70 courses with the subject SOC, 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.
SOC 1030Cultural Activism in Latin America3
What does Latin American hip-hop have to do with social change? How do murga dances in Argentina and Uruguay or “theatre of the oppressed” performances in Brazil challenge “social authoritarianism”? Why are Greenpeace campaigns so successful in raising awareness about the Amazon? Why are carnivals in Oruro, Bolivia, or in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, still so lively and engaging? This course explores the relationship between activism and “culture” in different Latin American countries.
Examines the art and science of contemplative practices in order to cultivate self-knowledge, critical awareness, emotional resilience, and social engagement. Students must be willing to personally explore such practices as meditation and incorporate them into their lives throughout the semester. This experiential approach complements an academic investigation and discussion of contemplative practices in the sciences and humanities.
An introduction to sociological thinking and to key concepts in sociology. Attention is given to social life, inequality, movements, action, change, institutions, and contemporary social issues.
Students examine sociological perspectives on the law and how it operates to exert social control, define social norms, and propel social progress. Moving from theory to practical analysis, the course focuses on the ways in which the law reinforces inequality and affects social change. Additionally, student explore how cultural shifts and social movements can influence the law.
Students explore the social construction of the genre of outsider art through an examination of institutional discourses and practices. Emphasis is placed on how the work of marginalized people comes to be viewed as artistically legitimate. Works of asylum art, folk art, prison art, and other genres are analyzed in relationship to creativity, local cultural tradition, and mental illness.
An examination of the state of race relations in the United States and other industrialized nations. Topics include racial and ethnic stratification, systems of oppression, mechanisms for integration, pluralism, assimilation, and racial politics.
An introduction to the development of consumer society and consumer culture, with emphasis on the city as a landscape of consumption. Topics include commodification, materialism, large-scale changes in cities and industries, the street as a site for identity, neighborhoods as contest spaces, and the environmental and social consequences of consumerism.
Introduces microsociology from a social-interactionist perspective. Concepts covered include self; social construction of reality and the symbolic environments; culture and subculture; and identity, social location, and socialization. The interconnectedness of selves and societies is explored by examining the ways in which (a) social arrangements shape individuals and (b) individuals shape the social order of which they are a part.
After examining the historical development of the profession of social work, this course introduces the profession’s values, ethics, and practice principles. Students examine major intervention methods of practice and explore the social service delivery networks comprising the social welfare system in professional settings. The course format includes volunteer service and visits to social service sites.
This professional orientation for sociology majors includes sessions with each member of the sociology faculty on such topics as professional presentation and communication skills, preparation for graduate school, and faculty research.
An exploration of different sociological renderings of birth and death in contemporary societies. Understanding the concepts from a sociological perspective offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, spirituality, and age. This course also focuses on recent biomedical technological innovations and their implications for birth and death representations. Students conduct an independent field trip and do extensive reading and writing. PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500 Or GND1200
Investigates the meanings, production, distribution, and consumption of food by human beings. Special attention is paid to social solidarity-the racial, ethnic, and gender relations of food preparation and celebration. Social stratification is examined to understand social inequality in relation to food, particularly in terms of labor and hunger. PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500 Or GND1200
SOC 3126Social and Cultural Studies of Food: Italian Gastronomy4
Food-its production, consumption, and representation-is used as a lens to understand politics, culture, sociality, identities, geographies, and economies. Taking the geographical area of Pisciotta, Italy, as a starting point and ultimately as an ethnographic case study, this course engages students in the local and regional landscape. From visits to the local weekly market to field trips to the local mozzarella or olive oil producers, students interpret how food, as a way of life, has shaped PREREQ: SOC1500
SOC 3127Social and Cultural Studies of Food: India4
Food, its production, consumption, and representation are used as a lens to understand politics, culture, sociality, identities, geographies, and economies. Some of the themes examined are salient in contemporary debates within social and cultural studies.
