Sociology - Spring 1999

Time: TTH 4 - 5:45 p.m.,
Location: FIX Room

Professor: Monica J. Casper
Phone: 9-3837
Office: 324 College Eight
E-Mail: mjcasper@ucsc.edu

Teaching Assistants: TBA

Course Description

This courses examines a number of issues and problems facing the United States today, and attempts to grasp the character of our diverse, ever-changing nation, its inhabitants, and its practices. At the same time, the course introduces basic sociological concepts. We examine contemporary society through the lens of recent history and current events, focusing on major social, economic, political, and cultural transformations that have shaped American life. Using a variety of sociological tools, we will address several general questions about social life: What is national identity? Why do certain events and issues continue to rend the national fabric? Can we speak of national character given our incredible diversity? What do our cultural practices and products say about us? What effect do cultural differences have on American identity? How does power operate in American society? Where do inequalities come from? How does social change happen? We will pursue these questions through analysis of specific topics (e.g., social institutions; popular culture; race, class, and gender, sexuality; environment). Our goal is to gain a "sociological imagination" with which to better understand a host of concrete practices and cultural products that shape our national identity. Throughout the course, we will also attend to current affairs and "hot" issues as they emerge.

Readings

There is a required course reader available for purchase at the UCSC Copy Center (Communications Building), and there is one copy on reserve at McHenry Library. There is also one required book, available at the Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust Street, 457-1195, and on reserve at McHenry Library:

Marita Sturken, 1997. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Course Requirements

1. Attendance and Participation. Your presence is required at both lecture and discussion. Participation in discussion is strongly encouraged, and your TA will work with you to enhance your seminar skills. Participation during lecture--that is,relevant participation--is also encouraged, to the degree possible given a large class size. Take advantage of class time and the attention of your professor and TAs to ask questions, learn the material, and strive for intellectual engagement.

2. Journal: Throughout the quarter, you are required to keep a journal. The style and format of your journal is up to you; you can use something as basic as a spiral notebook, or you can invest in an elaborate bound journal. The idea is for the journal to be a fun and meaningful way for you to engage with issues from the class. Although the format is flexible, there are some required contents:

a) First and foremost, you will use the journal to write down your thoughts and ideas about the readings and lectures. These notes will, in part, be the basis for discussion in section. Your observations do not have to be extremely detailed, but you should be engaging with the ideas brought up in readings and lectures. For example, what does each article say? Is it well-written? Informative? Do you like the article or agree with it?

b) Second, you will also be expected to collect media (newspaper articles, magazine images) that address contemporary issues or problems (e.g., race relations, environmental degradation, presidential sexcapades, etc.). Collect 2-3 articles per week (which will necessitate reading a newspaper regularly), and paste or tape them into your journal along with your sociological observations.

Your journal does not have to be typed, but please try to write neatly so that your TA can read the journal. The journals will be due June 3, but will be checked throughout the quarter by the TAs. The journal assignment is worth 30% of your grade.

3. Museum/Exhibition Visit: You will be required to visit a local museum or exhibition (e.g., a campus exhibit; the Museum of Art and History downtown; the Tech Museum in San Jose) that considers some aspect of contemporary society, and then write about your experiences. This is a fairly broad mandate and almost any museum is acceptable. I'd like you to view whatever exhibition you choose as both a consumer and a sociologist, asking such questions as: What is being represented and conveyed? Does the exhibition tap into any ongoing political or cultural tensions? Do I like this exhibit? Does it speak to me in some way? Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length and typewritten. The museum assignment will be due April 22 and is worth 20% of your grade.

4. Documentary Film Review: You are required to view a documentary film that addresses some aspect of contemporary American society. For example, you might choose to watch Hoop Dreams and then write about race and urban poverty, or Ken Burns' documentaries on baseball or architect Frank Lloyd Wright. You might watch a film about women and body image, or Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror about the LA riots, or Mah Jong Orphan about a Canadian-Asian family. The Media Center at McHenry Library has an extensive catalogue to help you locate a film that will be both suitable and interesting. Your review should include a brief description of the film, a critical analysis, and your observations on the viewing experience. What is the film about? What does it say about American society? Is it well-done? Did you like the film? How did you feel watching the film? Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length and typewritten. The film review is due May 13 and is worth 20% of your grade.

