@ Albright College

SOCIOLOGY COURSES

SOC 101: Introduction to Sociology
A general study, emphasizing the concepts and methodologies through which the sociologist investigates the nature of the social structure and the social processes of related to individual behavior.  
Satisfies General Studies Social Science Requirement

SOC 195: Introduction to the Criminal Justice System
This class will allow students to examine a broad array of topics related to the criminal justice system in America.  A number of guest speakers who are working in various positions in the system will be invited to describe and discuss their work and areas of expertise.  Students will be encouraged to think critically about public safety questions and focus on issues, complexities, and policies of the criminal justice system, while demonstrating the inter-relationships of the system's components.  Students will also be expected to complete a research paper on one area of interest. 
Sophomores and Freshman only

SOC 201: Social Problems
An introduction to the sociology of social problems. This course concentrates on the sociological analysis of significant problems as they relate to the social institutions in contemporary American society and their global counterparts. It provides an introduction to the sociological research and literature concerning major social problems such as health care, public education, poverty, racism, sexism, etc..  
Satisfies General Studies Social Science Requirement

SOC 222  Sociology of Africa
An introduction to Africa through the medium of films made by African filmmakers and novels written by some of Africa’s foremost authors.  We will take a critical look at the portrayal of Africa, its peoples, and conditions, by the Western media and filmmakers, and offer an understanding from the African viewpoint.  Topics covered include deconstruction of persistent, subtle and historical stereotypes; colonialism and the struggle for independence; the struggle against minority rule and apartheid; gender and African traditional institutions; contemporary African issues.

SOC 230  Cultural Sociology
What is culture and how and why should we study it from a sociological perspective?  How do we conceive culture in relation to other concepts such as power, identity, social structure, and society?  These are a few of the questions that will be addressed in this course as we explore several traditions of cultural theory and examine current debates in sociology over how to analyze culture.

SOC 231/REL 231: Cults and New Religious Movements
Why do people join cults?  Why are some cults violent while others seem to be relatively peaceful?  How do cults attempt to exercise control over their members?  Are cults always a danger to society?  This class will explore these questions as well as others by using examples from several groups including  People’s Temple, The Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, Montana Freemen, Solar Temple, Heaven’s Gate, and Chen Tao in order to develop a general sociological understanding and perspective with which to evaluate, interpret, and understand new religious movements, also known as “cults.”   

SOC 240: Development of Social Theory
An exploration of the evolution of social thought leading to the systematic and scientific basis of modern sociology.

SOC 241: Statistics
An introduction to the theory and practice of basic statistical analysis. Topics considered include the organization and tabulation of raw and grouped data, graphical presentation of univariate and multivariate distributions, central tendency and variability measures, elementary probability theory with binomial applications, the theory of sampling and the central limit theorem, one and two sample tests of hypotheses concerning means and proportions, the analysis of variance and regression.  
Satisfies General Studies Non-Laboratory Science Requirement.  

SOC 241Y Statistics Lab
Taken in conjunction with Soc 240 above.  The lab allows students the opportunity to learn and use SPSS, a popular computer statistical package used in various agencies and industries, in order to test hypotheses by applying the knowledge of statistics that they learn in class.

SOC 251: Crime and Deviance
An introduction to the sociology of deviance as it relates to criminal behavior.  An analysis of crime and delinquency, as well as the cultural implications of conformity and deviance in society, are the major topics of the course.  Sociocultural definitions of deviance and conformity will be investigated as they relate to their causes, prevalence, and sanctioning.        

SOC 253: Criminal Investigation
This course is designed to provide students with the basic theoretical and philosophical understanding of the investigatory process. The course will cover the fundamentals of criminal investigation and will teach the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct thorough preliminary investigations of crime. Crime scene search and recording, collection and preservation of physical evidence and scientific aids will be studied. Analysis of problems encountered in interviewing, interrogating, evidence collection, and admissibility will be examined. Sources of information, follow-up and case presentation will be addressed. Application of investigative theories to the administration of justice will be examined.  
Prerequisite: SOC 251

SOC 254: Advanced Criminal Investigation
This course is designed to provide students with a detailed understanding of the scientific methods and instrumentation used in processing crime scenes and physical evidence collected during a criminal investigation.  Topics include: fingerprints, cast and mold development, blood and other body fluids, hair, fibers, tool marks, paint, glass and plastic fragments, ballistics, and specialized instrumentation.  Practical exercises will supplement lecture to provide students with a better understanding of the techniques discussed in class. 
Prerequisite: Soc 253

SOC 261: The Family
An analysis of the marriage-family institution in society in an historical and sociocultural frame of reference. The institution of the family is examined in its variety of forms and functions within world cultures.  These functions are explored in relation to other social systems and institutions.  Aspects of social and cultural change are studied within the context of the family system as they relate to both society and individuals.  
Satisfies General Studies Social Science Requirement

SOC 262: Social Stratification and Structured Inequality
Why do some people have more power and wealth than others?  Why and how do some abuse the power they have?  How does the media perpetuate struggles over power and wealth?  How should we approach the issue of differences in power and wealth?  These are some of the questions that we will address as we look at how we as people struggle over scarce resources such as power and wealth.  We will focus on racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural stratification as well as inequality in the American educational, criminal justice, economic, and political systems.  

