Coursework Highlights
Coursework Highlights: Sociology 245 – Marriage and Family
Course Description: The family as an interactional system, an organization, and a social institution; extended family ties, mate selection, marital roles, socialization, marital dissolution, family life course and change.
Course Information: Prerequisite(s): SOC 100. Individual and Society course, and US Society course.
Through this course, I was introduced to a comprehensive overview of one of the five agents of socialization – family. We looked at particular contemporary debates, including interracial marriage and gay marriage. Essentially, we thought critically about the question: What does it mean to be a family? To answer this, we employed several methods; articles, documentaries, and (my favorite) writing journals*. For these journals we engaged in activities such as interviewing, watching television advertisements, and comparing peer-reviewed articles. These activities enhanced my active listening, written communication, and storytelling skills; all very important abilities for a sociologist to have.
Coursework Highlights: Sociology 251 – Health and Medicine
Course Description: Health care systems; special emphasis on United States; dimensions of wellness and sickness including mental health; health providers, organizations, and institutions and their relations.
Course Information: Prerequisite(s): SOC 100 or SOC 105; or consent of the instructor. Individual and Society course, and US Society course.
In this class, I was able to truly understand the social consequences of our current healthcare system – a topic area that I found to be useful in almost every endeavor encountered since taking this course. An important text read in this course was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This was my first exposure to biomedical ethics through a sociological lens. We also spent a large portion of the course discussing the impact of socioeconomic status and race on health (as well as the implications this has for furthering inequality) which has served to be another piece of foundational background knowledge I have carried with me since. The most important skill I gained from this course was critical thinking through use of my sociological imagination.
Coursework Highlights: Sociology 385 – Introduction to Sociological Theory
Course Description: A survey of the major approaches to explaining social phenomena drawn from representative nineteenth and twentieth-century social theorists. Emphasis on present-day applicability of these approaches.
Course Information: Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing or above and two 200-level elective courses in sociology or consent of the instructor.
In this course I was truly exposed to the foundational theorists and theories of sociology. I was impacted by Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault. I understood their theories quickly, and was able to write on them extensively through the assignments required by this course. These three names have been brought up in countless other courses I have taken, including (but not limited to): History – Europe in the Age of Imperialism and Capitalism; Anthropology – Culture, Medicine, and Society; Sociology – Race, Citizenship, and Policing. I am grateful for this course as it gave me a solidified background with each of them. I utilize the theories learned in this class often, particularly Foucault’s ideas surrounding panopticism in Discipline and Punish.