Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Wilkes-Barre · Courses
SOC
85 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 103Racism and Sexism3
This survey course examines racism and sexism as cultural, political and economic processes that shape contemporary social life in the United States. It provides an historical overview of the roots of modern racism and sexism and will explore these structural inequalities continue to matter in a "post-racial" and "post-feminist" era. Students will engage a broad range of texts that discuss these forms of inequality as intersecting, mutually constituted forms of marginalization. Students will develop a deeper understanding of how race, gender, sexuality, and class conditions identity formation; racism as a structural process that shapes and limits the life chances of non-white communities; and the long tradition of resistance that women and communities of color have developed to combat these social inequalities. The course is divided into two sections. The first introduces a range of terms: race, gender, class, sexual politics, intersectionality and neoliberalism. The second half considers various case studies: mass incarceration, toxic waste, (un)natural disasters, reproductive justice, and Islamophobia in the war on terror. Students will leave with both an understanding of key theoretical terms in the study of racism and sexism and be able to apply these concepts to contemporary social issues.
This course introduces students to sociological perspectives on gender using both theoretical concepts and everyday life examples. The course focuses on the constraints that gender imposes on our life experiences through our bodies, beauty standards, and social interactions, and across different social contexts, such as sex and dating, family, work, and politics. It explores how gender cannot be understood outside of its intersections with power and social difference. Students will have opportunities to think critically about how societal ideas about gender shape and constrain identities and opportunities within and across societies, as well as, how gender inflects on other parts of our social identities such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationalities. Students will develop an empirically based understanding of how gender and sexual inequalities unfold across time and space. The goal is for students to notice and question the construction of gender in many different realms of their lives. This course meets a General Education requirement in Social and Behavioral Sciences. It can be used as a lower-level sociology course in the Sociology BA major and the Sociology minor. It can also be used as a supporting course in the Women's Studies major and minor.
SOC 119N Race, Ethnicity and Culture (3 or 4 credits) (GS/GH;US/IL)(BA) Additionally, SOC 119N is an Inter Domain course (Social Sciences and Humanities) This course focuses on historical patterns and current status of racial, ethnic and cultural groups and issues locally, nationally, and internationally. SOC 119 has three objectives. First, the course will introduce students to new ways of thinking about race, ethnicity and culture from the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities. Students will be able to compare and contrast differences between race, ethnicity and culture. They will be able to understand the extent and pervasiveness of racial, ethnic and cultural inequality and discrimination in the U.S. and explain how unequal systems impact different ancestry groups both in the U.S. and around the world. Students will be able to compare historical causes and consequences of sociological processes such as immigration, assimilation and multiculturalism, and they will develop new ways of understanding how these processes are expressed in popular culture (e.g., art, music, literature) and intergroup dynamics. The second objective is to provide students with the intellectual tools for having more thoughtful conversations about the issues address in the class. By acquiring these tools Students will be able to formulate more thoughtful questions and responses when they engage others in everyday discussions about the many racial, ethnic and cultural factors and forces that pull people and groups together and push them apart. The third objective is to encourage students to explore their own racial and cultural identity. Students will explore pathways to allow them to discover new ways to understand their own racial and ethnic place in the world and the history of their own families. Students will be able to more clearly explain how their identity reflects and shapes their life experiences as well as others in their racial and ethnic group(s).
"Knowing Right from Wrong" provides a comprehensive understanding of the nature of moral ideas, beliefs, and behaviors in contemporary contexts. What roles do nature and nurture play in the development of moral sensibilities? How do moral emotions and moral reasoning interact to produce moral behavior? What defines moral character and how does it influence what we do? Is it possible to derive what ought to be done from what is known about the world? How do we respond when moral demands compete with another? How do our moral convictions color our perceptions of world events? Can individuals and groups with differing moral commitments communicate with one another and live together peacefully? The course integrates perspectives from philosophy, psychology, and sociology, and prepares students to think about (and act in) a world in which morality (and its linked concepts, such as judgment of others) plays an increasingly important social and political role. The course treats morality as both an aspirational concept and as an actual social practice, and focuses on three major themes: (1) the origins and development of moral reasoning and ethical systems, (2) the influence of moral emotions and moral intuitions on moral reasoning and behavior, and (3) the influence of social and contextual factors on moral behavior and expression. Integrating the philosopher's interest in ethics, with the psychologist's interest in the mind and body, and the sociologist's interest in groups, the course provides a comprehensive introduction to morality in contemporary society, and the ways in which it shapes the lives of people in everyday situations.
This course focuses on Buddhism in the United States. We will overview the historical factors that led to the development of Buddhism in the U.S., the many traditions that currently exist in the U.S., the role of Buddhism in the daily lives of different types of Americans, and various problems or frameworks that have characterized American Buddhism (such as race, gender, technology, and media representations). One major theme of the course is literary expressions of American Buddhism, such as the writings of Jack Kerouac and bell hooks. A second major theme, Buddhist meditation, will be explored through interdisciplinary perspectives drawing from both the humanities and social sciences. In the final portion of the class, we will focus on Buddhism in Pennsylvania, involving students in an ethnographic exploration of the religious pluralism in our home state.
