Ph.D. Sociology

CHV 560 Interdisciplinary Legal Studies (also

SOC 528

) Law in American universities is typically taught in professional degree programs. But increasingly, law has a life in the disciplines outside the law. This seminar introduces graduate students to interdisciplinary legal studies by tracing the history and trajectory of a new academic discipline of law. It traces the intellectual history of legal studies and its current state in the social sciences and humanities. Course examination will range across American, comparative and international topics. The seminar is aimed at PhD students who are specializing in a law-related field in their PhD programs and at PhD students with law degrees.

POL 573 Quantitative Analysis III (also

SOC 595

) The course builds on the material covered in POL571 and 572 and introduces a variety of statistical techniques including Bayesian methods and causal inference. The goal is to show how to apply these methods to data analysis in political science research. The course is particularly useful, but not exclusively, for students planning to take the Quantitative part of the General Exam in Formal and Quantitative Analysis at Level III. Prerequisite: POL572 or equivalent.

POP 501 Survey of Population Problems (also

SOC 531

) Survey of past and current trends in the growth of the population of the world and of selected regions. Analysis of the components of growth and their determinants. The social and economic consequences of population change.

POP 502 Research Methods in Demography (also

SOC 532

) Source materials used in the study of population; standard procedures for the measurement of fertility, mortality, natural increase, migration, and nuptiality; and uses of model life tables and stable population analysis and other techniques of estimation when faced with inaccurate or incomplete data are studied. Prerequisite: 571 or instructor's permission.

SOC 500 Applied Social Statistics Rigorous introduction to inferential statistics focusing on probability theory as a means to understand the Central Limit Theorem. Course goes on to cover Stata and such topics as descriptive statistics and visualization of data, classical statistical inference, basic non-parametric tests, analysis of variance, correlation, and the basics of multiple regressions. First in a two-course sequence for Sociology graduate students.

SOC 501 Classical Sociological Theory The origins of sociology, with a particular emphasis on the major works of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.

SOC 502 Contemporary Sociological Theory Systematic treatment of the main concepts of sociology and the major tendencies of contemporary sociological theory.

SOC 503 Techniques and Methods of Social Science Systematic study of research methods in social science, with emphasis on empirical procedures.

SOC 504 Advanced Social Statistics In-depth coverage of the multiple regression models, including the theory underlying it, methods and software used to estimate it, methods to diagnose and correct problems, and methods to extend it. Topics include: maximum likelihood estimation, bootstrapping and robust estimation, diagnosing and correcting for multi-collinearity, non-normal, heteroscedastic, and auto-correlated errors, and handling non-continuous outcomes and hierarchical data. The second in a two-course sequence.

SOC 505 Research Seminar in Empirical Investigation Preparation of research papers based on field observation, laboratory experiments, survey procedures, and secondary analysis of existing data banks.

SOC 506 Research Ethics & Scientific Integrity (Half-Term) (also

POP 506

) This course is concerned with the professional obligations of social science researchers. Topics covered include teaching and mentoring relationships, human subjects protections, professional codes of ethics, data management, peer review, collaboration, scientific misconduct (fraud, fabrication and plagiarism), conflicts of interest, and scientific agenda-setting. The course is intended for graduate students in Sociology and the Office of Population Research.

SOC 507 Topics in Comparative, Regional and Political Sociology (Half-Term) (also

CHV 507

) Covers sociological research in particular regions, comparative analyses of particular topics, and issues in political sociology.

SOC 508 Proseminar This course introduces sociology graduate students to the discipline of sociology and to departmental faculty. Each week members of the faculty lecture about their subfield of sociology; students are provided with required readings in advance of each meeting. Student work is evaluated by class participation and attendance.

SOC 513 Political Sociology (Half-Term) Systematic orientation, review of the literature, and critical analysis of theory and business.

