Topics in Sociological Analysis (376-0-22)
Topic
The Social Side of College
Instructors
Simone Zinaida Ispa-Landa
Ispa-Landa’s scholarship concerns the sociology of education, race and gender, and youth peer cultures. She is interested in understanding how individuals and groups respond to stigma and discrimination, maintain the meaning systems that support it, and seek to overcome its negative consequences. She is currently working on two projects: first, how college men and women in historically white Greek life navigate gendered power dynamics and sexual violence. Her second project is a book about the strengths and challenges of various approaches to racial disparities in discipline in a self-consciously liberal suburban school district. Her areas of teaching include race and ethnicity, gender, sociology of education, sociology of youth and childhood, and qualitative research methods.
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-415: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
"The Social Side of College"
This course presents sociological approaches to understanding the social side of the college experience and how it matters for students' identities, politics, and health and well-being. The course will explore a range of topics, from how four-year colleges support meaning systems to how they provide the settings for peer processes of social evaluation and exclusion.
This course is taught with SOC_POL 351-0-21
Learning Objectives
Students will learn to become more critical and appreciative interpreters of peer college cultures and how they affect the student experience. Students will investigate the key role that admissions, institutional policies, culture, and classification systems play in the student college experience and what it means to be a college student today. Students will learn to bring an intersectional race/gender/class lens to their analysis of the college student.
Evaluation Method
Each student will be responsible for leading at one seminar discussion, which may include introducing guest speakers. Students' oral presentation will be evaluated by me and classmates; it is worth 15% of your grade. Students are expected to come to class having done the required reading, viewing or listening. If you do not prepare for class, you will make it harder for student presenters. Consequently, class participation will be evaluated by me and class presenters each week, for quality as well as quantify; it is worth 10% of your grade. Additionally, two papers will be assigned: one short paper in response to a prompt (worth 25%) and one a final paper, the topic of which will address some aspect or example of calculation selected by you in consultation with me. The final paper is worth 50% of your final grade.
Class Materials (Required)
All materials for this course will be made available on Canvas - no purchase necessary.