This inter-domain course integrates historical (GH) study of the Holocaust with sociological (GS) perspectives on the Holocaust and human rights. Topical content begins with historical antisemitism ("the longest hatred") and elaborates the history of the Holocaust in German and in Europe. A second half of the course explores consequent definitions of genocide and human rights, globally established by the United Nations through international law. Post-war campaigns to reduce prejudice and to raise 'Holocaust consciousness' are presented along with sociological insights into problems of persecution through eugenics, xenophobia, and racialized inequalities. Survivor testimonies underscore the value of resilience and the ethics of standing up against injustice, including discrimination or persecution based on cultural or another group identification.
This course examines how individual health and well-being are influenced by social forces and public policy. The course revolves around three questions: How are social life and individual well-being linked? How can social policy positively influence individual well-being? And, what can individuals do to produce healthy social relations and support social policies that increase population health? The course has four sequential parts. The first portion of the course begins in the 19th Century, when the social aspects of health were first discovered and addressed. Students will learn basic sociological and population health terminology and methods, as well as the meaning of "social life" within sociology and public health. The second portion of the course focuses on the social processes that produce health inequality, their effect on public health, and the policy interventions that can be used to overcome them and protect individual health and well-being today. This portion of the course will use public health cases to understand the roots of social inequality and the power of social policy to alleviate health inequity. We pay special attention to areas of tension in public health delivery: public goods, privatization, cost-benefit ideas, social justice, politicization of science and regulatory capture. The third portion of the course focuses on the processes that shape individual health behaviors and influence of social behaviors on individual well-being. Relevant concepts discussed include culture, networks, framing, nudging, norms, and peer influence. The final portion of the course considers ways that individual behaviors contribute to a healthy society. This includes examining individual social behaviors, like civic engagement and religious activity, and social movements to understand how social responsibility can promote better health for all.
Communicating Care ENGL 162N / SOC 162N / CAS 162N What do we talk about when we talk about health? Our states of well-being and illness are topics that, like the weather, drive our daily conversations, but we rarely have time to study and practice these vital exchanges. Spoken in emergency rooms or on long-distance calls, by medical professionals, family members, or strangers making small talk, the languages we use to share pain and recovery require our knowledge of long-established scripts and our willingness to improvise. By exploring how these encounters draw from and work as textual and dramatic performances, this course will guide students to achieve a new level of literacy in the most essential communicative art of caring. Students will analyze health conversations in literary texts, such as short stories, poems, memoirs, and graphic novels. They will explore real-life scenarios drawn from their own experiences, fieldwork, social science theories, and published case studies. Developing skills in the humanities (GH), they will see how subjective, often individual experience, historical perspectives, and creative expression help people to communicate about health and care. Developing their abilities in the social and behavioral sciences (GS), they will see how theory provides insights to predict and understand health and practices of care, investigate objective perspectives and recognize the contributions of fieldwork and data-driven studies to analyzing and improving communication when health is a main concern. They will integrate these methodologies especially to pursue these fields' common goals of making beneficial connections between individuals and groups, and managing private and public life.
Alexis de Tocqueville called association the ¿mother science¿ of politics and saw voluntary associations as a pillar of American democracy. These associations must compete in what might be called a moral economy of public policy that preserves the value of equality. This course brings together ideas from political philosophy, history, political science, communication, sociology and economics to address an important question: How have voluntary, nongovernmental associations come to shape and implement public policy? The class begins with the core concepts in political thought and traces them through to contemporary ideas about civil society that span the political spectrum. After critically assessing these ideas, we integrate them into a framework for understanding the process of making public policy.
SOC 201Presumed Innocent? Social Science of Wrongful Conviction3
The criminal justice system is a human creation and some errors are expected. Sometimes guilty parties go free and sometimes innocent people are convicted. In this course, we will employ the perspective of the social scientist to understand why and how wrongful convictions occur. How can social science help to predict, explain, and prevent wrongful convictions? This course is organized into three units. In the first unit, we will examine the large body of social science research that demonstrates disparities in all stages of the criminal justice system. For example, young Black and Latino men are disproportionately arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for violent crimes. This is partly due to these men disproportionately living in environments that foster crime, but social science research shows sometimes it's also partly due to the discretionary decisions of police, prosecutors, and courts. As a result, these demographic groups are most likely to be wrongfully convicted. In the second unit, we'll explore the factors in the justice system that might lead to a wrongful conviction, including false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, poor legal representation, government misconduct, and informants and snitches. Social scientific findings elucidate how each of these factors influence conviction accuracy. Finally, we'll discuss how social science research on the risks and factors that contribute to wrongful convictions can be used to improve policies to reduce the risk of such convictions. Simple reforms such as openness about plea-bargaining, eyewitness identification reform (e.g., sequential lineups, double-blind procedures, etc.), recording of interrogations, and introducing Innocence Commissions in every state can improve our criminal justice system.
