Anthropology

• ANTH-A 103 Human Origins and Prehistory (3 cr.) Humans, their biological evolution, and their archaeological history through stone and metal ages.

• ANTH-A 104 Culture Anthropology (3 cr.) A survey of cultural and social processes that influence human behavior, using comparative examples from different ethnic groups around the world, with the goal of better understanding the broad range of human behavioral potentials and those influences that shape the different expressions of these potentials.

• ANTH-E 300 Culture Areas and Ethnic Groups (3 cr.) An ethnographic survey of a selected culture area or ethnic group.

• ANTH-E 329 Indians in the U.S. in the Twentieth (3 cr.) Position of the American Indian as an ethnic minority, including health, education, economy, and political consideration of proposals to change the Indian’s status.

• ANTH-E 445 Medical Anthropology (3 cr.) A cross-cultural examination of human biocultural adaptation in health and disease, including biocultural epidemiology; ethnomedical systems in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease; and sociocultural change and health.

• ANTH-E 455 Anthropology of Religion (3 cr.) Critical evaluation of current approaches to the analysis of religious myth, ritual, and symbolism. Problems in understanding religious beliefs of other cultures. Modern development of the anthropology of religion.

• ANTH-P 360 Prehistory of North America (3 cr.) Introduction to antiquity of the American Indian, principal culture areas, and field methods and techniques incident to recovery of archaeological data and materials.

• ANTH-E 105 Culture and Society (3 cr.) Introduction to the comparative study of contemporary human cultures and social processes that influence behaviors.

Undergraduate

• SOC-R 320 Sexuality and Society (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. The study of social issues and problems related to human sexuality using sociological perspectives. Examines diversity with regard to in sexual practices among various cultures and categories of people. Includes sociological research about topics such as the use of sex in the media and advertising, social controversies surrounding sexual orientation, and the sexualization of children.

• SOC-S 100 Introduction to Sociology (3 cr.) Offered every semester. Introduction to the concepts and methods of sociology with a focus on American Society as well as global issues.

• SOC-S 101 Social Problems and Policies (3 cr.) Offered every semester. Provides an introduction to sociology through an in-depth study of major social problems; explores the policy implications of the general sociological perspective and of sociological knowledge of particular problems. Problems include population, drug use, science and technology, and poverty.

• SOC-S 125 Introduction to Social Services (3 cr.) Introduction to the historical and contemporary professional social work in terms of its purpose and goals, values and ethics, and stated mission to enhance human well-being. 

• SOC-S 252 Methods of Sociological Research (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor Offered every Fall Semester. This course is required for majors and is recommended to be completed in Sophomore or Junior year. An overview of methods and techniques used by sociologists for gathering and interpreting information about human social behavior. 

• SOC-S 308 Global Society (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Multinational corporations, new information technologies, and international trade have made the world increasingly interdependent.  This course considers how business, technology, disease, war, and other phenomena must be seen in a global context as affecting national sovereignty, economic development, and inequality in resources and power between countries. 

• SOC-S 314 Social Aspects of Health and Medicine (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Survey of the nature of health care systems. Patient and professional role behavior are explored, as well as the characteristics of different health care settings.

• SOC-S 316 The Family (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Exploration of the diversity of family forms, norms and meanings over time and across social contexts. Considers the interrelationship between families and other social institutions; investigates family formation and processes of social reproduction within families as they are shaped by race, class, gender, and sexual orientation; examines stability and change in families in response to shifting social and cultural contexts.

• SOC-S 317 Social Stratification (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Functioning and maintenance of systems of social stratification in local communities, societies, and the global context. Correlates and consequences of social class position and mobility.

• SOC-S 328 Juvenile Delinquency (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Legal definition of delinquency, measurement and distribution of delinquency. Causal theories considered for empirical adequacy and policy implications. Procedures for processing juvenile offenders by police, courts, and prisons are examined.

