ENROLL

Serena Zabin

In the first years of the United States, men and women of all races had to learn what it meant to live in the nation created by the U.S. Constitution. This class will focus on the American attempts to form a more perfect union, paying close attention to the place of slavery, Native dispossession, sexuality, and politics during the years 1787-1840. Throughout the course we will examine the ways in which the politics and protests of the early Republic continue to shape the current United States.

Annette Igra

Brendan LaRocque

This course will examine the history of religious beliefs, practices, and community, European imperialist and Orientalist ideologies, and the socio-political implications of anti-colonial nationalist movements in India. We will address questions including: How did the European powers justify their imperial undertaking through specific concepts of race, religion, science and technology?  How did the imperial experience impact Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, and caste, race, and gender in India?  In the post-colonial period we will examine the powerful growth of low-caste and anti-caste social movements and political parties, as well as religious nationalist, pluralist, and secular mass-movements.

David Tompkins

This course will grapple with the difficult and complicated phenomenon of the genocide of the Jews of Europe. We will explore anti-Semitism in its historical context, both in the German-speaking lands as well as in Europe as a whole. The experience of Jews in Nazi Germany will be an area of focus, but this class will look at European Jews more broadly, both before and during the Second World War. The question of responsibility and guilt will be applied to Germans as well as to other European societies, and an exploration of victims will extend to other affected groups.

Lori Pearson

This course will trace the history of Christianity from its origins in the villages of Palestine, to its emergence as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and through its evolution and expansion as the world's largest religion. The course will focus on events, persons, and ideas that have had the greatest impact on the history of Christianity, and examine how this tradition has evolved in different ways in response to different needs, cultures, and tensions--political and otherwise--around the world. This is an introductory course. No familiarity with the Bible, Christianity, or the academic study of religion is presupposed.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Anthropology is the study of all human beings in all their diversity, an exploration of what it means to be human throughout the globe. This course helps us to see ourselves, and others, from a new perspective. By examining specific analytic concepts—such as culture—and research methods—such as participant observation—we learn how anthropologists seek to understand, document, and explain the stunning variety of human cultures and ways of organizing society. This course encourages you to consider how looking behind cultural assumptions helps anthropologists solve real world dilemmas.

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 110.WL0 (Synonym 67044)

Elizabeth H Trudeau

Most of us “go to work” at some point in our lives. Whether it's a summer job, a side hustle or a life-long career, people invest a lot of our time and energy into planning to be, preparing for, and operating as members of the “workforce.” Work shapes all aspects of people’s lives from their ability to provide for basic needs to their personal and social identities. In industrialized societies work is often characterized by membership in complex formalized organizations. However recent history and sociological theory raise a lot of questions about how work and organized labor may be changing. How do we define success? Who makes the most money and why? Have recent events like the pandemic changed the way we approach work? This course will cover classic and contemporary research into social organizations and the shifting landscape of work in post-industrial society. Topics will include the rise of complex for profit and nonprofit organizations, inequality in the workplace, sex work and illicit labor, and recent trends in the labor force. 

Colin McLaughlin-Alcock

Gentrification, a process of neighborhood-level class displacement, whereby devalued urban areas are redeveloped into trendy hubs, is one of the predominant modes of urban change in the twenty-first century. In this class, we will first develop a general understanding of how gentrification works. Then we will direct ethnographic attention to explore how gentrification takes place in specific contexts around the globe. We will examine how social boundaries, power relationships, and identities are reorganized through gentrification; how class and racial disparity are produced and enforced; how the social meaning of place impacts neighborhood change; and how communities have resisted gentrification.

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above

Elizabeth H Trudeau

The FBI receives praise and criticism for shutting down Backpage.com. A conspiracy theory about online furniture company Wayfair goes viral. Jeffrey Epstein is arrested. What do these disparate events have in common? They are all recent incidents that raise the question: when and how will the United States respond to the crime of human trafficking? In the past several decades activists and governments around the world have been increasingly focused on addressing human trafficking. However, there is often disagreement about the best way to understand and attempt to prevent a crime that is tied to a complex host of social, political, and cultural forces. This course will cover how human trafficking is defined, measured and studied as well as the cultural and political factors that affect how it occurs and how we try to respond to it. Topics will include labor, sex and organ trafficking, globalization, migration and inequality, and the criminalization/decrminalization of sex-based labor. 

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above.