SOC 205NCritical Race Theory in the Humanities and Social Sciences3
This course closely examines the place and power of race in America. By tracing the history of how race works in particular American institutions, such as public education, criminal justice, and federal housing, students will gain a deep sense of how social categories and understandings shape material conditions and human welfare. Through the study of policies, court cases, memoirs, documentary films, and freedom struggles, this course will interrogate the many Americas that race has created and their implications for democracy and justice. Not only will this course focus on making race visible, but also the many ways that race intersects with class, gender, and sexuality and how these concepts empower and marginalize at the same time. All the while, students will use Critical Race Theory methods to reach empathy and strengthen social (GS) and historical (GH) literacies. Discussion, writing, critical reading, and primary source analysis will be integral to this class. Class sessions will include whole- and small-group discussion where active listening and thoughtful participation will be taught and required. Students will be encouraged to explore their own conceptions of race and how those ideas shape knowledge and experience. Ultimately, this is a course that will weave data, theory, and story as we encourage students to move toward empathy through comprehensive understandings of race. This course therefore examines race as both deeply personal and structural.
SOC 208NVisual Representations of the Middle East in the US and Middle East3
This course is an introduction to the visual culture, the visual experience and sociological/historical context of images of the Middle East in the US mass media. The focus of the course will be on reading and interpreting visual images (painting, photography, film, illustration, digital media) and analyzing the larger social and cultural forces that shape the production, distribution and consumption of these media forms. We will explore these issues by focusing on a series of images/case studies located in a specific historical context, allowing us to introduce some of the major movements in visual culture, explore the social contexts of these images, and the ways in which the visual experience shapes our social lives and personal identities. Course evaluations will include exams, writing assignments, a class blog, and a final art project. The course examines visual representations of cultures over time, providing students with the artistic, historical, political and sociological context of their production. This integrative framework will enable students to understand how the creation of visual media and its interpretations both influence and are influenced by social context. It will introduce students to integrative thinking by providing them with interpretive techniques of the social sciences and the arts to increase their powers of visual analysis so that they can discuss an image's medium, composition, style and iconography. The course will examine the ways that the arts can be an expression of cultural values, helping students to comprehend the hegemonic aspects of image composition, production, exhibition and distribution. The course will explore the social milieus in which media is created, often depicting stereotypical images that poorly represent the complexity of the myriad cultural groups in the Middle East.
African countries are generally considered to be among the poorest countries on the planet. On average, their incomes are low as are their levels of education. Poor African countries also have a range of peculiar characteristics that negatively affect their living standards. As these standards decline, western audiences have increasingly been targeted by aid organizations seeking donations to help the African cause. Despite growing awareness of African poverty, however, few attempts have been made to locate discourses on African poverty within historical, theoretical, and contemporary contexts. This course provides an overview of the key issues foundational for understanding the dynamics of poverty and human development in African societies. It examines various academic conceptualizations of poverty, the dimensions of poverty in African countries, as well as poverty¿s various causes and consequences. The course also intends to highlight the complex nature of the social, political, and economic causes of African poverty and their implications. Furthermore, it will identify the important challenges to poverty alleviation in African societies, the effectiveness of foreign aid, and alternative strategies to poverty alleviation. The course will also provide unique opportunities for students to develop a focused understanding of specific issues that affect Africa's socioeconomically vulnerable groups as well as related issues relevant for understanding the dynamics of poverty in specific areas on the continent.
If the United States spends more money on medical care than any other country, why does it rank so poorly on many indicators of health and well-being? Why are there so many and important health disparities across different population groups within the United States? How do our social, economic and political conditions "get under the skin" to affect our health and well-being? These kinds of questions are fundamental in the growing interdisciplinary field of population health and will be addressed in this course. The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the social factors that influence health, such as race, class, gender, social networks, families, and public policies. We will explore the range of broader social factors that influence health, key sociological concepts and theories that help us understand these processes, and methods used to study them. The course will enhance student education and engagement in the area of vulnerable populations and health equity. After taking this course, students will be able to: - Describe the social and economic factors that influence health and disease patterns - Describe and discuss the social and economic factors that contribute to health inequalities across populations, particularly in the United States - Understand the important role social determinants play in the health of individuals and society
SOC 211Health Inequality: Understanding the Geographies of Life and Death3
This course provides an introduction to the concepts, measurement and study of health and health inequality across geographic scales from the international to the local scale, and to study health inequality in diverse contexts (including urban and rural; historical and contemporary). The lectures will cover the nature, causes and consequence of health inequality, temporal trends and spatial patterns in health indicators, and examine associations between socioeconomic and environmental factors and health. The emphasis will be on easily measured and available primary health indicators such as mortality and morbidity, communicable and non-communicable disease as well as mental health. The lab component of the course will focus on finding, critiquing, interpreting and presenting health-related data and will introduce students to fundamental concepts and expand their skill set in both basic statistics (numerical and graphical skills) and mapping (geographic visualization skills). At the end of the course the students will be more familiar with measures of human health and a variety of international and US data resources. The lecture component begins with focus on describing and understanding past, present and future patterns and trends in human health, examining these at the global, national (US), regional (Appalachia) and local (Pennsylvania) scales. The second half of the course includes lectures on the social determinants of health, the ways in which the legal landscape and direct and indirect discriminatory practices can influence health and wellbeing (e.g., around reproductive health, sexuality, and risk-taking behaviors), mental health, and the geographies of access to resources and the geography of exposure to risks. The final lecture will discuss 21st century "Global" health challenges. The parallel lecture and labs provide opportunities for practical learning. The labs are designed to expose students to the use of health data, geographic information systems and basic spatial analysis tools providing them with skills that help them to accurately summarize and report data on health outcomes. Students will learn how to find, critique and use data appropriately to measure and map health outcomes. The labs will be based on sample data sets and case studies that draw on the use and interpretation of a variety of data sets, international, national, and sub-national. Towards the end of the course, students will generate their own community health case study based on the skills they have used during the course.
