Prof. Juan Battle jbattle@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 71600 – Sociological Statistics II {91629}
Wednesdays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

This course will instruct students in file management and the statistical techniques used for the analysis of survey data. Students will further develop their skills in computer programming, file handling, data transformation, index creation, and multivariate statistics. Each student will undertake an individual project and will work on every aspect of the research endeavor from identifying a topic for investigation to writing and presenting a final project. The final project will employ (at least) hierarchical regression analysis with use of interaction terms. The goal of the individual project is for the student to use quantitative research methodologies to develop the core of a publishable paper. For this course, each student will use Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) to analyze a dataset provided by the instructor.

Prof. Hester Eisenstein hester1@prodigy.net
Soc. 83300 – Gender in a Global Perspective {91632}
Thursdays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

In the swirl of contemporary events, there is no way to avoid controversies over gender, race and class, from the role of women military personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to the firing of broadcaster Don Imus for his scurrilous remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

This course is an introduction to graduate work in gender studies. The focus is on women and gender from a global perspective. As Johanna Brenner has argued, for women this is both the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, for the first time in known human history most of the constraints on the options for women have to all intents and purposes been removed. On the other hand, the conditions of life for most women (and men as well) have become increasingly harsh, dangerous, and unforgiving, both in the industrialized countries of the North and the struggling countries of the Third World.

I hope to open up the terrain of gender studies in a way that shows something of the range of approaches that are possible and that introduces some theoretical debates. Given that the existence of gender and women’s studies in the academy is the product of women’s movement activism from the 1960s onward, I have included works that are inspired by activist struggles as well as more conventional case studies. My own current work focuses on the political economy of gender. I take a basically Marxist economic approach to the study of world capitalism, wedded to a feminist analysis that insists on the centrality of gender to economic, social, cultural and political life. Students will be encouraged to construct their own theoretical frameworks as their ideas begin to take shape.

Prof. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein cepstein@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 86800 – Social Construction of Identity {91633}
Wednesdays, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

There are various theories about the ways in which individuals’ identities are formed. They include psychodynamic, psychological, sociological and evolutionary perspectives. This course focuses on the social determinants of identity formation. It explores identity as a dynamic process and a political process. While not dismissing other models, the focus of the course will frame self, culture and society as interactive.

Using research work across disciplines, and literary sources such as novels and autobiographies, we will consider how the “public” world of social institutions such as the family, religion, work organizations, the political sphere and media connect with individuals’ notions of “who they are” and what they may become. Variations by gender, class, race nationality and ethnicity will be considered as well as mechanisms of social control from the subtle to the most obvious and coercive.

In the course we will acknowledge the multiplicity of selves women and men may acquire in post-industrial society. We will study the personal and master narratives they tell and hear. We will consider how powerful “others” determine the minds, hearts and psyches of individuals, and also look at individuals’ resistance and agency in determining and preserving their identities.

Included in the course will be sections on theories of the self, the sociology of emotion, cultural sociology and impact of social movements and organizational change on personality, and the crafting of selves from literature and popular culture.

Prof. Stuart Ewen drstu@bway.net
Soc. 86800 – The Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality {91641}
Wednesdays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

Through primary and secondary readings, and employing a range of visual media, the seminar is designed to extend a critical history of dominant ideas. We will look at the relationship between stereotyping as a persistent social, cultural and mental practice, and as components of the rise and development of Western societies from the 18th century onward.

Seminar discussions and assignments will seek to make contemporary patterns of perception, as well as recent scientific theories, somewhat more intelligible. Of central concern are the way that modern visual media, changing standards of visible evidence, and extensive networks of communication have provided new languages and lubricants for propagating ideas of human inequality. The psychic core within these invidious ideas will also be explored.

Evaluation will be based on seminar participation, including short presentations, and on a research proposal and completed project. Seminar projects may employ a variety of forms.

Prof. Janet Gornick Janet_Gornick@baruch.cuny.edu
Soc. 70200 – Social Policy and Socio-Economic Outcomes in Industrialized Countries: Lessons from the Luxembourg Income Study {91638}
Mondays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

This course -- which is crossed-listed in sociology, economics, and political science -- will provide an introduction to cross-national comparative research based on the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), a data archive located in Luxembourg. LIS has made comparable over 160 large microdatasets from 30 industrialized countries. (See http://www.lisproject.org/techdoc/datasets.htm for the list of countries.) The datasets contain comprehensive measures of income, employment and household characteristics.

Over the last two decades, the LIS data have been used by more than 1000 researchers -- mostly sociologists, economists, and political scientists -- to analyze cross-country and over-time variation in diverse outcomes such as poverty, income inequality, employment status, wage patterns, gender inequality and family formation. Many researchers have combined LIS' microdata with various macrodatasets to study, for example, the effects of national social or labor market policies on socio-economic outcomes, or to link micro-level variation to national-level outcomes such as immigration, child well-being, health status, political attitudes and voting behavior.

