Selected Course Objectives

In all of the courses I teach what I attempt to do is have students recognize their own creativity, and the brilliance that we all possess. I tend to design my courses in a thematic fashion. In all the courses there will be a search for ways of bringing  critical analysis and attentive expression to what we learn.  We will practice ways in which to bring sociological awareness to public venues and contexts.  What does this mean? You will be invited to experiment with unusual forms of presentation, writing and application of readings to projects. 

For instance in Alternative Culture students are asked to inquire about alternative ways in which we might design alternatives to schooling,economy, governance, medicine and other alternative lifestyles and current ways of thinking and believing.  We inquire to discover the possibilities imagining different patterns of  social and cultural life to orient ourselves towards flexibility of mind,body and spirit .  I attempt to get students to be optimistic about the inventiveness of human beings and the capacity to transform their lives and the lives of others. 

In  the Social Policy course we center our attention on social justice and change.  I want students to think about social reform through ideas of justice and equity.  In both courses we focus our attention to a historical sociology of distribution of the goods and services of a society as well as the political sociology of policy and law. 

In Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Symbols and Representation and Visual Sociology courses,  students discover the power and the influence of symbols, of representation and  visual presentation. Students study the ways in which social and individual imagination is influenced by the cultural things and processes that bind us together in a society and in groups.   Students in these courses actually work on projects using photographs, magazine images, or even film and written essays to explore the issues of representation. I encourage students to work with media projects as options to written responses.  The importance of the codes in our lives are the underlying themes of study in these courses. 

In the courses, Environmental Sociology,- Technology and Society, - Society and Nature, and Urban Sociology  students explore the ways in which our cultural or social ideas about nature and human power intersect. Students study not only the crisis but also study how we socially construct 'crisis and  responses to troubles'.    We explore how social ideas influence the ways we think about food, animals,land, technology and the ways in which these ideas are coded and used by different groups.  These courses are thematically connected in that we explore the social uses and cultural definitions of space, land and land usage.    In these courses we pay attention to the ways by which industrial society  view the relationship between techniques of control, and the rationalization of space.

Course Descriptions 

• Soci 30100   TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY  In this course we examine the co-dependence, co-influence, co-production of technology and society and culture. We study the ways our sensibilities are mediated by our technological environment and ecologies. We explore the social shaping of technology, why things bite back (the intended and unintended consequences of technologies) and the gender relationships of technologies.

• Soci 20400  SOCIOLOGY OF SYMBOLS AND REPRESENTATION This course is a study of the networks of meanings and significance that people, sharing the same language or set of symbols, have produced to organize their lives and to accomplish their purposes or goals.   What is the basis for social reality?  How is “what, where how and whom” believed and designated as author or authority related to the community in which we live?.

• Soci 30700 SOCIAL POLICY. “Social policy involves the study of changing, maintenance or creation of living conditions that are conducive to human welfare. Thus social policy is that part of public policy that has to do with social issues.”( Wiki)Social policy aims to improve human welfare and to meet human needs for education, health, housing and social security.SOCIAL POLICY asks what is to be done to secure basic structural changes in American society.

•  Soci 24700 ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY  This course involves examining social factors that cause environmental problems, the social impacts of these kinds of troubles, and efforts to solve the them. We also will examine the relationship between susceptibility to environmental problems and how different communities and ‘ecologies’ are defined by the new kinds of troubles. 

• Soci 22200 VISUAL  SOCIOLOGY Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life. It is the use of sociological imagination to tell a story visually about social phenomena such as gender, social status, cultural forms and other social interactions in spatial contexts. Students learn to create sociological portraits, to study sociological landscapes, to do studies on socials traumas and to study signs and representations. Students utilize digital cameras and other recording technology to collect data. They use visual media to communicate sociological understanding to professional and public audiences. Visual sociology includes the study of all kinds of visual material and the visual social world, and uses all kinds of visual material in its methodologies.

• SOCI 311 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY  Social Theory explores the complexities and interprets the nature of social behavior and organization.  The course contrasts major schools of thought and compares their epistemological, methodological and theoretical orientations.The primary goal of the course is to enable students to develop a strong familiarity with social theory, its developments, controversies and contemporary issues. Students should come away from the course with an appreciation of the major social theorists, their theories, their primary concerns, and the various issues social theories pose for social welfare practice today. From this course, students should be better able not only to trace the contours of social theory as it has developed but to evaluate social theories in terms of how they do or do not help us negotiate the relationship of theory to practice and address the issue of the relevance of social theory to contemporary social welfare problems in a changing world.