The objective of Globalization, Technology, and Ethics is to prepare students (especially but not limited to engineering, information sciences & technology, and business students) who are headed into the corporate, NGO (non-profit) or government sectors for the challenges and realities of working in a rapidly globalizing world. This course will encourage students to become leaders in a mobile and diverse transnational workplace and help them to become critical citizens of that world. Through team-centered projects and readings from the social sciences and humanities, students will broaden their understanding of engineering, technology, and culture and then be introduced to how one makes ethical decisions about that world. This course is designed to provide skills, theories and experiences that will help them to be respectful, diplomatic and professional while being able to successfully work with technology in multiple cultures and contexts. Students will understand the relationships and the effects on industry, economics, and the many facets of society in an interdependent global economy. These interrelationships will include the differing impacts on individual countries (winners and losers), the question of responsibilities of use or development of technologies and science (long term verses short term impacts). Students will be able to apply ethical analysis to these and many other issues that professionals face.
SOC 258NIntroduction to Child Maltreatment and Advocacy Studies3
Introduction to the multidisciplinary field of child maltreatment. CMAS (HD FS) 258 Introduction to Child Maltreatment and Advocacy Studies (3) This course will focus on the identification, investigation, service, advocacy, prosecution, and prevention of child maltreatment as well as the treatment of adverse health outcomes for children who have been maltreated. Specific topics include the causes, correlates, and consequences of child maltreatment, best practices for reporting and investigating an allegation of child maltreatment, evidence-based prevention and intervention programs, the Child Welfare System, and relevant legal issues (e.g., termination of parental rights, children's testimony in court, etc.). By definition, this course will detail issues related to the abuse and neglect of children. This material can be difficult to hear, view, and discuss. This course is a required course, and a prerequisite for all advanced courses, for a Minor in Child Maltreatment and Advocacy Studies.
SOC 269Intercultural Dialogue Concepts and Practice1-4
SOC 269 is an immersive experience in small group cross-cultural communication for students who have "international student" status at Penn State. In this class you will study the concepts of facilitated dialogue and how to apply these concepts to think together across borders. In this course, you will learn the nature and value of "activated" participation in a facilitated dialogue, and you will learn the crucial framework of "conflict and collaboration" to add to your mindset as an "activated" participant, which we will refer to as a participator. You will study discourse and rhetoric by examining the stories you hear from others and you will learn to develop your own story-telling abilities. You will engage in this process through participating in cross-cultural conversations twice weekly with your international and domestic peers at Penn State. All dialogues, both through in-class training and practicum, will revolve around both U.S. and international themes, which will often invite conflict and disagreement, as well as political divides and historical legacies. In class, you will learn a set of practices that will allow you to directly engage with these divergent perspectives, and you will practice applying them directly to your dialogues. This course includes 1.5 hours of weekly class time and 3 hours in a weekly course practicum, in which you will use your position as dialogue "participator" (an activated participant) along with your foundational communication skills (introduced in class) to develop and test hypotheses about people, culture, and social conflict according to a Grounded Theory approach. Some of the specific skills you will learn during the will be: designing and delivering open-ended questions, listening actively reflectively, as well as techniques for collaborating with facilitators to co-construct a conversational environment for "thinking together."
This course explores how films reflect (and in some cases attempt to explain, promote and memorialize) the emergence and transformation of global social phenomena. Through course readings, students will become familiar with key texts on globalization produced by social scientists and cultural theorists, and will link those key texts to a diverse array of cinematic representations of various global actors, issues, institutions and processes, as well as historical and theoretical interpretations and debates on globalization. The course introduces students to the work of internationally recognized film directors (for example, Euzhan Palcy, Jia Zhangke, Stephen Frears, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, or Majid Majidi) and studies of globalization (by scholars such as Arjun Appadurai, Guy Standing, Saskia Sassen, John Tomlinson, Robbie Robertson), and asks students to link scholarly perspectives with the visual rhetoric of cinema artists.
