Teaching

This undergraduate-level course is an overview of the discipline of sociology and introduces students to the study of society, with the goal of familiarizing them with the most influential theories used by sociologists to think about the social world. The topics covered include the sociological imagination, culture and communication, roles and organization, stratification and class, poverty and inequality, collective behavior and social movements, deviance and social control, and power and social change. Through class discussion and weekly activities, students will engage in critical thinking about social and cultural issues and gain exposure to different types of sociological research.

ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2025/26

This MA course defines a cultural approach to the study of advertising and its history as a means to understand advertising and branding as central components in capitalist economies and indicators of cultural attitudes and ideologies. The course examines how advertisements create meaning, the mechanisms of persuasion, and the changing strategies that have been used by advertisers and marketers in the 20th and the early 21st centuries. It also examines the impact of print, television, and digital media on advertising, the emergence of brand culture, and changing consumer practices. Through practical projects and a wide range of readings, students will create a paradigm for understanding the social effects of advertising.

CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF MAX WEBER
Semester: Fall and Spring
Offered: 2025/26

This seminar, which is required for and restricted to first-year PhD Sociology students, introduces some of the essential sociological writings of Max Weber. We will focus on how this social theorist conceptualized modernity and the relationship between religion and the economy, power, and authority. We will ask, and answer, the question of whether the analytic tools Weber developed at the beginning of the twentieth century are still useful for addressing the issues and social configurations of the twenty-first.