Sociology

Identification of the distinctive elements of sociological perspectives on society. Readings confront classical and contemporary approaches with key social issues that include power and authority, culture and communication, poverty and discrimination, social change, and popular uses of sociological concepts.

Please note you must also register for a discussion section to take this course. 

AI in Society takes a social science approach to understanding the rise of AI and its uses in various educational, cultural, and work settings. The course will train students in how to critically engage with AI in these settings through a variety of means, including by conducting interviews with workers experiencing AI-driven workplace changes, auditing algorithmic systems for bias, and analyzing AI representations in popular culture. Assessments include a closed-notes midterm exam and a creative final project involving an original audit study. Students with any level of technical experience are encouraged to enroll. 

Gender and sexuality are fundamental to how we understand ourselves as individuals – but have you thought about them as kinds of social inequality, similar to race, class, or disability? In this course, students will learn about gender and sexuality as elements of social context which are fundamental to our social worlds, as aspects of social organization, as key forms of inequality (heterosexuality/homosexuality, cis/trans or nonbinary, men/women), and as forces that shape health. Developing skills to analyze how gender and sexuality shape health includes mastering some key concepts at the intersection of social science, gender and sexuality studies, and health sciences as well as learning some content about social aspects of a range of health problems.

This course, which has no prerequisites, may be of particular interest to students majoring in sociology, anthropology, or gender and sexuality studies, as well as to students interested in health science careers (note, our engagement with questions about inequality and social structure speak to topics on the MCAT).  A key element of course design is that all graded writing is done *during* class time (of course with appropriate disability accommodations), both with the goal of structuring AI-free writing and helping students manage their workload.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries. Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels. Selected topics: individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.

Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission Required for all Sociology majors. Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions.

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. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

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. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

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. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

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. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

Discussion section for SOCI UN3203: Power, Politics, and Society

Discussion section for SOCI UN3203: Power, Politics, and Society

Discussion section for SOCI BC3248: Race, Ethnicity, and Education in the US

Discussion section for SOCI BC3248: Race, Ethnicity, and Education in the US

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 Determinants 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” Determinants of Health. This shift is in recognition that it is the underlying structures (laws, material infrastructure) that impact 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. An analysis that focuses upstream reveals that government policies and social structure are at the core of health disparities. Through the lens of New York City and its health systems, this course will cover a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in housing and homelessness, biases in medical institutions, and the unconscious bias that lead providers to have racialized perception of an individual’s pain tolerance. In addition to exposing these inequalities the course will also provide innovative solutions that seek to mitigate these barriers including: home visiting programs, medical respite programs for homeless patients and food as medicine in health care systems. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through individual writing, and class discussion. The course revolves around important readings, lectures, and podcasts that illustrates how one’s class position and the color of one’s skin can influence the access to healthcare one has as well as their experience of it.

Power, Politics, and Society introduces students to the field of political sociology, a subfield within sociology that is deeply engaged in the study of power in formal and diffuse forms. Using sociological theories and current events from the US and around the world, this course is designed to help students analyze their social worlds, and understand the significance of the old adage, “everything is political.” 

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.

Transnationalism, Citizenship, and Belonging covers the myriad ways that transnationalism is experienced in both South to North and South to South migrations. Transnationalism and its contenders, globalization and nationalism, will be placed within a broader discussion of belonging based on sociological theories of citizenship, politics of exclusion, and boundary-making. 

Examines the ways sociologists have studied the field of medicine and experiences of health and illness. We cannot understand topics of health and illness by only looking at biological phenomena; we must consider a variety of social, political, economic, and cultural forces. Uses sociological perspectives and methods to understand topics such as: unequal patterns in health and illness; how people make sense of and manage illness; the ways doctors and patients interact with each other; changes in the medical profession, health policies and institutions; social movements around health; and how some behaviors but not others become understood as medical problems. Course is geared towards pre-med students as well as those with general interests in medicine, health and society.

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. 

As novel technologies become increasingly enmeshed in our daily lives—and even intertwined with human consciousness—it is all the more necessary that we reflect critically on the social relations that produce, are embodied in, and are in turn produced by these technologies. This course will provide students an opportunity to begin unveiling those social relations via a wide-ranging introduction to the growing interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies. While course readings will especially emphasize sociological approaches, we will also draw on the history and philosophy of science, film, and literature. Questions we will explore include: How are social categories and hierarchies embedded in the structure and function of new technologies? What is the relationship between technological change and social transformation? Have scientific knowledge and technology liberated us, or could they do so in the future?