SOC 369Foundational Theory and Practice in Small Group Facilitation3-4
This course is an introduction to dialogue facilitation practices in a small group context with a focus on U.S. and international cultural and social issues. In this course, you will learn to recognize the foundational sociological forces that shape human interaction on the family, community, societal, and global levels, and you will understand the essential role of facilitators in rebalancing these forces. You will discover what it means to "think together across borders," and you will have opportunities to think together with "participators" from a multiplicity of social positions, examining and exploring the cultural and structural forces that shape your own and others' perspectives. In this course you will begin to examine your assumptions about US cultures, values, and traditions in relation to global communities around the world. The course includes an embedded practicum, during which you will develop a unique set of communication practices that allow you to effectively lead a small group, cross-cultural dialogue. So you will attend class 4 hours per week and then co-facilitate at least two (and sometimes three) 90-minute dialogues weekly with other students who are enrolled in the class. The participators of these dialogues will be other Penn State students who register for World in Conversation dialogues as well as students who are enrolled at universities around the world (using VTC technology). You will be provided with live coaching and direct feedback to support your development. Some of the specific skills you will learn during the in-class component of the course will be how to create a conversational environment for "thinking together", engaged Socratic inquiry, asking open-ended questions, active reflective listening, techniques for disrupting communication patterns, and working with a partner facilitator. In this course you will learn to see and think as a facilitator. You will develop the ability to "seek truth" in relationship to complex social issues by inviting a multiplicity of perspectives to be explored and how to work with and navigate both debate and dialogue. You will understand the elements that make a dialogue more than just an exchange of ideas, and you will learn to excavate the complex mindsets and worldviews of "participators" that bring nuance and thoughtful inquiry into topics that are often divisive (and thus, examined too simplistically). By the end of this course, you will be proficient in all of the key mindsets and communication practices of a dialogue facilitator.
SOC 376Introduction to Human Service Organizations3
This course is designed to acquaint students with the role of various social agencies. The course covers the history of social service organizations in the United States, with an emphasis on the growing diversity of theory and practice in human service settings. Focus is placed on understanding social service organizations through the conflict, symbolic interactionist, and functionalist perspectives. Other perspectives are also considered. The course centers on the kinds of social services that exist and their operation in society. An emphasis is placed on ethical behaviors and best practices in human services professions, with the goal of preparing students for work in social service settings.
Theory and research concerning deviant behaviors and lifestyles viewed as significant departures from a group's normative expectations. SOC (CRIMJ/CRIM) 406 Sociology of Deviance (3) (BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.Sociology of Deviance focuses on the theory and research in social construction of social norms, the violation of norms, and social reaction to the violation of norms. The course focuses on the role of social structure and power in the definition of deviance, on structural, cultural, and social psychological processes involved in deviant behavior, and the dynamics of social reaction to deviance. The course includes some content focusing on criminal deviance, but also emphasizes non-criminal deviance, as well as the role of social movements and social change in constructing and contesting deviance definitions. CRIMJ/SOC/CRIM 012 and CRIM/CRIMJ 250W are prerequisites. This course may be counted toward the credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Crime, Law, and Justice. It would fulfill one of the 400-level requirements in the 'Crime' component of the major. The course may also be counted toward credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Sociology for students with the Deviance and Criminology specialization.
Examines how and why issues related to social, economic, and political inequality among racial groups influence various aspects of US society. Explores the impact of racial inequality and discrimination on individual and collective identity, with a special focus on minoritized racial and ethnic groups. Students will unravel the key components of structural inequality and systemic discrimination by seeking answers to questions like, What are the long-term effects of unequal access to resources on contemporary racial inequalities in the US? How have sociopolitical factors affected the ways in which white, African, Latinx, and other American minority groups interact over time? Is affirmative action the best policy for correcting social inequalities? How does immigration status affect the socioeconomic outcomes of Hispanics? Are Native-Americans adequately represented in US political institutions? Why are there racial inequalities in income levels?
This course examines the global impact of education on human rights, health, economic development, political mobilization, religion, and environmental sustainability. The education revolution has significantly changed the world's population from one largely unschooled to one mostly schooled in just the last 150 years, yet the full impact of this major transformation is only now emerging through social science research. The course will explore, at both the individual and societal levels, how education changes many dimensions of global society in both positive and negative ways. It also focuses on the use and misuse of educational programs in social and economic development worldwide through Non-Government Organizations (NGO's), national governments, and multinational agencies.