Contemporary sociological studies of the body consider how bodies become social entities through membership in communities and how these bodies are valued according to their gender, social class, religion, and racial, ethnic, and national status. This course attends to bodies, engaging with a growing corpus of material on embodiment, embodied experiences, body regulation, bodywork, representations of bodies, and cultural exposures of the body. PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
How is scientific and medical knowledge researched and developed? What is the relationship between science and medicine? What are the hidden premises or values that lie within different scientific and medical approaches? How is scientific and medical knowledge culturally represented? Additional topics include alternative medicine, epidemiology, and everyday lived experience of medicine and the relation to social inequality. PREREQ: SOC1500
The “Bro Code” is an everyday term that describes an unspoken set of social guidelines among men, influencing their friendships, interactions and behavior. In this course, students will delve into the world of the “Bro Code,” masculinity, manhood, sexuality and gender through a critical sociological lens, uncovering the ways seemingly trivial social norms can reproduce larger social structures and inequalities.
We study artists as “monsters”-actors who disturb, provoke outrage, and expose contradictions in capitalism, race, gender, and sexuality. While queering monstrousness as a means of possibility, the course treats art as a social force embedded in inequality and power. Artists include Nan Goldin, Bob Flanagan, and Crackhead Barney.
Students and faculty, humans and animals, subjects and objects collaborate in this rigorous seminar on the “animal problem,” as it is particularly important to urban environments and urban dwellers (human and nonhuman animals). What are nonhuman animals? How do people account for their animal nature while reconciling their cultural aspirations? What are human primary desires with respect to nonhuman animals? PREREQ: SOC1500
This course examines fashion, as both clothing and aesthetic category, focusing on how style connects to power and resistance in contemporary and historical contexts. Students explore clothing as a social product, marker of self, and its symbolic meanings in relationship to class, gender, race, age and other social identities. Examples include goth, athleisure, streetwear, business casual, bohemian.
Students become acquainted with methods that social scientists in general and sociologists in particular use for different types of research. Goals include learning to identify, understand, and evaluate diverse research strategies; distinguish between qualitative and quantitative methods, the types of knowledge they produce, and the strengths and the weaknesses of each; and think critically about objectivity, researcher standpoint, and research ethics PREREQ: SOC1500
Given the ethnic complexity of society, major social institutions-including education, criminal justice, health care, social services, and business-face many challenges. This course explores the past, present, and future of race and ethnicity in American society, and how immigration, culture, religion, education, and income play parts in prejudice, discrimination, and racial inequalities.
SOC 3435Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements4
From the Manson family to Scientology, this course takes a deep dive into the world of fringe religious groups. We will learn how sociologists approach these marginal groups by examining their beliefs and behaviors, the power of their leaders and organizations, as well as their alignment with and resistance to the dominant culture. PREREQ: SOC1500
People’s everyday lives are monitored on multiple levels through mechanisms they take for granted. Surveillance systems and technologies provide knowledge about people through identification, monitoring, and analysis of individuals, groups, data, or systems. These systems are examined as social entities that organize and shape cultural values and norms. Issues of identity, security, fear, control, and vulnerability are also explored. PREREQ: SOC1500
Global Studies: Global Sustainability Concentration Description and requirements Faculty Courses Description: The Global Sustainability concentration prepares students to tackle pressing global issues and their implications for the environment. Students learn to problem-solve 21 st century topics that transcend geographical borders (i.e., food, water, transportation, energy) and become future thought leaders. Complementing the program’s core curricular content are courses drawn from adjacent majors including environmental studies, political science, and sociology. Requirements: Requirements Effective Fall 2027 Total Credits for Concentration: 17-18 credits One of the following introductory Cognate courses:
An examination of the special relationship of education to other American institutions. Topics include the declining support for public education, attempts to privatize public education (vouchers), and race and class issues in public and private education. PREREQ: SOC1500