5. Final Exam: The final will be on FIX, from FIX time. It will cover material from the entire course, although most of the questions will draw from Weeks 6-10. The format will be multiple choice and short essay. The final is worth 30% of your grade.

Week 1

March 30 INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

April 1 SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

C. Wright Mills, 1959, "The Sociological Imagination"

Charles Lemert, 1997, "Imagining Social Things, Competently"

David Newman, 1997, "Taking a New Look at a Familiar World"

Donna Gaines, 1998, "Resurrecting Sociology as a Vocation"

Week 2

April 6 IMAGINING AMERICA

Holly Sklar, 1992, "Imagine a Country"

Arturo Madrid, 1988, "Missing People and Others"

Eric Foner, 1995-96, "Who Is An American?"

Lillian Rubin, 1995, "Is This a White Country, or What?"

Jeffrey Meikle, 1995, American Plastic, "Introduction"

April 8 CULTURAL MEMORY

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, "Introduction", Chapters 1-2, pages 1-84

Week 3

April 13 RACE

Michael Omi & Howard Winant, 1986, "Racial Formations"

Edna Bonacich, 1989, "Inequality in America"

Francisco Jimenez, 1973, "The Circuit"

Lawrence Otis Graham, 1992, "Invisible Man"

Jonathan Kozol, 1991, "Savage Inequalities in America's Schools"

Karen Russell, 1987, "Growing Up With Privilege and Prejudice"

April 15 GENDER

Barrie Thorne, 1993, "Boys and Girls Together...But Mostly Apart"

Johnnetta B. Cole, 1986, "Commonalities and Differences"

Tracy Lai, 1988, "Asian American Women: Not For Sale"

Cherríe Moraga, 1983, "La Güera"

Peter Blood et al., 1983, "Understanding and Fighting Sexism"

Don Sabo, 1994, "Pigskin, Patriarchy, and Pain"

Week 4

April 20 CLASS

G. William Domhoff, 1974, "The Bohemian Grove"

Donna Langston, 1988, "Tired of Playing Monopoly?"

Dorothy Allison, , "A Question of Class"

Stan Gray, 1984, "Sharing the Shop Floor"

Gregory Mantsios, "Media Magic: Making Class Invisible"

Ralph da Costa Nunez, 1996, "A New American Poverty"

April 22 SEXUALITY

Ruth Hubbard, 1990, "The Social Construction of Sexuality"

Jonathan Ned Katz, 1990, "The Invention of Heterosexuality"

DUE: Museum/Exhibition Assignment

Week 5

April 27 ABORTION

National Abortion Federation, 1995, "Violence and Disruption Statistics"

Rickie Solinger, 1998, "Chronology of Abortion Politics"

Marlene Gerber Fried, 1998, "Abortion in the United States--Legal But Inaccessible"

Kristin Luker, 1984, "World Views of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Activists"

Dorothy Roberts, 1990, "The Future of Reproductive Choice for Poor Women and Women of Color"

Katha Pollitt, 1990, "Fetal Rights: A New Assault on Feminism"

April 29 FAMILIES

Kath Weston, 1991, "Exiles from Kinship"

Julia Wrigley, "Other People's Children"

Week 6

May 4 CULTURE

Gilbert Rodman, 1996, "Elvis Studies," pages 1-18

May 6 RELIGION

Week 7

May 11 THE NATION'S HEALTH

Health Statistics

Catherine Kohler Riessman, 1983, "Women and Medicalization"

James Jones, 1981, "The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment"

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, Chapter 5, pages 145-182

May 13 POPULAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Constance Penley, NASA/Trek, pages 1-58

Dorothy Nelkin & M. Susan Lindee, 1995, "Elvis's DNA"

Bill Zimmerman et al., "People's Science"

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories, Chapter 7, pages 220-254

DUE: Documentary Film Review

Week 8

May 18 ENVIRONMENT

May 20 WAR

Barry Levy & Victor Sidel, 1997, "The Impacts of Military Activities on Civilian Populations"

H. Jack Geiger, 1997, "The Impact of War on Human Rights"

Herbert Kelman & V. Lee Hamilton, 1989, "The My Lai Massacre"

Sturken, Chapter 4, pages 123-144

Yuri Kochiyama, 1991, "Then Came the War"

Week 9

May 25 GLOBALIZATION

Barbara Ehrenreich & Annette Fuentes, 1981, "Life on the Global Assembly Line"

D. Stanley Eitzen & Maxine Baca Zinn, 1989, "Structural Transformation and Systems of Inequality"

June Jordan, 1985, "Report from the Bahamas"

May 27 CALIFORNIA

Week 10

June 1 Exchange Day--No Class.