SOC 271  Work and Family
This course examines the theory and research in the growing area of the intersection of work and family.  It explores the work/family interchange and its implications for family life and structure, family members: children, women and men, for employers, the community and society.  It looks at how the work/family interaction is mediated by structural factors like gender, class, race and ethnicity, and how the emergent interfacial issues of work/family conflict/integration, childcare, household work, elder care are managed through private and public initiatives. 

SOC 272  Minority Families
A study of the historical and contemporary experiences of minority families in the United States and how these experiences have shaped the structure and composition of these families.  Our focus would be on the African-American and the Hispanic families.  Topics to be covered include the historical debate on these families, the consequences of discrimination, unemployment, poverty, and community involvement regarding the problems of these families.

SOC 302: Juvenile Delinquency
Patterns of juvenile delinquency are examined within the framework of the social definition of the adolescent years in American society and the response of the criminal justice system to behavior which society has deemed deviant.  Within this framework the course will focus on the conflicting expectations and opportunities available to youth in American society, the operation of the juvenile justice system including the formal and informal processing of those whose age specific behavior is defined as “delinquent”, the patterns and trends in delinquent behavior, the major theoretical perspectives used to account for and explain juvenile delinquency, and the range of options society has to control, punish, reward or treat those who exhibit delinquent behavior.

SOC 305: Terrorism
This course examines the concept of terrorism through a comprehensive overview of the many disciplines the subject crosses. Various positions on issues of controversy, fear, and prevention are examined. Illustrations of cultural, historical, tactical factors, and social causes of some of the major forms of terrorism will be addressed.  An integrated approach to the subject will include domestic and international issues as well as the importance of security techniques and intelligence gathering.   Case studies of terrorist groups and their activities will be presented.

SOC/LAS 307: Organized Crime
This course examines criminal activities carried out through criminal organizations and focuses on organized crime as it related to cultural history, assimilation processes and the characteristics of American society which have fostered its growth and success.  Trends in organized crime in terms of ethnicity, structure and activities will be investigated.  Law enforcement strategies and tactics used to control organized crime will also be examined.

SOC 309: Criminal Corrections
This course focuses on the alternatives available to provide sanctions to those convicted of criminal deviance.  Taught by a sitting criminal court judge, the course looks at criminal sanctions in terms of the Constitution, efficacy, and judicial discretion.  Particular attention is paid to the purpose of criminal corrections within the context of individual rights and society’s desire for punishment, protection and rehabilitation. 

SOC 311: Domestic Violence
The definition, characteristics, and nature of domestic violence will be explored, with particular emphasis on the various forms of violence that take place within the familial contest such as abuse of spouses, children and the elderly.  The perspective of both the victims and those who batterer them will be addressed through case studies.  Prevention strategies, treatment techniques, and the role of law enforcement will also be explored.

SOC 312: Intimate Relationships
A sociological approach to the study of intimacy, this course will focus on important dimensions of intimate relationships: attraction, sexuality, love, communication, and companionship. Other related themes will also be covered, including gender identity and gender roles; sexual orientation; adolescent sexuality; dating and courtship; contraception and abortion; pregnancy and childbirth; sexually transmitted diseases; atypical sexual variations; sexual coercion, and sexual consumerism. Cultural and temporal diversity are emphasized.

SOC 313: Human Services for Families and Children
The development and evolution of legislation, programs and services for families and children will be analyzed.  This course focuses on the social problems of poverty, drug addiction, domestic violence, sexual abuse and limited health services as experienced by children through their family structures and organization.  Students will be exposed to the range of private and public human services through examining program goals and the operation of these parts of the human services network.  

SOC 324 Social Aspects of Health 
The study of the normative aspects of health and of illness diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation in contexts of the community and social organization. Special emphasis is given to such topics as the organization of medical care, the practitioner, and the consumer aspects of health care.

SOC 331: Sociology of Mass Media & Popular Culture
How did forms of mass media like newspapers, rock music, advertising, and Hollywood films emerge?  What do the messages in these popular forms of culture tell us about our selves and our society?  How are we affected by the messages in the mass media and popular culture?  Does the structure of a popular culture industry like, say, the music industry limit the kinds of music that is available for our consumption or do we as consumers help decide what the industry will produce?  Commercial entertainment is an important part of our lives and it has the power to shape the way we live.  This class will explore the influence popular culture and the mass media have on our lives.  The lectures, readings, and discussions will use examples from several of the popular arts including music, movies, publishing, and advertising in order to provide an opportunity for the student to develop a general sociological understanding and perspective with which to evaluate, interpret, and understand popular culture and the mass media.  
Prerequisites:  Sophomore standing.