Incorporates service learning and examines immigration and the U.S. school system. Combining hands-on work within local schools with academic readings that address children of immigrants in schools, this course emphasizes applied sociology. Throughout the course, students analyze how school structures, peer networks, relationships with teachers, and familial interactions influence the incorporation and educational trajectories of first- and second-generation immigrants. PREREQ: SOC1500
*For students considering graduate school in social work, two internships in human services locations are recommended. Advisors can assist with course planning for a career in social work. Concentration 3: Local and Global Communities & Social Change (40–42 credits) * Effective Fall 2025 for new students entering: SOC 3015/ProSeminar in Sociology is no longer a requirement. 1. SOC 1500/Introduction to Sociology: 3 credits 2. SOC 3405/Research Methods: 4 credits [FALL JR only]
Public health has the goal of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society. This course focuses on a specific public health topic that might unexpectedly become significant or an interdisciplinary topic that integrates sociological considerations in relation to the goals of public health (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, abortion, synthetic biology, DNA testing). PREREQ: SOC1500
Focuses on the diversity of families, the challenges they face, their relationship to social institutions and communities, and how they interact with society at large. Students explore how social norms and public policy have benefited or constrained particular familial structures over time and examine how contemporary family formations are shifting normative social structures. PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
Considers the ways in which children and childhood differ across cultures, what those cultural differences mean, and what childhood means in a larger developmental and cultural sense. Among other topics, students examine children as active social agents, independent of families, and incorporate ideas around children as products, childhood innocence, and children in need of protection. PREREQ: SOC1500
SOC 3661Border Wars and Transnational Human Rights4
An examination of the various causes and consequences of international migration on migrants, their sending communities, and their destination countries. Topics include immigration debates, the social structures and economic and social conditions that facilitate labor migration, undocumented migration, refugee migration and forced migration. New York is an amazing place to explore migration, providing firsthand knowledge about migrant communities.
Sexuality is grounded in bodily experience, but meanings of both body and experience are socially constructed. This advanced seminar examines contemporary sexual constructions and their cultural and historical roots. PREREQ: GND1200 Or SOC2020 Or ANT3750 Or GND2020
The meaning of theory, and the major theoretical perspectives in social science. Primary attention in reading and discussion is given to the works of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. These thinkers have been chosen because of their seminal, interdisciplinary contributions to political, economic, sociological, and anthropological theory. PREREQ: SOC1500
In preparation for the senior project, sociology majors conduct an in-depth critical review of research and learn how to plan and write a research proposal within a particular area of interest. The goal is to develop critical-thinking skills and the ability to do close reading of primary sources and write in the style of the discipline.
An advanced seminar in critical race studies specifically designed for juniors and seniors interested in reading theory, history, and research. Focuses on key works that have defined the field and shaped understandings of race in the 21st century, including those of Du Bois, Wacquant, Fanon, hooks, Crenshaw, Davis, Hall, and Said. PREREQ: SOC1500
Offers an in-depth focus on a specific sociological issue, which varies each semester. Includes research, readings, and writings on a topic related to the particular expertise of the faculty member.
Using a sociological imagination, we will examine the personality and politics of Generation X, Y and Z as compared to their predecessors. In examining birth and age cohorts, we focus on cultural, economic, and political moments that define generations. Emphasis is placed on identity, education, technology, values and the marketing of generations as distinct. PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500
Contemporary issues in bioethics; the study of ethical issues in the field of medical treatment, the life sciences and medical research. Examines moral and philosophical theories of ethics, applies these concepts to current topics, including end of life decisions, reproductive technologies, patient autonomy, human, animal and fetal research and technologies, organ transplantation, and genetic testing and engineering. PREREQ: SOC1500 And WRI1110
SOC 4060Cross Cultural Solutions to Climate Change6
Environmental challenges confronting human and nonhuman life demand adaptive modes of inquiry that accommodate the intricacies, fluidity, and interconnectivity of a global world, while engaging the place-based drivers that influence climate change across localities. Using a comparative approach, students apply accumulated knowledge to working definitions of climate change and identify real-world challenges to sustainability in diverse local environments.