June 3 SOCIAL CHANGE

Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1983, "Coalition Politics"

Roberta Praeger, 1986, "A World Worth Living In"

Ruth Sidel, 1990, "Toward a More Caring Society"

bell hooks, 1989, "Feminism: A Transformational Politic"

DUE: Journal

Finals Week

June FIX Final Exam

FIX time

Instructor: Traugott

This course will focus on social movements as varied as the struggle for civil rights in the American South, the anti-nuclear movement, the Ghost Dance of the plains Indians, and the women's movement. In addition, we will also touch upon closely related phenomena like collective behavior (through readings on the Jonestown massacre) and revolution (for which we will travel to France). Lectures will acquaint students with the major schools of social movement analysis, including Collective Behavior Theory, Rational Choice, Marxist, Resource Mobilization, and Political Opportunity models, as well as the New Social Movements perspective. Students will read sources of very different types, including interviews with movement participants, articles from the major sociological journals, and the sort of historical analysis that Karl Marx wrote concerning the 1848 revolution. In their written work, students will be asked to apply what they have learned from readings and lectures to a social movement of their choosing. The written course requirements will include: a preliminary outline and prospectus; a short paper; and a longer term paper. In addition, brief in-class exercises will be used as a means of stimulating discussion and encouraging students to draw connections between the lectures and readings.

1998 syllabus - will be updated for 1999, but with similar organization and most of the same readings.

Instructor: Ben Crow
Office: College VIII, Room 320
Phone: 9-5503;
Email: bencrow@ucsc.edu

The Course

This is an ambitious course: it tries to cover a big subject. I am interested in development and the environment, so I decided to construct a course on that topic. I called it Nature, Poverty and Progress because those are the issues that such a course needs to confront. I wanted a course which tackled environmental questions while taking the perspective that human livelihoods and deprivation cannot be ignored: inequality and poverty have to be at the center of the analysis. This syllabus is my current attempt to produce such a course.

Given ten weeks, a large topic, and my own interests and knowledge, I have taken one step to limit the scope of the course. The most substantive examples described in the readings come from South Asia, primarily India, Nepal and Bangladesh. This is the area I have studied for a number of years, and I know the literature on this area better than on other areas. I have included some writing relating to other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa, but the coverage of those areas is less substantial.

The structure of the course is as follows:

1 Progress

2. Development and Nature

3. Social theory and the environment

4. Poverty and the environment

5. The overpopulation hypothesis

6. Gender and the environment

7. Water, poverty and progress

8 Industrialization, the global economy and environment

9. Global issues and social theory

10 Visions

Assessment

Your progress in this course will be assessed on three elements of the course:

Contribution to debates

Mid-term exam

Final exam

There will be four debates during the Quarter. In these debates, teams of students will argue for or against a proposition related to one of the central themes of the course. Within each team, students will have to take responsibility for researching a part of their team's contribution and, or, presenting part of the argument. There are skills to be developed in research, speaking, writing oral arguments, coordinating an argument. Your assessment for this part of the course will include both a grade for the team's presentation and a grade reflecting your individual contribution.

Each participant will be expected to produce a short written background paper for their team's argument.

Week Topic Exams Debate

1 Progress

2 Development and nature Poverty is not a major threat to the environment

3 Social theory and the environment

4 Poverty and the environment Overpopulation causes environmental degradation

5 Overpopulation Midterm

6 Gender and environment Big dams should never again be built

7 Water, agriculture, poverty and progress

8 Industrialization Economic growth is needed for conservation

9 Global issues

10 Review Final

There will be a mid-term and a final exam, encouraging you to use the ideas you have learned in the course. These exams will combine multiple choice questions, short-answer questions and longer, essay questions. They will test your comprehension of the topics covered in the course, your ability to present written arguments, and your ability to think clearly about the topics.

(Cluster C Theoretical Foundation Course)

Time: Thursday 12 - 3 p.m.
Location: TBA

Professor: Monica J. Casper
Phone: 9-3837
Office: 324 College 8
E-Mail: mjcasper@ucsc.edu
Office hours: TBA