Sociology (SOC) Courses

SOC1001 Sociology I

This course provides an introduction to sociology with the focus of study on how humans interact within a society, both as individuals and in groups. Emphasis is placed on sociological methods and perspectives/paradigms.
Offered at Charlotte, Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2002 Macrosociology

This course explores the large scale patterns, processes and structures of social life. It does so through the examination of those institutions or social systems that comprise the central structure of society and which are essential to the survival of both individuals and groups. This course examines both how such institutions influence people’s everyday life in a variety of societies, and also how the institutions are shaped by cultural, economic, historical and political forces that are increasingly intersecting and global in nature.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Online
3 Semester Credits

SOC2005 Honors Seminar: Social Inequalities

Gender, race, class: Have you ever wondered about the extent of those inequalities today? How are inequalities accomplished and maintained? This honors seminar serves as an introduction to sociology with a focus on the inequalities of race, gender and especially class. The operations of these inequalities are studied at both the micro, person-to-person level and the macro, institutional level. Students make use of both qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore how the micro and macro levels of analysis connect, and also how race, class and gender intersect.
Prerequisite(s): ENG1024 or English placement, honors or SHARP status.
Offered at Charlotte, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2010 Sociology of Digital Environments

This course provides an introduction to the digital world as both a setting of social interaction and as a social and historical phenomenon. Attention is given to the ways that virtuality has both transformed and been influenced by other institutional domains such as family, media, art and work. This focus on the digital world advances students' sociological understanding of the human experience.
Offered at Charlotte, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2012 Microsociology

This course investigates questions (such as, where does individual identity and behavior come from?) using microsociology, the study of both face-to-face interactions and also the processes of routinization and ritualization underneath them. Students learn that although each person is born into a culture of well-established symbols and structures, these abstractions are made of (and changeable via) interpersonal interactions, which run the gamut from socialization, to attraction, altruism, obedience, prejudice, deviance, and aggression. In all of them, microsociology inquires into people's motives as they reproduce, or dispute, meanings, power and knowledge.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2035 Sociology of Aging

Aging is a lifelong process that affects individuals, families and cultures across the globe. It encompasses a multitude of dimensions — physiological, emotional, cognitive, economic and interpersonal — that influence a person's physical and social well-being. This course examines aging from multiple perspectives and addresses the roles that individuals, families, service industries and government play in attempting to meet the needs of this growing population.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2050 Cultures of Africa

This course gives students a grounding in the cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. Students consider how the lives of Africans have been shaped by many forces: geographic, economic, religious, historical, political, linguistic and social. Students become more familiar with many Sub-Saharan African cultures by examining films, television programs, literature and newspapers from around the continent, in addition to more traditional academic sources.
Offered at Charlotte, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2070 Social Issues in Contemporary America

This course is designed to provide the student with a realistic understanding of contemporary social issues. The course focuses on the origins, nature and interrelationships between the various topics. Students are encouraged to consider people and conditions in society that pose problems, and to attempt to develop solutions to those problems.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Charlotte, Online
3 Semester Credits

SOC2100 Sociology of the Family

This course introduces students to the sociological investigation of the core institution of family. Emphasis is on social, cultural, political and economic forces on family systems and to changes in family life and family structure both in the United States and globally.
Offered at Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC2620 Classical Sociological Theories

This course introduces students to the intellectual, social and foundational history of sociology in the major historical transformation of the eighteenth through early twentieth century, primarily in Europe and the United States. Topics include sociological theory, a theory’s value and how one might evaluate it. This course sets the stage for students moving on to study contemporary sociological theories and their various forms of expression.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005, any other SOC-designated course.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3020 Culture and Food

This course is on the sociology of food. Students think and rethink the place of food in the human experience and consider topics such as how food and gender intersect, symbolic group boundaries affect how people eat and drink, and cultures share and adapt each other’s foods. Students explore how the discipline of sociology examines food as a cultural and social artifact and the role that it plays in societies today.
Prerequisite(s): ENG1020 or ENG1024 or English Placement or SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Charlotte, Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3025 Cultural Tapestry: Perspectives in Diversity

This course approaches the study of diversity by offering students an opportunity to understand the meaning of difference from a multitude of perspectives. Students study how categories of diversity are created, the experience of being perceived as different in society, and the consequences of difference as gauged by the allocation of privilege and resources to differing groups within society. Such categories as race, ethnicity and national identity, socioeconomic status, gender differences, sexual orientation, learning styles and religious affiliation are addressed. Similarities between ethnic groups and cultures are also examined. The sociological paradigms/perspectives are also utilized in the study of diversity. Students shape a presentation that addresses diverse subject matter in an experiential manner. As the course concludes, attention is directed towards identifying strategies that can be employed both on a macrolevel in society and on a micro-level within the students' realm of influence, to broaden the acceptance of differing perspectives in a pluralistic society.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Online
3 Semester Credits