SOC 411Racial and Ethnic Diversity and the American Family3
This course will explore the nature and determinants of racial and ethnic variation in family processes in the United States. HD FS 416 (SOC 411) Racial and Ethnic Diversity and the American Family (3) During the last several decades, the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has changed dramatically. At end of the 20th century, non-Hispanic whites accounted for less than 75 percent of the U.S. population. While blacks remained the largest minority group, there were nearly as many Hispanics as blacks, and the number of Asians was increasing. Population projections indicate that by the middle of the 21st century, Hispanics will make up nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians together will comprise an additional fourth of the population. The last several decades have also brought significant changes in family life in the United States, including declining rates of marriage, a rising age-at-marriage, an increase in cohabitation, and a dramatic rise in the proportion of births outside of marriage. While these trends in family life have been experienced by all racial and ethnic groups, there is substantial variation in family patterns by race and ethnicity. The course will build on other courses in social inequality and the family. The course does not overlap with any existing courses in the Department of Sociology or with courses offered in other relevant departments.This course will explore the nature and determinants of racial and ethnic variation in family processes in the United States. The student will read articles from major sociological journals and learn to extract major points and issues. He/she will learn to synthesize and critique various arguments on major issues in the field. The student will acquire skills in summarizing and evaluating arguments in essay form. He/she will also develop oral presentation skills. Final grades for the course will be based on class participation, a brief (approximately 5 pages) paper, a group presentation, a midterm examination (essay format) and a final examination (essay format). The course is not required for the Sociology minor or major. However, the course can count as one of the 400-level elective courses in Sociology for the Sociology minor, B.A. or B.S.
This course provides an in-depth look at theories of crime and examines influential empirical studies designed to these theories. CRIMJ 413CRIMJ (CRIM/SOC) 413 Advanced Criminological Theory (3)Advanced criminological theory is intended to extend and deepen students' knowledge of core ideas in criminology. The course has four main emphases: 1) learning major schools of thought in criminology, 2) learning about the uses and construction of theory, 3) learning about approaches to integrating criminological theories, and 4) exploring how criminological concerns are grounded in and interrelated with core issues in sociology. The course is offered once a year with 50 seats per offering. CRIMJ/CRIM/SOC 012 is a prerequisite. Students will be evaluated on research or analytical papers, written assignments on course readings, and/or in-class essay-style exams. This course may be counted toward the credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Crime, Law, and Justice. It would fulfill one of the 400-level requirements in the major. The course may also be counted toward credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Sociology for students with a Deviance and Criminology specialization.
SOC 414Criminal Careers and the Organization of Crime3
Research on and theory of criminal careers and crime organizations, emphasizing recruitment and disengagement; offender characteristics and lifestyles; policy implications.
Seminar format course in which sociological theory and research are applied to current race policy issues. The course examines a number of different aspects of race relations and public policy, including the social and biological constructs of race, historical race policy, modern race policy, affirmative action, criminal justice and other issues regarding race.
Social demographic perspectives on fertility, mortality, morbidity, migration, population density, demographic transitions, social mobility, family, the aged, and minorities.
This course aims to inform students about the causes, history, and consequences of homelessness in the United States, with a focus on ethnographic accounts of the day to day lives of people experiencing homelessness. It also examines barriers to exiting homelessness, and existing programs and housing policies for addressing homelessness. We will critically evaluate these studies and explore how public policy could address these issues. Throughout this course, you will become more knowledgeable about homelessness in the United States and gain the tools to participate in the ongoing debate about how to ameliorate homelessness and the problems that surround this issue.
An in-depth examination of family policy. HD FS (SOC) 440 Family Policy (3)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course is designed to provide an in-depth examination of family policy. Students will identify and critically analyze major issues, controversies, and policies that affect families. Attention will be devoted to recognizing both intended and unintended consequences of family policies and understanding policy challenges and trade-offs. Students will gain an understanding of how policies are shaped by both facts and myths, as well as our values. Students will examine historical and current trends in family patterns (e.g., divorce, women's labor force participation, nonmarital births) to understand the implications they hold for individuals, families and society. Students will gain an awareness of the social, economic, historical, legal, and political contexts within which family policies exist and are proposed. Although the main focus is on U.S. family policy, some time will be devoted to learning about family policies in other countries. We will learn about several specific family policies in-depth (e.g., welfare), but a final goal is to help students develop a general way of looking at family policy that they can then use to understand any issue of family policy that unfolds throughout their lifetime. This course will foster thoughtful reflection and critical thinking, writing skills, research skills, and skills of synthesis, logic, and argument. Course goals will be accomplished through course readings, writing assignments, lectures, class discussions, debates and group projects. Mastery of course material and student evaluation are assessed in several ways. Students will take a midterm and final exam that cover lectures, class discussions, and assigned readings. Two papers are also required. The first paper is based on an analysis of newspaper articles dealing with family policy issues that students will collect and relate to course materials. The second paper is a literature-based analysis of a family policy in a society outside the United States. Class participation is also essential and its evaluation will be based on a combination of class attendance, contributions to class discussions, participation in group debates and projects, and an oral presentation of the final paper on a non-U.S. family policy.
This class examines theories of U.S. immigration and immigrant adaptation, effects of immigration, and policy. SOC 445 U.S. Immigration (3) The United States has long been known as a nation of immigrants. People have come for all sorts of reasons, including economic opportunity, political asylum, and religious freedom. Immigration continues to be a fundamental source of demographic and social change today. However, the nature of the changes brought about by immigration will depend on the pathways immigrants and their descendants take as they incorporate into American society. This course is designed to introduce students to theories of immigration, patterns of immigrant incorporation, immigration's impact on the U.S., and political debates about immigration issues.Topic to be discussed include: -Why do immigrants come to the U.S.? -In what kinds of communities do immigrants live? -What is the economic impact of immigration on U.S. society? -What is the social impact of immigration? -Are new immigrants assimilating? -What are the problems with current immigration policies and what are the alternative approaches to reform?