SOC 520 Topics in Sociology of Culture (Half-Term) Topics in the sociology of culture, which deals with analysis of meaning, communications, symbol systems, the arts, media, science, religion, language, and related topics.

SOC 521 Sociology of Culture (Half-Term) This mini-seminar surveys the field, exposing you to major research traditions, themes, and specific areas of study. The course evolves around several debates in the sociological study of culture: relative autonomy vs. dependence, structure vs. agency, instrumentalism vs. expressionism, part vs.whole, synchronic vs. diachronic analysis. These debates are explored against the theoretical and methodological developments of the field.

SOC 523 Seminar in Sociogenomics (Half-Term) The cost of genotyping is dropping faster than Moore's law is bringing down the price of computing power. As a result, genetic data is pouring into social scientific studies, raising old debates about genes and IQ, racial differences, criminal justice, political polarization and privacy. The goal of this course is to provide foundational knowledge of social genetics research, provide a survey of the core concepts within the subfield, and give students the basic tools they need to pursue research in this line of inquiry.

SOC 525 Sociology of Gender (Half-Term) (also

GSS 526

) This course offers an introduction to theory, perspectives, and empirical research in the Sociology of Gender. The course covers a combination of canonical and contemporary work, consider traditional and current debates, and will include local and global material. This is a reading and writing intensive class.

SOC 526 Cultural Analysis (Half-Term) This course journeys through some key methodological and theoretical issues in the sociological analysis of culture. The questions of how one analytical approach is accomplished and whether it is justifiable form the core of discussions. We survey a selective set of analytical approaches to studying culture, or culture in social actions. We interrogate their epistemological, theoretical, and methodological foundations. This is not necessarily a technique-teaching course, but we cover some basics of useful analytical techniques to mapping the structures and processes of culture.

SOC 527 Religion and Public Life Presentation and critical discussion of research in progress by participants. Focuses on the use of social scientific methods in the study of religion and on applications of recently published work about religion and society. Includes an emphasis on religion and public policy in the U. S. and in comparative perspective.

SOC 530 Sociology of Education (Half Term) Poor students lag academically behind their more advantaged peers, and explanations for this achievement gap are hotly debated. While some have pointed to the quality of education offered in public schools as the primary culprit, others have drawn attention to the role of out-of-school factors in creating and exacerbating these gaps. In this course, which is a graduate-level introduction to the sociology of education, we make sense of competing explanations of pre-K-12 educational performance through a sociological lens, and evaluate the possibilities for and barriers to closing achievement gaps.

SOC 540 Topics in Economic and Organizational Sociology (Half-Term) Covers econiomic and organizational sociology, which deals with research on formal organizations, economic institutions, social networks and related topics.

SOC 540A Topics in Economic and Organizational Sociology (Half-Term) The analysis of institutions is central to sociology, but it comes in many forms. This seminar considers contrasting perspectives in the analysis of institutions in the state and the economy as well as in civil society and the public sphere. Throughout, we ask in what ways institutions matter and how they develop and change. Although much of the work is historical, recent changes in institutional structure and problems of institutional design also receive attention. The role of law is a particular focus.

SOC 541 Economic Sociology (Half-Term): Social Ties, Culture, and Economic Processes An introduction to economic sociology seen not as a subordination of sociology to economics but as the sociological explanation of economic phenomena. It focuses on alternative accounts of phenomena that most specialists have explained using economic concepts and theory. In particular, it seeks sociological explanations of production, consumption, and distribution, and transfer of assets. After a general orientation to economic sociology as a whole, the course explores economic activities in an unconventionally wide range of settings including households, informal sectors, gift economies, and consumption.

SOC 542 Complex Organizations (Half-Term) Introduction to the study of complex organizations. Course goals are (1) to familiarize students with classic and recent organizational scholarship; (2) to enable students to apply critical insights from this research to empirical analyses involving organizations; (3) to provide a start on key readings for students planning to take a comprehensive examination in this field. Topics covered include: bureaucracy/pre-bureaucratic forms; contributions of the Carnegie School; economics of organizations & organizational networks; environments and organizational ecology; institutional theory; organizations/inequality; corporations/social change.