SOC 332 Sociology of Sport & Leisure
This course is designed to provide an analysis of the social aspects of sport, with emphasis on interrelationship of sport and society.  The course focuses on topics such as social values, education, sport roles, religion, socialization, mass media, sexism, and racism, and is oriented to students with an interest in sports.
Prerequisites:  Sophomore standing.

SOC/REL 333  Sociology of Religion
This course is designed to provide an opportunity for the student to develop a general sociological understanding and perspective with which to evaluate, interpret, and understand religion and religious institutions.  Topics investigated include the role of belief, values, and symbols, religious recruitment, how religious organizations are formed and maintained, the link between religion and social inequality, how religion has changed and adapted in American culture, and various contemporary expressions of religion in the U.S. including cults, civil religion, fundamentalism, and the commercialization of religion.
Prerequisites:  Sophomore standing.

SOC/REL 334  Religion & Popular Culture
How do popular culture and the mass media affect religion?  Conversely, how does religion affect our popular culture and mass media?  What are we to think of Christian forms of commercial entertainment like “religious rock music,” “Christian hip-hop,” and “Christian romance novels” or motion pictures?  Several critics have pointed out that the industry that produces these things is nothing more than an attempt to make money off of religion.  Others, however, feel that this industry provides an important role in maintaining and reinforcing religious identity by giving people what they want: religious commercial entertainment.  This course is designed to provide an opportunity for students to explore the role religion plays in creating and maintaining culture through popular cultural expressions such as music, television, motion pictures, sports, and fashion.  We will analyze how popular culture affects religion and how religion, in turn, affects popular culture and society.   

SOC 335  Collective Behavior and Social Movements
This course is designed to provide an opportunity for the student to develop a general sociological understanding and perspective with which to evaluate, interpret, and understand social movements and collective behavior.  Topics investigated include behavior in crowds, moral panics, fads, riots, and organized movements intended to create major social changes.
Prerequisites:  Sophomore standing.

SOC 341: Research Methods
An exploration of the application of the basic tenets of scientific research to social science topics. Topics investigated include the formalization of research topics, the isolation and operationalization of theoretical concepts, the construction of hypotheses, sampling theory and alternative means for selection, study design selection and evaluation, data collection techniques, the organization of empirical data for hypothesis testing.  
Prerequisite: Soc 241   

SOC 350  Comparative Family Policy
A comparative analysis of government programs and policies impacting families in the United States and a select other industrialized countries.  Surveys how the involvement of the state in the family has grown from protection of mothers and children to various aspects of family life and involving larger number of families through policies on health, welfare, family planning, childcare, teen pregnancy, family leave and elder care.

SOC 383: Special Topics
Special topics courses are those that have not yet been added to the catalog because they are being taught for the first time.  Topics can vary from crime to culture to religion depending upon who is offering the course.

SOC 384: Elite Deviance
Elite Deviance constitutes a major social problem for American society, and much of the world as well. The course will introduce students to the concept of elite deviance and the variety of cultural, political, and social situations that foment it.  The course focuses on the global nature of elite deviance, and examines its corporate, political, occupational dimensions.  Both policy and regulatory issues in government and business are also examined relative to major theoretical positions. 

SOC 385: Violence and Victims
This course focuses on the socio-cultural basis for violence in American society and for others throughout the world.  Using a global perspective, this course will address a variety of types of violence, its causes and its consequences.  Topics addressed will include street violence, gang warfare, hate crimes, serial murder, and gender specific crimes. The theoretical basis of the causes of violence will also be examined. The consequences of violence for both individual victims and society as a whole will be explored.  

SOC 386 Ethnographies in Crime and Deviance
“Ethnography” is a type of research by which an investigator, overtly or covertly, participates in the lives of their research subjects over an extended period of time.  This participation is accompanied by the use of a trained scholar’s skills to observe what happens, listen to what is said, and, occasionally, pose questions or conduct interviews.  Quality ethnography makes a reader feel as if he/she personally knows the people and places described.  Students in this course are asked to complete their own small ethnographic projects, but the bulk of this seminar-style course is devoted to the study of significant works in ethnographies of criminal or deviant populations.  Hence, students will read and discuss studies in which researchers live with, interview, and otherwise share their lives with such individuals as drug dealers, muggers, crack addicts, rapists, prison guards, and their respective families and acquaintances.  Through intimate exposure to the personal thoughts and lives of deviants and law enforcement personnel, an understanding is gained that goes beyond the abstractions of theory or remoteness of statistical analyses.     

