“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its purpose.” The sociologist C. Wright Mills described the “sociological imagination” as a quality of mind that enables us to understand our lives and experiences and the relationship between self and society. By situating biographies in history and society, this course explores how societal structures and social forces shape our opportunities, our socioeconomic status and our positions of power or powerlessness. We also examine how cultural values and norms inform our identities and affiliations, our pursuits and aspirations, and our notions of dignity, worth, and a meaningful life. We will engage theories of social reproduction, stratification and the construction of categories of class, race, and gender. We will study and compare different methods by which scholars conduct systematic research, collect and analyze valid and reliable evidence, and identify and explain patterns and relationships. The relationship between social inequalities and beliefs in meritocracy and achievement will be a central theme of the course.

This course will investigate how social conditions come to be defined as social problems, specifically examining the roles of advocates, policy makers, experts, the media, and the public. Why do some social problems receive so much attention, while others are ignored? What are the impacts of defining social problems in a particular way? Drawing on case studies of contemporary issues, including racism, wealth inequality, health care access, the criminal justice system, and climate change, the uneven consequences of social problems will be exposed; some groups are disproportionately disadvantaged while others disproportionately benefit.

Who are you? Is your identity socially constructed or biologically formed? How do identities of race, ethnicity, and culture manifest in American society? What are the consequences of social identity politics? This course provides an introduction and overview of foundational concepts of social identity, engages major sociological perspectives of race and ethnicity, and analyzes media representations of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities. We explore the historical trends of meanings and values attached to social identity categories and address the multiple and intersecting ways that the dynamics of these social categories and concepts shape society-at-large, our individual life-chances, and our daily social interactions. We also examine the contemporary rise of DNA as a controversial signifier of racial identity and ethnic belonging. As the public gains access to unprecedented amounts of genomic information, DNA evidence has become increasingly incorporated into political claims about race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage. Within the context of media, we will examine both the historical and contemporary mainstreaming of ideas that race, ethnicity, and culture are biologically driven through the science of genetics, and how these claims are being misappropriated to support racist agendas.

Music, Food, and the Senses is an introduction to social and cultural theory in the humanities with a strong emphasis on embodied and practice theory. Building on the idea of musical and culinary practice as a form of 'living history,' this course will focus on critical approaches to ethnomusicology, anthropology, ethnography, and social theory from a musical lens. Our investigation will aim to bridge the realms of theory and practice through a multi-disciplinary, liberal arts-based approach that includes intensive textual study in combination with performance-based embodied learning modules, hands-on ethnographic inquiry, and multi-media forms of creative reflection and writing.

In today’s “surveillance society,” we have become accustomed to trading personal information—wittingly or not—for goods, services, and simply to participate in everyday life. With the rise of big data, state and market institutions routinely collect and analyze data to monitor our purchasing patterns, social networks, and physical movements. However, some people are more insulated from scrutiny than others, and exposure to surveillance depends in part on social status. In this course, we will examine surveillance through a sociological lens, focusing on how surveillance can generate and reproduce social inequalities. We will cover various formal institutions that monitor populations, including the criminal justice system, welfare system, and health care system, as well as examine the informal ways we are surveilled (and surveil others) in everyday life, including here at Colorado College.

Colorado is one of the United States’ most popular outdoor playgrounds. With towering mountains and crystal-clear rivers, opportunities for recreation and play abound. But do those opportunities exist equally for everyone? Are outdoor spaces welcoming for all people? What do you think of when you think of Wilderness? Who do you imagine when you think of an “outdoorsy” person? And why would anyone want to spend the night in a tent or paddle down a whitewater river anyways? Can outdoor recreation be a mode of resistance to dominant narratives and a place of restoration? We will dive deep into these questions and the historical, social, and racial issues around outdoor recreation activities, and look at why they can provide positive experiences. We will also unpack the history of outdoor tourism and recreation and critically analyze how white, European notions of nature and systemic racism have shaped the ways that we conceive of and recreate in natural places. Along with field experiences in the “Great Outdoors”, this experiential education course will develop your college level qualitative analysis, reading, writing, and discussion skills.

This course addresses the role of language in shaping and maintaining unequal relationships of power in societies, with an emphasis on the ongoing impacts of colonialism and white supremacy. Drawing from multiple disciplines including linguistics, anthropology, Indigenous studies, race and ethnic studies, and cognitive studies, the course introduces students to various epistemological and methodological approaches to the study of power in society. While introducing students to disciplinary-specific ways of producing knowledge, the course will also critically explore the relationship between Western scientific paradigms and colonialism. Comparing Indigenous and decolonizing approaches to knowledge production with Western scientific and philosophical traditions, the course allows students to critically think across and toward the expansion of disciplinary paradigms.

As the social science devoted to decision-making, economics is a mathematical analysis of how to optimize outcomes. But how do we make choices when the yardstick isn't obvious? How do we assess outcomes that are more moral than financial, more holistic than quantitative? Even more challenging, how do humans interact effectively when we don't agree on how to assess the outcomes, or don't even agree on the value systems we might use to evaluate the outcomes? This course is about how we make economic decisions, but more importantly it is about how we think about our own morality and the morality of those around us as we make decisions together. So each day we will advance your knowledge of the core principles of economic theory while reflecting on them critically to ascertain their implicit cultural assumptions (and therefore, also our own positionality as scholars and citizens).

This course will cover the sociological, psychological, religious, and biological contributions to what is called mental illness inside and outside of the United States. Care will be taken to place our current diagnostic system in historical context and to note the Western frame that currently permeates much of the world's attention to mental illness. Select disorders will be chosen to focus on rather than surveying a broad swath of diagnoses, and stigma emanating from medicalization in the west will be addressed.