Teaching
“Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is . . . . we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”
— Jedi Master Yoda (The Last Jedi, 2017)
Pedagogical Philosophy
Sociology, as an academic paradigm for explaining human behavior, is also a reservoir rich in varied pedagogical approaches. I draw upon techniques to assist students to situate their own biographies in an ongoing cycle as both products and producers of social forces. I challenge students to recognize where they are socially located and to closely study and question the knowledge they gain as both indicators and effects of what I call “The Five I’s” (institutions, ideologies, interests, interactions, and identities).
Toward this end, my pedagogy utilizes the framework of C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination, whereby one grasps “history and biography and the relations between the two within society” (The Sociological Imagination 1959, p. 4). We tend to cloak or present what are “public issues” as instead our own “private troubles”: we blame individuals for not finding work, we dismiss the outcomes or even existence of discrimination, we traffic in gossip about the people involved in controversies rather than the social source of problems. As a remedy, I guide students to focus on the larger social milieu and how taken-for-granted notions like the individual, profit, race, gender, conflict, and knowledge (among others) are themselves products and reflections of subjective interpretations and objective asymmetrical social relations.
Courses Offered
Ethnicity and Race
Are “Emily” and “Greg” more employable than “Lakisha” and “Jamal”? Did the election of Obama mean the end of racism? Do White Supremacists have inter-racial friendships? How do we count multiracial people on the US Census? How can one provide empirically-based solutions to the problems of racial inequality, racial discrimination, and systemic racism? What kind of sociological concepts can help us interpret what data we collect and analyze? course will answer these questions and more by providing a rigorous introduction to the field of race and ethnicity, largely within the context of North America. (Undergraduate Level)
Social Theory
For better or worse, contemporary sociology rests largely on a foundation of concepts, observations, and procedures developed by a variety of European and American thinkers from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. In the eighteenth century, sociology was not yet institutionalized as a distinct point of view or profession. Rather, social reflection and observation were styles of thought within philosophy and letters more broadly. By the late nineteenth century, however, a number of thinkers began to identify social science—if not yet “sociology” in particular—as a distinctive enterprise with unique procedures, concepts, and theoretical points of view. By the twentieth century, the application of sociology to a host of “social problems” became normative and increasingly necessary in order to explain why and how human behavior works. Any understanding of sociological projects in the contemporary period thus rests on a comprehension of the origins and outlines of the field as they formed in these contexts. By the same token, the ideas, attitudes, and terms propagated by thinkers in the Enlightenment, the Romantic Age, the Colonial and “Post”-Colonial Era, the Industrial Age and more, and the sociological theories built form the distinct times, provide enduring resources for, as well as origins of, the self-concept of modern society. These are the terms of our self-understanding and referents of our sociological discourses. This course will address whether and in what ways these theories still contribute to our understanding of the world in which we live and the ways we practice sociology. (Undergraduate Level)
Symbolic Interaction
This course covers selected topics related to the sociological tradition of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). This perspective has a long intellectual history, whose formal beginnings are often credited to the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) and the American philosopher, George H. Mead (1863-1931). However, it was Herbert Blumer (1900-1987), who is responsible for coining the term “symbolic interactionism,” as well as for formulating the most prominent version of the theory. Distinguished from the macro-structuralist approaches of both the functionalist and conflict varieties, SI emphasizes how society consists of organized and patterned interactions among individuals. Thus, research by interactionists focuses on observable face-to-face interactions. Moreover, the SI focus on how actors make meaning of events (“the definition of the situation”) shifts attention from stable norms and values toward more changeable, continually re-adjusting social processes that remain ongoing acts of accomplishment. Such constant negotiation among members of society creates temporary, socially-constructed relations that remain in flux, despite relative stability in the basic framework governing those relations. (Graduate Level)
Science, Medicine, and Race
The course examines the intersection of science, medicine, and the strange concept of “race.” This course will draw from a variety of scholarly literatures but will center on the social constructionist approach to the study of race and its use as an analytical and scientific category. In so doing, the course will examine how race has been used to organize the fields of medicine and science—as well as social life writ large—in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in the US and transnationally. Beginning with the socio-historical context of the formation (and interrelationship) of science, medicine, and race, we will examine how each have shaped one another and been shaped by larger social and historical processes, such as the development of colonialism, eugenics, Darwinism, and the rise of empirical experimentation. We will then explore modern notions of biology & species, the causes & consequences of health inequities across the color-line, racial inequalities in medical professions & structures, and supposedly “race-based” diseases & cures. We will wrap with the study of genetic & genomic research, DNA & ancestry testing, birth & population control, and organ transplants & markets. (Undergraduate Level)
The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois
An exploration of the life, times, intellectual contexts, and sociological imagination of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), sociologist, public intellectual, and African American leader and activist. This course seeks to explore Du Bois’ sociological imagination by, first, reading several key works by Du Bois and asking the following questions: What are the sociological models contained in these works? What kinds of further exploration do Du Bois’ writings and analyses provoke? How does Du Bois present the role and importance of African Americans in the United States and in the world? How does the sociologist’s life experience shape the sociologist’s ideas? What are Du Bois’ contributions to our thinking about gender, race‑ethnicity, and class? Second, we will gain an understanding of Du Bois’ biography and its connection to race relations and social change in the United States. Third, we will couch these questions more abstract within the context of Du Bois’ scholarly progression, including the early comparative-historical sociology and commentaries on white supremacy; the intimations of cultural sociology that motivate his writings on the cultivation of a black elite and the uses of high culture; his political sociology aimed at institution building and tactical maneuvering with and against white and black leaders alike, and his more “public sociology” that advanced a socialist critique of American militarism and imperialism during the Cold War and beyond. (Graduate Level)
Sociological Perspectives on Whiteness
The concept of whiteness has achieved a powerful purchase in recent discussions and understandings of race and racism. Over the past three decades, investigations into whiteness have emerged as a means to attend to lacking and missing discussions in the “social scientific” study of race and ethnicity. However, despite this interest, studies of whiteness are far from new. Critical investigations of white identity in its lived expressions, as well as theoretical inquisitions into “whiteness” as an ontological concept, have been long been taken on by scholars of color. An explicit yet nascent interest in whiteness goes at least as far back as the work of William J. Wilson’s essay “What Shall We Do With The White People?” in 1860. Today the sociology approach to “whiteness” is quite interdisciplinary and heterogeneous, connecting to fields from labor history and psychoanalytic theory, to cultural analysis and postmodernism. This course investigates the social construction of race through an exploration of whiteness, both theoretically and empirically. It includes an investigation of the historical genesis of whiteness, its intersection with political movements and organizations, the relation of whiteness to race, ethnicity, class, gender, nation, and how whiteness is understood in popular culture, and the sociological mechanisms by which it is reproduced, negotiated, and contested. (Undergraduate Level)
American Society & Popular Culture
From the popularity of Migos and “mumble rap” to debates over race, empire, and royalty surrounding the wedding of Meghan Markle and from issues surrounding patriotism, dissent, and organized sports witnessed in the Colin Kaepernick and the “take a knee” movement to the return of Dave Chapelle to comedy and debates over political correctness, how do we make social scientific sense of American “popular culture”? This course provides an introduction to the sociological study of the field of popular culture. It attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of culture, power, representation, meaning, stratification, mobility, and social positioning. The course seeks to illuminate the cultural contradictions that underpin the discourse of popular culture in a Westernized context. Of necessity, the course has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over culture are strongly conditioned by the past. Along the way, we will learn about the power of mass communications to reflect social values and, at the same time, reproduce structures and meaning systems across generations. (Undergraduate Level)
Race and the Media
This course is an intense and rigorous study of race and the media. It is designed to both challenge “common-sensed” understandings of race and the media and provide empirically-based reevaluations of our racialized media landscape. This course is composed of four general themes: (1) An introduction to how to understand and sociologically theorize the intersection of mass media and racial representations; (2) a discussion of media and power in terms of how inequality is rationalized, reproduced, and contested in media formats; (3) a study of poignant media debates and “hot button” points of controversy, and; (4) an outline of how “new media,” conglomeration, and globalization relate to race and racism in our increasingly digital age. (Graduate Level)
Qualitative Analysis
This course is an introduction to qualitative research methods. The course will operate on several levels simultaneously, as students go through a series of data collection and analysis practices in order to learn qualitative methods skills but also read and reflect on fieldwork carried out by new and well-established scholars. In so doing, the course begins with a review of the logic of social inquiry and the basis for claiming sociological knowledge. This section will consider a variety of analytic and interpretive approaches to sociological research. The course then turns to a review of ethical considerations inherent in varieties of qualitative research. Next, through a review of theoretical, didactic, and exemplary materials, the course will cover interviewing, ethnography, historical/comparative methods, and discourse/content analysis. At the conclusion of the course, students should have: a strong foundation in the logic of qualitative inquiry; basic qualitative techniques and applications; a sense for what types of questions are (and are not) effectively addressed with qualitative approaches, and; ability to design a research project using qualitative methods. Proficiency in qualitative research, however, requires further training and experience. (Graduate Level)
Doctoral Students
2016—2021, Dr. Emma González-Lesser (UConn, chair). Now Communications Associate at Jews of Color Initiative.
2014—2020, Dr. Michael Rosino (UConn, chair, graduated May 2020). Now Assistant Professor at Molloy College.
2014—2019, Dr. Bianca González-Lesser (UConn, chair, graduated May 2019). Now UX researcher at Meta.
2014—2018, Dr. Devon R. Goss (UConn, chair, graduated May 2018). Now Assistant Professor at Oxford College, Emory University.
2014—2017, Dr. Atiya Husain (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduated Dec 2017). Now Assistant Professor at University of Richmond.
2013—2016, Dr. Louise Seamster (Duke University, reader, graduated Aug 2016). Now Assistant Professor at University of Iowa.
2011—2016, Dr. Eric Goulé (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, reader, graduated 2016).
2010—2014, Dr. Sheena Gardner (MSU, co-chair, graduated June 2014). Now Assistant Research Professor at the Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University.