Drawing on sociological theory and disability studies scholarship, this course explores how societies construct meanings of disability, normalcy, and difference, and how these constructions influence social institutions, policies, and everyday interactions. Through critical analysis of key institutions—e.g. education, work, and the criminal justice system—students will examine how ableism operates at structural levels while also exploring disability rights movements and forms of resistance and agency. Many of these issues will be examined through an intersectional lens, analyzing how disability intersects with race, gender, class, and other identities to create complex experiences of privilege and marginalization. 

Prerequisites: One introductory course in Sociology suggested. Examination of factors in gender identity that are both universal (across time, culture, setting) and specific to a social context. Social construction of gender roles in different settings, including family, work, and politics. Attention to the role of social policies in reinforcing norms or facilitating change.

In this class we will examine the politics, organization, and experience of work. In the first three weeks we will get our bearings and consider some basic (but difficult!) questions about work, including: What counts as work and who counts as a worker? How important are our jobs to our survival in the world, and what makes for a good or bad job? In this section you will start thinking about and analyzing your own work experiences. In weeks four and five we will read what sociology’s founders had to say about work, and consider some of the important shifts to work that accompanied industrialization. Then we will turn to 20th century transformations, including the rise of the service economy and worker-customer relations, changes in forms of managerial control and worker responses to these changes, globalization, and the proliferation of precarious work. Finally, we will turn to examining gender, class and race in labor markets and on the job, paid and unpaid reproductive labor, the construction of selves at work, and the job of fashion modeling. Throughout the course we will examine how the sociology of work is bound up with other key institutions including gender, race, class, and the family.

The increasingly rapid development of technologies including artificial intelligence has raised fear of widespread automation. These fears are not new – rather, they have emerged frequently in the past during periods of economic slowdown and technological growth. This course will examine the relationship between work, power, and technology. It will discuss how, and how much new technologies are changing the way people work, if these changes in technology will lead to a replacement of workers or a change in the types and standards of available work. We will look at the potentials and limits of technology in the workplace, with a particular focus on power: understanding why technologies are designed, who they are used by, and for what purposes. We will put these technological developments in the context of long term changes in the American and global economy, and look at what the future may hold, and how we can imagine new futures for ourselves.

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.

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 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.

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. 

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.

This seminar examines social stratification through the lens of Asian American experiences. Social stratification refers to the unequal distribution of valued resources, such as income, wealth, education, and power, and the processes by which these resources are allocated across individuals, groups, and generations.

We will explore how the broader patterns of inequality and mobility in the United States intersect with the histories and social positions of Asian Americans. Topics include income and wealth inequality, educational attainment and occupational mobility, immigration and inter-generational mobility, racialization and stereotypes (e.g., the “model minority" and “perpetual foreigner" narratives), gender and family dynamics, neighborhood segregation, and political and civic incorporation. We will also consider how globalization, transnational migration, and the future of work shape opportunities and constraints for different Asian American communities.

This seminar is a continuation of the course from last semester (SOCI3988). It will culminate in you completing your thesis. Whereas last semester you concentrated on posing interesting, important, and feasible research questions, as well as how to conduct data collection, this semester you will learn how: to troubleshoot challenges and ethical issues in collecting data (i.e. data collection), translate your data into findings and conclusions (i.e. data analysis), orient your findings in an existing conversation (i.e. revising a literature review and introduction/hook), and write to persuade your audience and readers of your argument (i.e. write persuasively). 

Instructor permission is required to join the course. Please note this course is the second part in a two part sequence, you must first take SOCI 3988 before you can enroll in SOCI 3989. 

The Gender/Sexuality Workshop is a forum for Ph.D. students interested in social science topics broadly related to gender and sexuality. In particular, it will provide an opportunity for students share and refine their own works in progress by getting feedback from other students in the workshop. The workshop is geared towards students conducting empirical work, from ethnographies and interview-based projects to archival research to other kinds of critical quantitative work that attempts to theorize gender/sexuality. We will take an expansive view of gender and sexuality as a mode of classifying people and a structure that organizes social life, including work that uses gender/sexuality as a lens to interrogate other social structures such as empire, capitalism, science and knowledge, states and governance, and more. The G/S Workshop will meet biweekly (every other week) over the course of Spring 2025.