SOC 481: Independent Study
Independent studies allow students the opportunity to engage in hands-on research in the sociological, criminological, or child/family studies fields.  Students who are interested in an independent study should consult with a faculty member to set up an independent research project.  These projects can be conducted and /or completed on or off campus. 

SOC 482: Internship
An off campus placement in a human service, community, criminal justice, health care or business setting for students in the Applied Sociology program.  Students are under supervision of both a faculty member and an employee of the sponsoring organization.  Students must complete at least one-hundred hours of study during one semester of the academic year and complete a project related to the sponsoring organization.  
Prerequisites:  Senior standing and permission of the department.

SOC 490: Senior Seminar in Sociology
An advanced research seminar which focuses on conducting a hypothesis-testing empirical research project on a topic of interest to the student.  Building on the content of SOC 403, this course concentrates on the collection and analysis of social science data and culminates in the writing of the senior thesis.  
Prerequisites:  Senior standing, Soc 241 & 341.

ANTHROPOLOGY COURSES

ANT 204: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
The science of culture focuses on the learned behavior of the human species. Cross cultural comparisons of a variety of human behaviors provide insights to the question of what it means to be human.  Satisfies General Studies Social Science Requirement.

ANT/IDS 206: Food and Culture
The focus of this course is human foodways, in particular the social uses and meanings of food.  Topics include how culture shapes taste; food, social metaphors and the objectification of emotions; food sharing and rituals of solidarity; food avoidance, the life cycle, and taboos; food and identity (ethnic and national); food and religion; food and gender; and food in historical perspective.  Ethnographic data form around the world, especially from Latin America, will be employed.  Although the course occasionally addresses the biology of nutrition, the main objective of the course is to explore food folklore.  

ANT 210 Culture and Environment
Although we tend to attribute much of our environmental degradation to technical inadequacies, the more significant obstacles are manifested in our own the social institutions and psychology. This course will examine the complex relationship between culture and the environment – how people relate to their environment and what it means in terms of attitudes and perspectives. Case studies of different cultures will be incorporated to illustrate the effects of these phenomena. Students will also explore potential solutions to deal with these problems.

ANT/LAS 270 People of the World
This course will examine the way people live from around the world. This will be accomplished through ethnographies and films. All forces which may have combined to produce a particular way of life will be incorporated in the analysis. These will include ecology, history, politics, economics, etc. The groups selected for analysis will be predominantly of non-western origins. Students should emerge with a broader and more sophisticated understanding of humans and the their cultural diversity and universality.

ANT/IDS 285 The Human Animal
What are humans and how did we get to be the way we are? How do we live? What makes us act the way we do? Are we moral? How do we effect other species and the world around us? These are the questions we shall investigate in this course, and to answer them we will take an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the disciplines from both the natural  (biology, ecology) and social (anthropology, sociology) sciences to provide insights into the heart and soul of the human species.  After examining the process of natural selection we will explore how it forged modern Homo sapiens over the last 5 million years. We will then look at the finished product both in terms of our mental and physical characteristics.  We shall complete this investigation by examining how we (humans) tend to interact with other species and our surrounding environment. It is hoped that many of the complexities and confusion about who we are will become more clear as we develop an understanding of both our capabilities as well as our limitations. Overall, students should gain a more complete comprehension of who they are as a member of the human species.

ANT 310: Crime, Culture and Conflict Resolution
This course introduces students to the “law ways” of different societies, in particular non-industrialized societies.  The goal is to explore the extent to which different societies employ coercion, punishment and consensus in order to maintain order and resolve conflicts.  Topics include rules and crime: the cultural basis of right and wrong, informal and ritualized disputing, conflict theory and conflict resolution (avoidance, community action, ritual reconciliation, negotiation and mediation), oaths, ordeals, and punishment, adjudication and codified law, feuding, raiding and warfare (internal and external).

ANT 320: Sex, Gender and Culture
This course introduces students to the diversity of roles that men and women occupy in a wide variety of societies.  The course covers topics such as the biological basis of sex differences, primate studies as windows into human sexuality and social life, feminist perspectives on evolution, gender complementarity, the cultural construction of gender differences, religious ideas about women as both polluting and powerful, notions of masculinity (vis-à-vis femininity), and the impact and spread of capitalism on the position of men and woman.  

ANT 342: Human Evolution 
How humans came to be what they are today is one of the most intriguing and interesting topics that can be examined. We can gain powerful and enlightening insights into the mystery of the human animal: how did we come to be; what is our evolutionary legacy; why do we act the way we do; what might we expect in the future. We will explore human origins starting with the evolution of primates. We will then focus on hominids commencing with their split from chimpanzees and tracing their transitions to modern Homo sapiens. We will examine how we got to be the way we are both physically and mentally. In addition, we will examine both the variety and similarity in humans around the world, population genetics, and evolved psychology.