratives of the everyday lives of Latin Americans, we will learn how life histories and narrative accounts offer windows for understanding inequality and persistence in the face of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of an unequal world. Themes covered include precarious work, migration and displacement, housing, racism and state violence, gender and family, health, environmental devastation, and social movements. Cases are drawn from across the Americas, including: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Nicaragua
SOCI BC3943Black Americans and Development Politics4.00
This seminar explores theories regarding race/racism, gendered racism, capitalism, political economy, and processes related to how governments and markets allocate capital to build and maintain public goods and services and private amenities—from drinking water, to homes, to schools, to grocery and retail stores. Focus is on debates within and across Black communities regarding how Black people should seek individual and collective capacity to realize their citizenship rights and privileges, with particular attention to variation in Black Americans’ interests across the class spectrum. The final two weeks are devoted to Black liberation and reparations movements
SOCI BC3946GLOBAL HEALTH, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY4.00
What is global health? Where do global health disease priorities come from, and how do the ways that we understand disease shape how we respond to it? What happens when good ideas and good intentions go wrong? This course critically examines the politics of global health and its impact on local institutions and people. Drawing on social science research, the course will address three main themes: 1) how global health priorities are defined and constructed, 2) how our understandings of disease influence our response to that disease, and 3) how efforts to respond to disease intersect with people on the ground, sometimes in unexpected ways. We will examine the global health industry from the vantage point of different institutions and actors – international organizations, governments, local healthcare institutions, healthcare workers, and people living with or at risk of various illnesses like HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, and Ebola. A primary goal of this course is to help you to develop skills in critical thinking in relation to global health issues and their impact on society. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through individual writing, class discussion, presentations, and a final research project
This class will examine the development of education for African Americans in the United States. Chattel slavery and its afterlives are marked by questions, debates, and experiments not simply in schooling for Black people, but how to use education for the practice of freedom. Through examining this development, students will learn how the experience of Black people in schools complicates static notions about public vs private schools, demands for school desegregation, and the ongoing role of (mostly) white philanthropy in shaping the development of education for Black youth in the US and around the world
This seminar examines transgender people’s lives through a sociological lens, investigating how social structures, institutions, and everyday interactions shape trans people’s lives and identities. Students will analyze the intersectional nature of transgender experience, exploring how gender, race, class, disability, nation, and citizenship status create diverse lived realities within transgender communities. Topics include family dynamics, violence, resistance, space, work, legal recognition, and visions of transgender futures
Surveillance has become a ubiquitous term that either conjures images of George Orwell’s 1984, the popular series Black Mirror, or is dismissed as an inconvenience and a concern of only those who engage in criminal activity or have something to hide. Using sociological theories of power, biopower, racialization, and identity formation, Surveillance explores the various ways we are monitored by state authorities and corporations and our role in perpetuating the system (un)wittingly
SOCI BC3959How Race Gets Under Our Skin: The Sociology of Race, Health, and Biomedicine4.00
One of the glaring forms of inequalities that persists today is the race-based gap in access to health care, quality of care, and health outcomes. This course examines how institutionalized racism and the structure of health care contributes to the neglect and sometimes abuse of racial and ethnic minorities. Quite literally, how does race affect one’s life chances? This course covers a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in health outcomes, biases in medical institutions, immigration status and health, racial profiling in medicine, and race in the genomic era