The goal of the course is to introduce students to foundational texts, theories, and research in the field of sociology of education. In particular, we will focus on the role of schooling in social stratification and social reproduction in the United States.

This course is organized by broad topic and theme. We will begin with a discussion of the purpose of schooling before moving into a discussion of some theoretical perspectives on the role of schooling in our society. Next, we will discuss inequality in schooling across multiple socio-demographic categories, including social class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion (in addition to inequality at the intersection of multiple social categories). By the end of this course, you should have a strong foundation in research on education’s role in society.

Markets are inescapably entangled with questions of right and wrong. What counts as a fair price or a fair wage? Should people be able to sell their organs? Do companies have a responsibility to make sure algorithmic decisions don’t perpetuate racism and misogyny? Even when market exchange seems coldly rational, it still embodies normative ideas about the right ways to value objects and people and to determine who gets what. In this seminar, we will study markets as social institutions permeated with moral meaning. We will explore how powerful actors work to institutionalize certain understandings of good and bad; unpack how particular moral visions materially benefit some groups of people more so than others; examine the ways people draw on notions of fairness to justify and contest the market’s distribution of resources and opportunities; and consider who has agency to build markets according to different normative ideals. Most course readings are empirical research, so we will also critically discuss how social scientists use data and methods to build evidence about the way the world works.

The course is designed to introduce PhD students in Sociology to the basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, analyzing, and reporting interview and observational data. The readings and practical exercises we will do together are designed to expand your technical skillset, inspire your thinking, to show you the importance of working collaboratively with intellectual peers, and to give you experiential knowledge of various kinds of fieldwork.

Mostly, though, students will learn how to conduct indictive field-based analyses. There are many versions of this model, including Florian Znaniecki’s “analytic induction,” Barney Glaser and Anselm Straus’ “grounded theory,” John Stuart Mill’s system of inductive logic, the Bayesian approach to inference in statistics, and much of what computationally-intensive researchers refer to as data mining. This course will expose students to ways of thinking about their research shared by many of these different inductive perspectives. Remember, though, that all of these formulations of analytic work are ideal types. The actual field, and actual field workers, are often far more complex.

For that reason, this course focuses not merely on theory, but also, and fundamentally, on practice. While some skills like producing a code book or formulating a hypothesis can be developed through reading and reflection, the field demands more nuanced skillsets that can only be attained by trial and error. How do you get an honest answer to a painful or embarrassing question? How do we know that the researcher interviewed enough people? Or spent enough time in the field? Or asked the right questions? Or did not distort the truth? My hope is that by the end of class you will have done enough fieldwork to have arrived at a good set of answers, and to begin developing the ability to communicate your answers to others.

A note on intellectual parentage: The particular approach to training in this course is based on a qualitative bootcamp developed by Mario Small for Harvard’s Ph.d cohorts. Other methods courses focus on particular technical skills rather than analytic frames, or merely on empirical work itself, rather than secondary literature on method. This is one way to think through analytic training. We will try it out together.

This course introduces students to the literature on globalization and the diffusion of culture and institutions. It covers literatures in sociology and political science as well as some anthropology and history. This course will not discuss economic, financial, or migratory globalization in depth. In the first part, we will survey the major theories of the global diffusion of culture and institutions: world polity theory, global field theory, the policy diffusion literature, etc. In the second part, we discuss select topics, such as the role of local power relations in diffusion processes or the consequences of diffusion for patterns of cultural similarity and difference across the world.

The course focuses on the U.S. labor market but will also draw research from other settings. The readings are organized by topic and highlight the extent and urgency of the issue and along the lines of gender, race/ethnicity, nativity, and class. Topics include the patterns and trends of inequality among highly-educated workers, and underlying demand and supply-side mechanisms that explain the observed patterns. Attention will be paid to student pathways through higher education to the labor market, including the school-to-work transition process. The course will also cover topics of intergenerational and intragenerational mobility processes among highly-educated workers.