• SOC-S 333 Sociology of Moral Panics and Fear (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Moral panics involve disproportionate media coverage of phenomena thought to threaten social values using exaggerated claims of harm and problem size. Explores rumors, urban legends, fear, and moral panics and their effect. Emphasis on the contemporary era and considers panics and fear of crime, teenagers, the media, and other topics.  May not be repeated as HON-H 399 with the same topic.

• SOC-S 335 Race and Ethnic Relations (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Relations between racial and ethnic minority and majority groups; psychological, cultural, and sociological theories of prejudice and discrimination; comparative analysis of diverse systems of intergroup relations.

• SOC-S 336 Society and Technology (3 cr.) P: Three hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. An exploration of the interplay between technology and society.

• SOC-S 338 Sociology of Gender (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Exploration of the research and theories explaining gender roles in contemporary societies. Emphasis on defining gender roles; tracing their historical development; considering their implications for work, marriage, parenting, and equality in society. Includes cross-cultural comparisons.

• SOC-S 340 Social Theory (3 cr.) Offered every spring. P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor.  Junior standing recommended. Sociological theory, with focus on content, form, and historical development. Relationship between theories, data, and sociological explanations.

• SOC-S 344 Sociology of Childhood (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of the instructor. Analysis of childhood as a structural form and children as social agents who contribute to societal reproduction and change. Considers the relation of childhood to other social institutions and children’s contributions to society historically and cross-culturally. Examines how social policies in education, family, work, and the media affect children’s lives.

• SOC-S 352 Public Sociology (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology, or consent of instructor. Instruction in making sociological knowledge public-accessible to a non-expert or lay audience. These may include a podcast, video, a social media campaign, a series of blog posts, a letter to the editor, an infographic, and so on.

• SOC-S 355 Statistics for Social and Health Professionals (3 cr.) P: 3 hours of Sociology and Math-M 118 or Math-M 119 or equivalent. Offered every fall. This course is a required statistics course for all sociology majors. An introduction to statistical analysis including probability, sampling, levels of measurement, descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis, and multiple regression as used in sociology and other health-related professions.

• SOC-S 360 Topics in Social Policy: (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor, but some courses have additional prerequisites. Offered as needed; Variable topics in social policy. Can only be repeated for credit 1-4 times with different topics.  Recent topics include: Society and Technology (3 cr.); Drugs and Society (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor); Family Violence (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor); Health over the life course (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor); Sustainability and Human Trafficking (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor); Mental Illness (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor); Body and Society (P: 3 hours of sociology or consent of instructor)

• SOC-S 361 Cities and Suburbs (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Introduction to theory and research on the changing scale and complexity of social organization (urbanization), the quality of life in urban areas, demographic and ecological city growth patterns, and public policy concerns in contemporary urban society.

• SOC-S 364 Drug Abuse in Society (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. This class introduces students to the sociological aspects of drugs and alcohol use (and abuse). It seeks to give students a sense of why and how drugs came to be characterized as they have. We try to answer such questions as: why people use, and perhaps in some cases abuse, so many of the available substances beyond those prescribed to them by the medical profession.

• SOC-S 366 Sport and Society (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Explores the institution of sport from a sociological point of view, including sports as an agent of socialization, sports in everyday life, race, class, and gender and sports, and sports as an institution.

• SOC-S 368 Family Violence (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. This course is intended to be an advanced level sociology course which explores the definitions, issues, controversies and social policies regarding family violence in society.

• SOC-S 369 The Body and Society (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or instructor approval. An examination of the impact of social structure and institutions shaping bodies (our physical bodies), embodiment (how we experience our bodies), and our perception/reception of bodies from conception through death.

• SOC-S 372 Health over the Life Course (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor This course introduces and examines the basic principles which guide growth and development and the health of individuals across the lifespan, from the prenatal period through senescence. The course presents methodological, conceptual and substantive issues necessary for understanding and evaluating empirically based information about growth, development and health at different stages of life and from different academic perspectives.