This course provides an introduction to the concepts, measurement and study of inquality across spatial scales and in diverse contexts. SOC 451 Health, Disease & Society (3) (GS) Health is not simply a matter of biology, but involves a number of factors that are social, cultural, political, geographic, and economic in nature. This course will focus on the critical role social factors play in determining or influencing the health of individuals, groups, and the larger society. The emphasis in the course is on the social patterning of health and disease with focusing on variation by age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, socioeconomic status (income, education, occupation) and neighborhood/community. There will be selected coverage of the "sociology of medicine" with some discussion of medical power and knowledge, the organizational structure of health care, and the experience of illness and such issues such as stigma.
SOC 457Jewish Communities: Identity, Survival, and Transformation in Unexpected Places3
Examines the global array of smaller Jewish communities that have flourished outside the main urban centers of Jewish settlement. JST 457 / ANTH 457 / SOC 457 Jewish Communities: Identity, Survival, and Transformation in Unexpected Places (3) (US;IL) This course addresses an understudied aspect of Jewish experience. It aims to expand our understanding of Jewish communities by focusing on those that are, alternatively, small, situated in out-of-the-way places, culturally outside the Jewish urban mainstream, or embedded in a larger society with markedly different values and traditions. These communities often constitute the points-of-contact between Jews and non-Jews, and in so doing sometimes transform Jews, non-Jews, and the relationships among them. Other such communities constitute experiments in Jewish lifeways and provide mainstream Jews with pilot projects for potential social and cultural change. This course will explore the significance of small, little-known, idiosyncratic, and anomalous Jewish communities on Jewish history and culture, and draw on them to instruct students on the social and cultural processes of small or unusual communities generally. The communities studied will be located both in the U.S. and elsewhere in which Jews have lived as a minority community during modern times. The course will look at the founding, growth, and decline of such communities and at their social processes and institutions. It will explore how to understand and analyze such communities, which vary from one part of the world to another. The social world of Jewish communities, large and small, is a core interest of Penn State's Jewish Studies Program. This course will complement the current offerings in Jewish Studies, strengthening the social, cultural, and contemporary perspectives available in the Program. It will provide students with an opportunity to explore individual experience and micro-level processes among Jews, and to study the dynamics of identity and survival. It will complement the current offerings in Sociology and Anthropology by affording an opportunity to focus on community-level social processes and by adding a course on contemporary Jewry. The course will integrate knowledge from a variety of sources and fields, promote intercultural understanding, and meet US and IL requirements. Materials will be interdisciplinary, and will include ethnographies, sociological studies, population studies, histories, and personal narratives. They will include primary texts, creative works, and scholarly analyses. The assignments will be structured to facilitate preliminary experience in independent analysis, library research, or field research. The course will be offered approximately once a year. Enrollment will be limited to 30 students in order to promote active, engaged learning. Evaluations will be based on short papers and outlines that will prepare students for their final, term papers.
In this course you will learn about how crime levels vary across different types of neighborhoods and about the role of different socioeconomic, demographic, spatial, and informal social control aspects of neighborhoods in promoting or buffering crime. We will address the patterns, concepts, theories, methods, and policies related to communities and crime. We will critically assess theory and research on the effects of neighborhood structure and social organization on crime, focusing in particular on the classic and contemporary thinking on poverty, social disorganization, disorder, collective efficacy, institutional trust, cultural heterogeneity, segregation, immigration and how they affect criminal behavior and victimization. Through readings, class discussions, and activities, writing projects, and presentations, you will be given the opportunity to reflect on what you are learning and to apply the theoretical concepts to real-life examples and to new contexts in and out of the class.
Examines religion through a sociological lens to understand the religious aspects of society and the social aspects of religion. Covers concepts, theories, and research on such topics as the major religious traditions, rituals, culture war, cults, conversion, secularization, atheism, religious violence, religious nationalism, church-state relations, and civil religion. Students will have opportunities to identify multiple ways that religion is present in social life; articulate the social aspects of religion using sociological theories; explain the ways that religion interacts with other social processes such as demographic change, gender, politics, and social movements; and evaluate different types of data about religion. Students will use empirical evidence, dialogue, and self-experience to foster an informed perspective on the social significance of religion.
Explains how communities solve local problems by partnering with researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Demonstrates how such partnerships help communities tackle complex problems by clarifying their causes, identifying solutions, leveraging resources, and mobilizing stakeholders to act. Examines community-engaged research projects - such as collaborative efforts to revitalize neighborhoods, reduce crime & violence, empower youth, house the homeless, improve health, and promote sustainability - that address local manifestations of broader societal problems. Students will collaborate with community partners to design, implement, and evaluate problem-solving projects. Provides students with skills and knowledge needed to collaborate productively in community-engaged problem-solving initiatives.
