Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• CAS SO 770: Topic for Spring 2025: Teaching Workshop
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: For Advanced Methods in Social Networks - Students should have taken a course in the fundamentals of social networks. - Topics seminar that takes in-depth look at a social issue. May be repeated for credit as topics change. Two topics are offered Fall 2021. Section A1: Meritocracy. This course critically evaluates the concept of "meritocracy," its origins and contemporary adoption as an ideal worth striving for. What would a true meritocracy look like, what are its societal implications and what social processes may stand in its way? Section B2: Advanced Methods in Social Networks. Course covers applications of common advanced methodologies in the analysis of social networks like blockmodeling, ERGM, topic modeling and HLM for ego networks. Focus will be applications of methodologies analyzing small and medium size network data. Topic for Spring 2022, Section A1: The Craft of Theorizing Research. Research projects are like gems that need polishing and the craft of polishing them to uncover a theoretical contribution can partly be learned. This intensive course is designed to help participants polish their gems-in-the-making and sharpen their emerging contributions. The seminar is primarily designed for doctoral students who have already collected and/or analyzed data. The common denominator for participants is that they be engaged in research projects reliant on qualitative or quantitative data (e.g., archives, interviews, field observations, and surveys) and be willing to share with the class a draft analytical memo, paper, or chapter from their research.
• CAS SO 800: Student Editorial Interns Practicum
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: currently enrolled in Sociology graduate program. - Students get familiarized with day-to-day practices of running an academic journal, including the overall workflow, including initial evaluation of submitted manuscripts, selecting and inviting reviews, evaluating reviews and editorial decision-making. Also assist in other tasks, such as post-publication promotion of articles through social media, organizing virtual discussion forums and connecting authors to classroom instructors.
• CAS SO 803: Seminar: Gender Stratification
  Considers how the social production of gender contributes to various forms of gendered inequalities in employment, the family, dating markets, media representation, etc., with a special emphasis on how race, class, sexuality, and disability mediate the process.
• CAS SO 804: Seminar: The Family
  Explores the rise of "modern" families and the plurality of contemporary family forms and processes including gay and lesbian families and new reproductive technologies. Particular attention to social and economic inequalities and their implications for family life. Also offered as GRS AA 804.
• CAS SO 808: Seminar: Ethnic, Race, and Minority Relations
  Formation and position of ethnic minorities in the United States, including cross-group comparisons from England, Africa, and other parts of the world. Readings and field experience.
• CAS SO 818: Medical Sociology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - Sociological factors in physical and mental illness as they operate in the community, hospitals, and interpersonal relations. Current research on selected topics in medical sociology; contributions to sociological theory and their practical application. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS SO 820: Graduate Study in Women and Social Change in the Developing World
  Studies women in nonindustrial countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Stresses empirical research, theory, and methodology. Comparisons among regions and with industrial countries important. Focus on sex segregation, female labor force participation, migration, fertility, family roles, and women and political power.
• CAS SO 834: Seminar: Mental Illness
  Sociology and social psychology in study of incidence and prevalence of mental illness, organization of treatment institutions, doctor-patient relationships, and community psychiatry.
• CAS SO 837: Seminar: Sociology of Culture
  Sociology of culture in the twenty-first century. Focuses on the connection between the mind and culture. Examines the interdependence between culture, society, and individuals, and how belief, faith, knowledge, symbol, ritual, and the like both produce and are products of social organization.
• CAS SO 838: Seminar on International Migration
  Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - The course will explore key themes in international migration. It will emphasize connections between current topics in immigration, and sociological theories that explain immigrant pathways, mobilities, and outcomes. Students will engage in analytical memo-writing that make these links, and write a final term paper. Throughout, the course will emphasize how the intersection of inequalities--of legal status, gender, race and class--shape immigration processes. Effective Fall 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS SO 839: Seminar: State Building and Failure in the Developing World
  Considers the political significance of failed and fragile states in the developing world in the post-9/11 era. Students analyze historical patterns of state formation and its relevance in contemporary society.
• CAS SO 840: Seminar: Comparative Political Cultures
  Explores the "deep cultural" level behind the daily conduct of politics. A theoretical framework relying upon Tocqueville and Weber is developed and then applied to unveil the political cultures of the United States, Germany, England, Russia, China, Japan, and Mexico.
• CAS SO 848: Culture, Markets, and Inequality
  This seminar examines commerce as a cultural process, focusing on cultural production and consumption practices in fields like fashion, music, and bodily goods and services. Traces the cultural construction and maintenance of gender, race, and class inequalities in markets.
• CAS SO 852: Contemporary Debates in Sexualities Research
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120). - Engages sociological debates about sexual identities, politics, and practices. Students consider how sexualities are expressed and regulated through various institutions and how they intersect with race, class, gender, citizenship, and other domains of inequality. Also offered as CAS WS 452. Effective Fall 2023, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU HUB areas: Writing-Intensive, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS SO 859: Deviance and Social Control
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing. - This seminar explores sociological explanations for why and how certain attributes and behaviors are defined as deviant, the consequences of deviant labels, and how rules and sanctions are created and enforced. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Social Inquiry II, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS SO 860: Seminar in Economic Sociology
  Introduction to core theoretical perspectives and debates in contemporary economic sociology (structural/network, cultural, institutional/political, and performativity) with a special attention paid to morality of markets, commensuration and construction of value, money, credit and finance and inequality. Effective Spring 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS SO 883: Gentrification Studies
  This seminar explores the process of urban gentrification from an interdisciplinary perspective, examining the variegated histories, geographies, and sociologies of gentrification globally, thinking through comparative urbanism. It considers definitions of gentrification, how theorizations developed over time, and key concepts.
• CAS SO 890: Seminar: Global Health: Politics, Institutions, and Ideology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., WR 100 or WR 120) - What is global health? Who are the main actors in global health debates? This seminar explores the politics of global health, providing students with sociological tools, concepts, and knowledge to help make sense of conflict in contemporary global health debates. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II, Writing-Intensive Course, Research and Information Literacy.
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  • Research and Information Literacy
  • Social Inquiry II
  • Writing-Intensive Course
• CAS SO 897: Understanding Meritocracy
  Challenges students to sociologically evaluate the concept of meritocracy, its origins, its societal implications, and contemporary adoption as an ideal worth striving for. Reviews empirical research on perceptions around and explanations of social inequality. Explores how beliefs about inequality are mobilized in class and racial conflict and in what ways people's beliefs are or aren't likely to change. Fall term. Effective Fall 2022, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry II and Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Social Inquiry II
• CAS SO 947: DR FIELD CONC
  DR FIELD CONC