• SOC-S 374 Sociology of Mental Illness (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. This course will take a sociological view of issues of mental health and illness with an eye to understanding the varying perspectives from other disciplines such as psychiatry, psychology, and social work. We will consider social factors in the cause, incidence, and prevalence of problems, social responses to illness, and the social organization of treatments.

• SOC-S 375 Issues in Human and Social Service Policy (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours in sociology or instructor approval. Examination of theories in sociology relevant to human/social services delivery, as well as the ethical and professional issues of workers in human/social service agencies with clients from diverse populations. Application of sociological concepts, theories, and methods as they apply to the management, practice, and evaluation of human/social service agencies.

• SOC-S 382 Environmental Sociology (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. This course explores the relationship between society and the environment. The course analyzes the development of environmental sociology, the historical domination of nature in western society, and the existing sociological approaches analyzing the environment-society relationship. May not be repeated as SUST-S 341.

• SOC-S 383 Cognitive Sociology (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. An examination of how perceiving, focusing, classifying, signifying, timing, remembering, and prospecting can be understood as sociological as well as psychological processes.

• SOC-S 399 Decoding Disney: Sociology of the Disney Universe (3 cr.) P: Three credit hours in sociology or consent of instructor. Students must apply to join this course.  This course examines sociological topics and methods using the Disney universe as the focus of inquiry. Course topics may include issues of diversity, emotion work, the presentation of the self, and others based on the expertise of the instructor of record. The course includes spending time at Walt Disney World.

• SOC-S 419 Social Movements and Collective Action (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of Sociology or consent of instructor) This course examines the sociological understandings of social movements, social change, and collective action. The course introduces theories and concepts about social movements and collective action emphasizing historical and cultural context, movement formation, organization, resource mobilization, participation, influence, and collective action. Focuses on movements in the United States and around the world struggling over issues such as race, gender, sexuality, poverty, civil rights, and environmentalism.

• SOC-S 420 Topics in Deviance: Variable Topics (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Variable Topics.

• SOC-S 431 Topics in Social Psychology (3 cr.) P: 3 credit hours of sociology or consent of instructor. Various topics in sociological social psychology. May be repeated up to 3x with variable topics. 

• SOC-S 445 Deviant Behaviors and Social Control (3 cr.) P: 3 cr hours of Sociology or consent of instructor. Nature and dynamics of deviant behavior. The course includes theories of deviance, social control and forms of deviant behavior. Forms may include drug use, sexual behavior, personal violence, crime and delinquency and mental disorders.

• SOC-S 470 Senior Seminar in Sociology (3 cr.) P: Completion of core requirements including SOC-S 252, SOC-S 340, SOC-S 355 and Senior standing, and completion of a minimum of 18 credit hours in sociology or consent of instructor. Capstone course in sociology for the B.A. or B.S. degree. Students conduct research projects under faculty supervision, make presentations, discuss sociological issues, prepare for applying to graduate school and for seeking employment with a sociology degree after graduation.

• SOC-S 494 Field Experience in Sociology (3 cr.) P: Junior or Senior standing and consent of instructor. Completion of 18 or more hours in sociology including SOC-S 252, SOC-S 340 and SOC-S 355. Faculty-directed study of aspects of sociology based on field experience, in conjunction with directed readings and writings. Specifically, each intern is required to participate in 120 hours on site, keep a daily journal that is given at regular intervals to the faculty sponsor, and write an analytic paper dealing with the field experience.

• SOC-S 495 Individual Readings in Sociology (arr. cr.) P: Junior or Senior Standing and Consent of instructor. Prior arrangement required.

• SOC-S 475 Applied Sociology (3 cr.) Applied Sociology is the study of how sociology is applied and used in the real world.  In this course, we will examine case studies of applied sociological research and advocacy in various settings and locales. This course will expose you to the various agencies and organizations where sociologists often work.  We will examine the various kinds of research and assistance applied sociologists do in the community.