SOC 544 Sociology of Poverty (Half-Term) This course examines the history, causes and consequences of U.S. poverty. It explores strategies for addressing it from the colonial era to the present. It covers the major theoretical explanations sociologists and other scholars have advanced to explain the persistence of poverty in the U.S. including family structure, parenting, residential segregation, labor markets, safety nets, and the criminal justice system. Within each topic area, students are introduced to a range of interventions aimed at alleviating poverty.

SOC 545 Advanced Sociological Fieldwork I (Half-Term) Research practicum in which students write field notes on their experiences in and observations of intensive field placement. Discussions focus on fieldwork roles and relations, observing and describing, writing field notes, field interviewing, ethical issues, and data analysis. Fieldwork and extensive field notes required. Readings focus on reaching hard to reach populations, ethical dilemmas, ongoing relations with IRB, interviewing and journal publishing.

SOC 549 Workshop on Social Organization A year-long seminar in three foundational topics in modern economics and organizational sociology: bureaucracies, markets, and informal networks. Specific topics will vary from year to year. Pre-generals students will take the course for credit; advanced students in the economic and organizational sociology cluster will use the workshop as a forum to present their work for criticism and critique the work of others. Students receive one term¿s worth of credit for attending for the whole year.

SOC 550 Topics in Ethnography (Half-Term) Covers ethnography and microsociology

SOC 551 Ethnographic Tradition (Half-Term) This course is the first in a sequence designed to train graduate students in ethnographic methods. This class introduces students to classical and contemporary works of ethnography that exemplify the contributions this method has made to sociological theory. Weekly readings are drawn from texts on topics such as the social ecology of the city, the study of the self, race and ethnicity, organizational ethnography, disasters, and social movements. Students who select to do original research papers over the course of the entire sequence begin their preparation in this class.

SOC 552 The Logic of Ethnographic Methods (Half-Term) This mini seminar, the second in a four-series sequence on ethnographic methods, covers basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, and analyzing ethnographic data. The seminar will address the central questions facing ethnographic research in sociology today, such as What are the roles of induction and deduction in qualitative research? Can qualitative research verify hypotheses, or only generate them? Do ethnographies have a small-n problem? Is true replicability possible in ethnographic or interview-based research? Open to graduate students or undergraduates with permission of the instructor

SOC 553 Fieldwork Methods (Half-Term): Time and Space in Ethnographic Fieldwork This seminar deepens expertise about the logic and application of ethnographic methods by exploring the epistemological and technical issues surrounding ethnographic research, including in-depth interviewing, participant observation, community mapping, and other related strategies. This seminar is most successful when used to advance projects in the early or midway stages of implementation. Alternatively, the course may be used to practice qualitative techniques through exercises not necessarily related to a student¿s long-term research agenda.

SOC 556 Microsociology: Social Interaction (Half-Term) Where does social order come from? Theorists since the 1960's have tackled this question from a micro perspective, looking not to grand institutions or structures for an explanation, but to the routine, practical, interactional aspects of everyday life. This course delves deeply into several branches of microsociology - including symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis - with an emphasis on both the theoretical aspects of each school, and their practical application to microsociological study.

SOC 557 Technology Studies (Half-Term) This half-semester graduate course introduces you to basic concepts, theoretical frameworks, and empirical studies in the sociology of technology. The course draws largely on science and technology studies, a hybrid field with tools optimized for the study of science and technology in social context; it also draws related materials from recent literature in the sociology of work, technology and organizations, media studies, anthropology, and communication.

SOC 560 Topics in Social Stratification (Half-Term) Covers social stratification and social inequality, including courses on race and gender

SOC 562 Race & Ethnicity (Half-Term) (also