Law and society studies the social origins of law and legal systems; occupational careers, and decision-making of legal officials. SOC (CRIMJ/CRIM) 467 Law and Society (3) (BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.Law and society teaches students' knowledge of key concepts and core ideas about the role of law in society. The course will cover the basics of key legal philosophies, major social science theories of law and society, research in law and society, the structure of the legal profession, and vital contemporary issues involving the role of law in society. CRIM/CRIMJ 113 and CRIM/CRIMJ 250W are prerequisites. The evaluations methods will include written assignments on course readings, and essay-style exams. Law and Society may be counted toward the credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Crime, Law and Justice. It would fulfill one of the 400-level requirements in the 'Law' component of the major. The course may also be counted toward credits required for the B.A. and B.S. in Sociology for students with the Deviance and Criminology specialization.
SOC 469Advanced Theory and Practice in Small Group Facilitation3-4
This course will build on your knowledge of the foundational facilitator mindsets and communication practices that you developed in SOC 369. You will refine your ability to re-balance the sociological forces that shape human interaction on the interpersonal, societal, and global levels. You will learn to use all of the facilitator communication practices with intuition and nuance in a variety of conversational contexts. The fundamental difference between the foundational facilitation course and facilitation on the advanced level is that SOC 469 will prepare you to make choices about how to apply the dialogue methodology in contexts in which the topics are not explicit and thus, the stakes of the conversations are less immediately apparent (though still present). The structure of this course is parallel to SOC 369: you will complete an imbedded practicum during which you will lead small group dialogues with a focus on both U.S. and international cultural and social issues. At the advanced level, dialogues will not start with a singular focus but will instead begin with an exploration of the "sociological addresses" of the "participators." You will develop the ability to ask questions that seamlessly access information while also catalyzing a conversation. You will then work with the sociological themes that are revealed in the conversation, identifying relevant questions that will invite group members to examine society. This course meets for four hours per week, in addition to which you will also co-facilitate at least three 90-minute dialogues weekly. The participators of these dialogues will be other Penn State students who register for World in Conversation dialogues. You will be provided with live coaching and direct feedback to support your development throughout the semester.
Introduces basic methodological concepts and statistical tools commonly used for conducting sociological research. Students will gain experience using research methods and statistics to answer research questions by going through a scientific research process that includes hypothesis testing; graphically and numerically describing distributions; statistical inference, and practical data analysis techniques like bivariate linear regression; analysis of variance; and multiple linear regression. Encourages students to be informed consumers of quantitative research who understand how statistics are computed and interpreted, and how they can be used to address key social science questions. Students will also gain basic familiarity with a statistical software package.
Theory, methods, and practice of qualitative data collection, including observation, participant observation, interviewing; supervised projects in natural settings.
Explore the causes and consequences of conflicts between work, family, and other life commitments, and how these may be resolved. LER 472 Work-Life Practices and Policies (3)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. The interdisciplinary field of work-family and work-life developed as a result of middle-class women's entry into the labor force, a movement that generated conflict between family and paid work commitments. Overall, the course addresses the reasons the field developed, relevant theoretical perspectives regarding the issues, and related problems as well as proposed solutions at both the public and private sector levels. The overarching objectives of the course are to expand students' understanding of conflicts between work and family commitments, and how these might be resolved through private and public sector initiatives. Specifically, the course concerns how individuals, families, and organizations interact to help hinder the achievement of balance between work and life commitments, and relevant effects on those involved. The changing demographics of the family, laws and trends around working time, father and mother time with children, the expanded need for elder care, work-life programs such as flextime, concierge services, paid parental leave, part-time careers, paid time-off banks, and the role of unions, corporations and government legislation are covered. The course attempts to link the likely future needs of students to broader trends in society and how balance could be achieved at the level of individuals, families, other stakeholders in the community, and for society as well. Fields of research relevant to the course include labor studies, women's studies, Industrial/Organizational psychology, the sociology of work and of family, and child development. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation, through two in-class examinations, and through a final written or oral project providing a chronology and analysis of an adult's work-family history.
This course is designed to discuss and analyze masculinity in contemporary societies. The focus in this course will be in examining the way masculinity is constructed and the different ways that boys and men (and girls and women) learn to experience it. Various areas of social structure and social interaction will be explored such as historical origins of masculinities, theoretical constructions of masculinity, media, work, subcultures, violence/mass shootings, and sexualities. Students will develop critical thinking skills as sociologists, and as members of society. Additionally, students will be encouraged to think about the way their gender has been shaped and shapes their own lives.
In this course, we will center and explore the theoretical contributions of feminists of color, contemporary experiences of women of color in the U.S., and how the category women of color has been mobilized as a social and political identity. In our analyses, we will pay close attention to the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, and other categories of power. Topics include cultural representations, intimacy/families, sexual violence, economic justice, the carceral state, and immigration. Lastly, we will examine strategies of resistance and solidarity for social change to support marginalized communities.
