Schedule of assignments and readings
INTRODUCTION: THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
August 31
September 2
Mills, C. Wright. 1959. "The Promise." Pp. 3-24 in The Sociological Imagination. New York: Grove Press.
Pirtle, Whitney N.L. 2020. "Racial Capitalism: A Fundamental Cause of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Inequities in the United States." Health Education & Behavior 47(4): 504-508.
REPRODUCING SOCIAL INEQUALITY
September 7
Post Essay #0 on Moodle.
Lareau, Unequal Childhoods, chaps. 1-3.
September 9
Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: chaps. 4-5 and 12, plus select one of chaps. 6, 7, 8 or 11.
Dowling, Emma. "What is Care?" Pp. 21-46 in The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? London: Verso.
CONCEPTUALIZING CLASS: MARX vs. WEBER
September 14
September 16
Post first draft of Essay #1.
September 21
Weber, Max. 2005 [1925]. "Class, Status, Party." Pp. 151-162 in Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity, edited by Stephen Kalberg. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Beamish, Rob. 2019. "Class." Pp. 30-33 in Core Concepts in Sociology, edited by J. M. Ryan. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.
September 23
Essay #1 due.
RACE & RACISM: THE PROBLEM OF THE 20th (AND 21st?) CENTURY
September 28
DuBois, W.E.B. 2007 [1903]. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." Pp. 1-7 in The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Oxford University Press.
DuBois, W.E.B. 1996 [1899]. Chaps. 1-2, 16, 18 in The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
September 30
Post first draft of Essay #2.
October 5
"A Fight Over Zoning Tests Charlottesville's Progress on Race," New York Times, August 1, 2021.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2014. Chaps. 1-2, 6 in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mueller, Jennifer C. and DyAnna K. Washington. 2021. "Anticipating White Futures: The Ends-Based Orientation of White Thinking." Symbolic Interactionism, June 29. DOI: 10.1002/SYMB.563.
October 7
Essay #2 due.
THINKING INTERSECTIONALLY
October 12
Collins, Patricia Hill and Sirma Bilge. 2016. "What is Intersectionality?" and "Intersectionality and Identity." Pp. 1-30, 114-135 in Intersectionality. Malden, MA: Polity.
October 14
Post first draft of Essay #3.
October 18-22: FALL BREAK
October 26
Essay #3 due.
Kao et al., The Company We Keep, chaps. 1-2.
October 28
Kao et al., The Company We Keep — select either of chaps. 3-6, then read chap. 7.
November 2
Post first draft of Essay #4.
IDEOLOGY AND POWER
November 4
Karl Marx, The German Ideology: A. Idealism and Materialism (1846). Read from "First Premises of Materialist Method" through "History: Fundamental Conditions."
Karl Marx, The German Ideology: B. The Illusion of the Epoch. Read "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas."
November 9
Essay #4 due.
Read excerpts in class:
Weber, Max. 1999 [1922]. Selections from "Domination and Stratification." Pp. 28-46 in Max Weber: Sociological Writings, edited by Wolf Heydebrand. New York: Continuum.
Weber, Max. 2005 [1922]. "The Bureaucracy (I): External Form." Pp. 194-198 in Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity, edited by Stephen Kalberg. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
SOLIDARITY AND ANOMIE
November 11
CLASS CANCELED: Attend office hours this week.
Durkheim, Emile. 1951 [1897]. "Anomic Suicide." Pp. 241-276 in Suicide. New York: Free Press.
November 16
Post research paper proposal.
Metzl, Dying of Whiteness.
November 18
Metzl, Dying of Whiteness.
November 23
Post first draft of research agenda essay.
Discuss research agendas in class.
November 25: THANKSGIVING
CHANGING THE WORLD
November 30
Morris, Aldon. 2021. "The Power of Social Justice Movements." Scientific American, February 3.
December 2
Research agenda essay due.
December 7
Last day of class.
Post first draft of essay #5.
Sunday, December 12 (last day of study period)
Essay #5 due. E-mail it to me by 5pm.
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