The course has two goals: (1) To review and synthesize 20 years of research results based on the LIS data; and (2) to enable students with programming skills (in SAS, SPSS, or Stata) to carry out and complete an original piece of empirical research. (All students are permitted to use the LIS microdata, which are accessed by an email-based "remote access system", at no cost and without limit.)

The course will require a semester-long research project. Students will be encouraged to complete an empirical analysis, reported in a term paper ultimately intended for publication. Students without programming skills will have the option to write a synthetic research paper.

Prof. William Kornblum wkornblum@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 81200 – Sociology of Community: The Community Studies Tradition in American Sociology {92506}
Thursdays, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits
(Qualifies for Methods Requirement)

This seminar will explore the theory and method of community research in the social sciences by looking at two broad areas in which its methods continue to yield valuable insight and to produce enduring literature. The first of these is the momentous transition, still occurring in many parts of the world, in which people from tribal and rural villages experience the forces of industrialization and urbanization. In this unit of the semester we will compare readings – like Wylie’s Village in the Vaucluse, and Thomas and Znaziecki’s The Polish Peasant in Poland and America, with equally classic documentary film studies including Ousmane Sembene’s Mandabi, George Rouquier’s Farrabique, and Meyers et. al The City. The second area of inquiry, which will take up the follwing two thirds of the semester, will center on the physical, social, and political economic processes that characterize life in the World’s most densely built urban environment, Midtown Manhattan. Readings will include work from the Chicago school, Richard Wade’s urban history, Manhattan Moves Uptown, Walter Benjamin’s arcades project, Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, readings from Goffman’s Behavior in Public Places and Relations in Public ,Mitch Duneier’s Sidewalk Sharon Zukin’s work on department stores, Kornblum and others on the social ecology of Times Square, and studies of the demography of midtown and its transportation network. The course will also seek to bridge micro and macro perspectives on Midtown, and will consider some of the major changes in the political economy of the area over the past twenty years. Throughout the semester we will work together in “the field” to address critical questions about life in Midtown Manhattan by gathering qualitative and quantitative data through systematic observation in the streets and subway stations, in the vicinity of the Graduate Center,

Profs. David Lavin and Dean Savage davidelavin@earthlink.net; Dean.savage@qc.cuny.edu
Soc. 84700 - Higher Education and Social Inequality [91636]
Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, Room TBA, 3credits

The course will examine several major equity issues confronting higher education today. To what extent is higher education an institution which serves to narrow ethnic and racial, class, and gender inequalities and to what degree is it implicated in reproducing them? In examining this theme, we shall look at the ways in which higher education is stratified, and debates about the role of community colleges in eroding or maintaining social inequalities. Controversies about access, opportunity, and the consequences of admissions and aid policies will be explored. To pursue these themes, we will be reading a number of recent analyses of the impacts of different policies and institutional factors which influence student success in higher education.

The course will also examine some of the major institutional problems facing higher education today, including shifts in the support for higher education, the widening gap in support for private and public higher education, the sources and effects of the current pressures for outcomes assessment, the growing use of part-time faculty, and shifts in the nature of the academic labor market.

Prof. Mary Clare Lennon mlennon@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 81900 – Interdisciplinary Methods for Urban Health Research {91630}
Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

This course introduces students to research on urban health problems from various disciplinary perspectives. The focus will be on how scholars from a range of disciplines investigate health disparities and develop interventions to promote well-being in urban communities. Disciplines include political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, demography, history, and epidemiology. The course will consider disparities related to gender, race, and socioeconomic status, with particular attention on specific populations, such as poor children and families, and homeless individuals. Throughout the course, attention is given to the distinctive set of challenges faced by urban populations. Students are expected to prepare three research papers and a final project. The research papers are expected to compare and contrast studies using two different disciplinary and methodological approaches. The final project is to further develop one of the research paper topics into a proposal to investigate health disparities drawing on the conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches of at least two disciplines.

Prof. Yusheng Peng ypeng@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 85200 – Economic Development and Social Change in China {91637}
Tuesdays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

China’s economic growth for the past three decades is remarkable in two ways: First, it is sustained for such a long period time, and second, it is achieved amidst dramatic institutional changes. This course explores the economic development and institutional changes in rural and urban China since 1949, with a special focus on institutional reforms after 1978. We will trace the institutional logic of central planning, heavy-industry oriented development strategy, and examine the gradual process of building market institutions and transforming state-owned enterprises, and explore the driving forces behind China’s economic miracle.

Organization and Grading

The course will be organized as a combination of lectures and seminars. Students are expected to write 3-4 short reviews of assigned readings, make presentations, participate in discussion, and write a 10-15 pages-long final paper on a selected topic. Final grades will be based on short reviews, the final paper and class participation.

