Innovation and creativity are universally celebrated aspects of modern life. We celebrate geniuses and innovators because they reject tradition and produce ideas that are intuitively innovative. In this course we challenge these myths and develop the tools to understand innovation and creativity sociologically, and to explain why creativity and innovation tend to be rare, celebrated, and valued.

Social movements are an historical and global phenomenon of great complexity and variety. Because the topic can be so broad, the course is organized around case studies of civil rights, the industrial workers' movement, environmentalism, religious fundamentalism, and the counter movements to globalization. These cases will be used to illustrate variety of themes and principles, and you'll learn about specific events, personalities, organizations, and dynamics that shaped these movements. By this method, you will gain specific knowledge about important social movements, as well as an overview and general orientation to the sociology of this dynamic area of social life. Prerequisite: SOC 1010 or instructor permission.

Students will consider ways in which social communities intersect with, respond to, and create musical communities. Musical taste will be interrogated as a point of identification and self-presentation that is neither given nor natural, but contingent and constructed. Students will engage foundational critical texts in the sociology of music, and examine both the continuities and the disjunctures represented by our era of digital social media. Prerequisites: six credits of Sociology or permission of instructor

Course will focus on established traditions in the United States including evangelical and mainline Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, black Protestantism, and Orthodox Judaism. Prerequisite: Six credits of sociology or instructor permission.

Analyzes education as a social institution and its relationship to other institutions (e.g., the economy, the stratification system, the family). Emphasizes the role of education in the status attainment process. Prerequisite: Six credits of sociology or instructor permission.

Political sociology focuses on the social foundations and patterns of political behavior and the socio-historical mechanisms for political stability and political change. Its focus is not restricted to the formal rules that characterize a given political system, such as laws, regulations, or electoral systems: political sociology rather emphasizes how power, in its multifaceted and complex nature, is socially configured and reproduce global power.

This course will consider the social-science perspective on law and legal institutions; theories of laws and legal institutions that trace their origin to social consensus or social inequality; how social inequality influences how people think about law, why they obey it, and whether they mobilize it to resolve disputes; and whether law is an effective tool for social change.

Studies the relationship between family and society as expressed in policy and law. Emphasizes the effects of formal policy on the structure of families and the interactions within families. The American family system is examined as it has responded to laws and policies of government and private industry and to changes in society. Prerequisite: Six credits of sociology or instructor permission.

Family inequality is an enduring feature of American family life--both within and between families in the US. This seminar will focus on the ways in which class, race, and gender structure inequality within and between families--and the effects of that inequality on the social, emotional and financial well-being of men, women and children. We will also explore the causes and consequences of growing class-based inequality in marriage.6 credits of Sociology or obtain permission of instructor

A discussion-based seminar covering material from a wide range of perspectives in an attempt to understand the social context and effects of visual and other arts. Students are expected to have introductory level familiarity with sociological thinking. Prerequisite: 6 credits of sociology or instructor permission.