Schedule of assignments and readings
INTRODUCTION: THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
February 18
February 23
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.
Lareau, Unequal Childhoods, chaps. 1-2.
REPRODUCING SOCIAL INEQUALITY
February 25
Lareau, Unequal Childhoods, chaps. 3-5.
March 2
Lareau, Unequal Childhoods — select one of chaps. 6, 7, 8 or 11, then chap. 12.
March 4
Post first draft of Essay #1.
CONCEPTUALIZING CLASS: MARX vs. WEBER
March 9
March 11
Essay #1 due.
March 16
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.
March 18
Post first draft of Essay #2.
RACE & RACISM: THE PROBLEM OF THE 20th (AND 21st?) CENTURY
March 23
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.
March 25
Essay #2 due.
March 30
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.
March 31-April 4: SPRING BREAK
THINKING INTERSECTIONALLY
April 6
Collins, Patricia Hill and Sirma Bilge. 2016. "What is Intersectionality?" and "Intersectionality and Identity." Pp. 1-30, 114-135 in Intersectionality. Malden, MA: Polity.
April 8
Post first draft of Essay #3.
Kao et al., The Company We Keep, chaps. 1-2.
April 13
Essay #3 due.
Kao et al., The Company We Keep — select either of chaps. 3-6, then read chap. 7.
April 15
Post first draft of Essay #4.
IDEOLOGY AND POWER
April 20
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."
April 22
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
April 27
Durkheim, Emile. 1951 [1897]. "Anomic Suicide." Pp. 241-276 in Suicide. New York: Free Press.
April 29
Work on developing research paper topics in class.
May 4
Metzl, Dying of Whiteness.
May 6
Post research paper proposal.
Metzl, Dying of Whiteness.
May 11
CLASS CANCELED: Attend office hours this week.
Post first draft of Essay #5.
May 13
Work on research papers in class.
CHANGING THE WORLD
May 18
Essay #5 due.
Read excerpts in class:
Morris, Aldon. 2021. "The Power of Social Justice Movements." Scientific American, February 3.
May 20
Last day of class.
Thursday, May 27 (last day of study period)
Research paper due. E-mail it to me by 5pm.
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