This course will offer a selective survey of the field of medical sociology, with an emphasis on representations of the body, disease and pathology, constructions of illness, and the social and power relations of medicine and biomedicine. We begin by briefly examining the social history of medicine from the 18th Century onwards and the rise of the medicalized body. Key themes include the medical gaze and processes of medicalization. We then examine how the medicalized body is framed: representations of the body in medicine, cultural images, enthographies and narratives of disease and illness, and cultural understandings of medical subjects. The third section will explore the rise of biomedicine and biocapital. Key themes include conceptions of the posthuman, the power relations of biomedical technologies, and theories on the rise of new forms of subjectivity. Course readings will reflect a range of theorical approaches, including social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, feminisms, neoliberalism and poststructuralism. Among the aims of the course is to invigorate our sociological imaginations with regard to approaching medicine and the medicalized body and to foster innovative ideas for future exploration and research.

Prof. Barbara Katz Rothman BkatzRothman@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 85404 – Family, Parenthood, Adoption {91635}
Tuesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

Office hours: before class and by appointment.

This course will offer a sociological analysis of the family in its many old and new variations, with particular attention to issues of birth and parenting. The focus will be on the United States and its particular racial, class and gender politics and eugenic history, with an awareness of the global context in which Americans live and raise our families.

Specific topics to be covered will include:

Infertility and the new technologies of procreation such as the donation
and sale of gametes and ‘gestational services;’

Contraception and abortion, including prenatal testing and selective abortion;

The medicalization and demedicalization of childbirth practices, the
midwifery and homebirth movements;

Child bearing and rearing within gay and lesbian families;

Child care arrangements and services, including ‘transnational mothering’;

Adoption, with particular attention to the issues of foster care, international and
‘transracial’ adoptions;

Other topics to be agreed upon by members of the seminar.

Readings will include an overview of the lifework of the professor on this topic, including IN LABOR: WOMEN AND POWER IN THE BIRTHPLACE; THE TENTATIVE PREGNANCY: HOW AMNIOCENTESIS IS CHANGING PREGNANCY: RECREATING MOTHERHOOD, and WEAVING A FAMILY: UNTANGLING RACE AND ADOPTION.

Prof. John Torpey jtorpey@gc.cuny.edu
Soc. 70200 – Contemporary Theory {91627}
Mondays, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

This course introduces students to some of the main developments in sociological thought since the “founders” of the discipline laid out some of the central themes and problems of sociology. Because it has now become virtually impossible to encompass in one course all the different “schools” of sociological thought that have emerged since the writings of the founders and any selection is inevitably one-sided, we shall focus on some or all of the following: Mead, Elias, Parsons, Schutz, Goffman, Berger and Luckmann, Foucault, Habermas, Luhmann, Giddens, Bourdieu, Fraser, Mann, Harvey, Bellah, and Joas.

Prof. Sharon Zukin zukin@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Soc. 82800 – Urban Sociology: Research Seminar {91639}
Wednesdays, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

This course aims to prepare students to conceive, carry out research for, and write up a publishable paper in the field of urban sociology. Working as a group, we begin by examining current changes in New York and other global cities, listing issues for research, and dissecting several interesting scholarly articles. Topics of interest are: the crisis of neighborhood shopping streets, ethnic divisions of labor, cultural images and industries, sources of urban authenticity. What makes a scholarly article “work?” How do writers blend grand theoretical questions with nitty-gritty empirical detail? What kinds of research are appropriate for answering different kinds of questions? How much data is “enough?” The class will choose topics, questions, and research sites, and work collaboratively in groups to develop a conceptual framework and collect data. Class presentations by each group at the end of the course will lay out a journal article and chart the work that remains to be done for a journal submission. All students will also hand in a first draft of at least three sections of the paper. Enrollment is limited to 12 students.

Prof. Stanley Aronowitz saronowitz@gc.cuny.edu

Soc. 74100 – Social theory of Work and Labor {91858}

Thursdays, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m. Room TBA, 3credits

Work, its satisfactions and its discontents remain at the heart of social relations. More than an economic necessity work may be viewed as intrinsic to such far ranging human activities as dreams, art, science, technology and production of goods and services. The first part of the course will explore the scope and the controversies surrounding the concepts of work and labor. The second part will discuss the idea of, as well as the development of, the labor movement in many of its forms, especially contemporary institutions that depart from traditional trade unionism. Readngs will include selections from Aristotle's Politics, Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit, Marx's Economic and Philosophical Notebooks, portions of Capitall and his work on productive and unproductive labor, E.P. Thompson's "Time, Work and Industrial Dsicipline", Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital, Daniel Bell: "Work and Its Discontents" and ! Hannah Arendt The Human Condition, and more recent writings such as those by Beverly Silver, Bruno Guilli and Antonio Negri. We will then consider texts addressing the contemporary labor movement.