SOC3060 Deviant Behavior

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a clear understanding of the nature and meaning of deviance. Students learn what is considered the norm in society, what is outside the norm, and how each is relative in nature. Theoretical explanations, cross cultural references and in depth analyses of deviant behavior are studied from the three dominant sociological paradigms. Who defines deviance, what is deviant, why deviance persists, the effect of labels, and the personal and social effects of deviance are discussed.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Charlotte, Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3100 Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

This course confronts the questions of whether every person has both a race and an ethnicity, if these "memberships" matter more in some people's lives than others, and why there is conflict sometimes about what the groups are and who belongs where. Focus is primarily on the United States, but global migration is an important part of the story both in the nation’s founding and today as national borders greet global citizens with mixed results. Rather than a survey that characterizes one racial-ethnic group after another, this course emphasizes the social construction of races and ethnicities as historically specific, relational and changeable.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3200 Environmental Sociology

This course explores the relationships between society and the environment. It investigates how sociologists and others analyze human-nature interactions. Focus is on how environmental factors such as regional climate change, toxins, availability of resources and natural disasters have shaped social phenomena and how human activities have impacted biological systems and the physical environment. Students investigate the social structures and institutions in our society affecting environmental quality at the local, national and global levels. This course also assesses relevant characteristics of society such as intersecting inequalities, types of environmental movements and social change.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3300 Gender in Global Perspective

This course explores the ways in which gender is distinctly socially constructed in societies and places across the globe. Emphasis is on the social factors that shape gender relations and make ideas about gender different in one place from another. Exploring how the elements of everyday life and society interact (culture, economics, politics, history and religion), this course investigates the performances of gender roles and the expectations that align with them. The social construct of the binary idea of gender is challenged in human terms, from both biological and socio-cultural perspectives. This course also uses case studies of various gender relations internationally to explore the many contexts in which ideas, scripts and performances of gender occur.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005.
Offered at Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3620 Contemporary Sociological Theories

This course extends the work completed in SOC2620 Classical Sociological Theories with a focus on sociological theory from the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Emphasis is on the varieties of sociological expression that have emerged and solidified in connection with empirical research. Additionally, attention is given to the social and intellectual contexts of sociological theorizing. Focus is on the viability of the much-touted “sociological imagination” in the present context.
Prerequisite(s): SOC2620.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3720 Intersecting Inequalities

This course is a study of how intersectionality (the new intellectual tradition of considering class and race and gender not separately, but simultaneously) can enrich both theory and research for all of us. Topics include how sociology has always been concerned with economic inequality, and more recently with inequalities of race-ethnicity and of gender.
Prerequisite(s): SOC3620.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC3850 Research Applications and Interventions

This course documents many instances of research helping to advance social well-being and justice, as well as instances when social science has been used to support misery and injustice. Students develop a cautious and well-informed approach to maximizing positive impacts in the research they use and conduct. After completing this course, students are prepared to conduct their own original research in the Sociology Capstone course.
Prerequisite(s): SOC1001 or SOC2005, RSCH2050.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC4900 Capstone in Sociology

In this senior capstone course, students synthesize together their knowledge of theories and research methods with topical knowledge at both the micro and macro levels. Following their individual areas of interest, each student designs and conducts an original research project. Students share peer feedback, then build professional skills with final presentations. Throughout, in accordance with the stated outcomes of the major, college and university, the seminar strengthens students’ sense of themselves as positive community members, and their competencies in communication, reasoning and problem-solving.
Prerequisite(s): SOC3850, junior status.
Offered at Online, Providence
3 Semester Credits

SOC5030 The Global Food System

This interdisciplinary course provides students with an overview of food systems characteristics, exploring how local and regional influences compare with those occurring at the global level. Exploration of major historical developments in the food systems of the past 500 years occurs in order to comprehend how they are influenced by social, political, economic and ecological environments. Students explore the complexities and diversity of the global food system identifying potential challenges facing producers, consumers and policy makers. Aspects of the global food system are examined in the context of a variety of environmental and social challenges ranging from sustainability, climate change and ecosystem degradation to rising rates of obesity and malnutrition. Students debate the challenges of providing a modern food system that can sustain a growing global population living in the midst of increasingly post-industrial societies.
Offered at Providence
3 Semester Credits