An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-sociology/

This course explores the phenomenological and organizational foundation of everyday experience. It focuses on the structure and social interactions that shape everyday life, and explains the social order that makes everyday life seem smooth and relatively effortless. The course offers experience in qualitative research and writing.

Scandals – corporate, political, or bureaucratic – pervade media reporting and public debate. This course takes up scandals as sociological events: what are the causes of scandals? How are scandals ‘made’? How are scandals represented? And what are the consequences of scandals: do they discredit some actors, and lead to cultural, institutional, and organizational change? Do they lead to reform, used for new professional mobilization, new forms of regulation and oversight, targeted for legal intervention, or do they generate new political shifts, or new memories or narratives? Or are they ignored? The course will also pay attention to how scandals are made public: leaks, investigations, whistleblowers, and media reporting, and the framing of events as scandals worthy of public condemnation. Finally, with scandals often thought of as singular, this course allows students to consider what is in common between these events.

This course is by application, submitted to the Department by the Monday before the term begins. Students work independently with a professor in the Department who acts as research supervisor. There are no formal class meetings, lectures, or readings other than what is agreed to with the supervisor. Professors accept supervisory responsibility at their discretion. Students approach a professor working in the same sub-discipline of sociology. This course is not eligible for CR/NCR option. For further details, including the application form, please visit our website at: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/independent-research-course/

This course is by application, submitted to the Department by the Monday before the term begins. Students work independently with a professor in the Department who acts as research supervisor. There are no formal class meetings, lectures, or readings other than what is agreed to with the supervisor. Professors accept supervisory responsibility at their discretion. Students approach a professor working in the same sub-discipline of sociology. This course is not eligible for CR/NCR option. For further details, including the application form, please visit our website at: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/independent-research-course/

This course is by application, submitted to the Department by the Monday before the term begins. Students work independently with a professor in the Department who acts as research supervisor. There are no formal class meetings, lectures, or readings other than what is agreed to with the supervisor. Professors accept supervisory responsibility at their discretion. Students approach a professor working in the same sub-discipline of sociology. This course is not eligible for CR/NCR option. For further details, including the application form, please visit our website at: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/independent-research-course/

An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-s…

An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-s…

An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-s…

An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-s…

An opportunity to explore new topics in sociology. Topics vary from year to year based on the instructor. Consult the Departmental website: http://sociology.utoronto.ca/st-george-campus/courses-3/new-topics-in-s…

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-excursions-program. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-excursions-program. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/research-opportunities-program. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course covers central issues in the field of organizational sociology. It explores different perspectives on why complex organizations look and operate the way that they do, and examines the social consequences of their behavior. The first part of the course focuses on the evolution of the modern firm. We will trace the history of different models of management and strategy, and evaluate their relative efficacy. The second part of the course examines how organizations shape, and are shaped by, their environments. The third part of the course will explore how organizational behavior influences social inequality, and how social inequality shapes the way that modern organizations function. We will make use of both social scientific analyses and Harvard Business School case studies. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

Research designs are much like jigsaw puzzles, but harder: they require scholars to carefully connect a variety of distinct yet intricately linked piecesinto a thematically consistent, practical and defensible whole. Few tasks in the research process are as commonplace and as riddled with difficulty. This semester length course will provide a forum for students to compose a research design on the topic of sexuality using qualitative approaches that include in-depth interview and ethnography. Throughout the course, students will read a variety of works that describe the goals, procedures, and underlying logic of research design. These works will draw from articles and chapters on methodological problems and issues, and also from actual studies that use in-depth interview and ethnography in sexuality studies. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course examines the sociological implications associated with the growing dominance of psychiatry over designating and managing the margins of ‘normality’ and ‘deviance.’ It covers the evolution of the DSM and rise of deinstitutionalization, the importance of stigma and symbolic interactionist understandings of psychiatric diagnoses, and the methods of social control used to mitigate risk and reduce social deviance within the psychiatric and criminal justice systems. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the social implications of mental health labels. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course considers the history of penology, theories of penal development and current trends. Particular attention will be paid to cross-national variations in punishment and what these reveal about the relevance of particular theories and the importance of culture in understanding historical developments in punishment. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This fourth year course will provide an advanced treatment of selected topics in political Sociology. Specific topics to be covered are the relationship between political systems and cleavage voting, the relationship between social class and attitudes and voting, the post-materialist thesis, social capital and civic participation, gender politics, the various varieties, causes and effects of welfare states, and social movements. The course will have both a Canadian and international focus. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

Examines the competing theoretical, policy and therapeutic responses to a variety of family health problems, including addictions, chronic physical illnesses, and mental illness, as well as the effects of illness on family life and family coping. The links between theory and practice provide the basis for discussion of knowledge transfer. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

From social cohesion to intergroup violence, emotional processes influence social outcomes. Moral aspects of experience in particular are linked to emotions such as shame and pride. Students in this course will review major theories of, and a variety of empirical approaches to, the link between social and emotional processes. They will be encouraged to extend ideas and analyses in the published literature to new topics. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

Global Inequality and Contentious Politics: This is a seminar course designed to understand global inequalities and contentious politics. Inequality has been one of the primary subjects in sociological inquiries and its scope naturally expands to a global dimension as our societies are increasingly shaped by international connections. This seminar focuses on understanding various manifestations of global inequalities intersected by international hierarchy, race, gender, and class. Yet, these divisions and injustices are neither static nor unchallenged as people react to these realities via divergent methods. This class will read major theoretical approaches to social movements and examine contentious mobilizations taking place in different geographies around the world to reshape the global order ridden with disparities. Empirical cases of contentious activism include anti-globalization protest, the Occupy movement, campaigns for migrant care workers, resistance against American military bases, and the Me Too movement. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

In this course, we examine institutions of higher education as unique social contexts within which student mental health unfolds. In doing so, we will address mediating and moderating factors, which characterize the unique and varied socio-emotional experiences of students attending post-secondary. As such, we will distinguish and clarify social approaches to studying mental health – focusing on mentorship, funding, social support, academic demands and healthcare resources – from mental illness as characterized in medical disciplines. Students will be expected to read thoroughly and apply insights from the course to authentic mental health concerns facing institutions of higher education today. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course explores major questions about the nature of gender and gender inequality. The course requires a careful review of key theoretical and empirical work addressing one of these questions and the completion of a research project. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course will tackle some of the messy martial arts geneaology that gave rise to contemporary MMA, while also delving into theoretical work on the emotions felt in violence, the moral worlds of gyms and dojos, the process of learning how to fight, women in the UFC, and a host of other issues related to jiu jitsu, judo, and mixed martial arts more generally. Students will have the opportunity to participate in martial arts practices.

This course explores how policy processes and frameworks need to be evaluated in light of the social context in which they are developed. Factors to be considered include the interplay between public values and expectations and public policy; the implications of cultural diversity and demographic change, and understandings of ethical principles of conduct in public organizations. A related goal is to help students learn how to use empirical research to answer highly contested issues in policy circles and in public life. These objectives are pursued by introducing students to major trends in inequality in Canada, assessing these trends within a comparative context, reflecting on their normative implications, and examining alternative policy responses to these developments. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course focuses on current debates and research findings in the study of social movements. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

Relationships between various forms of culture and the networks connecting both individual people and organizations creating culture. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.

This course examines the social foundations of thinking and action, with a focus on how individuals think and act through shared cognitive schemas that are embedded in larger social structures. The course is organized around a wide-ranging array of classical and contemporary theories that help explain the various factors that shape culture and cognition. There is a research component to put this analytical understanding into practice. Restricted to 4th-year sociology majors and specialists.