In this course we will survey some of the principal sub-areas of political sociology while paying special attention to disciplinary controversies, intellectual trajectories, and major contributions. Although political sociology overlaps with political science, political scientists tend to focus on institutions that are more official, entrenched, or legitimate (e.g., parties, constitutions, parliaments, electoral systems, judicial systems, armed forces, public administration, and interest groups). Putting things a bit too simply, political sociologists tend to examine the social determinants and social outcomes of political and quasi-political processes such as policymaking, class struggle, state formation, social inequality, and movement mobilization.

Under the supervision of a faculty member, students may develop a paper for credit. Students may develop their own projects, write a paper that is part of a faculty members' research or develop one based on their work as a Research Assistant. Given the short timeframe, it is best to line up a Sociology faculty supervisor in the first semester of the program.

This course examines advanced topics in the sociology of gender. These will vary depending on the instructor.

An in-depth examination of selected topics in the Sociological Theory. Topics in this course will vary from year to year with professorial rotation. See the departmental website for details.

As social scientists, we are interested in understanding how social outcomes vary across different groups, or how such outcomes are related to other characteristics and variables of interest. To answer such questions, we often need to collect data and analyze that data in a statistical way. This course introduces fundamental techniques and methods to analyze quantitative data to draw inferences about social processes. Specifically, the course covers sampling, summary statistics and visualization, probability fundamentals, statistical inference, simple and multiple linear regression, and research design.

This course will teach students the craft of ethnography, with two main foci: the collection and analysis of field data and the critique and analysis of ethnographic texts. Students should have a specific field site prior to the course since they will immediately begin writing up their insights and observations. In addition, students will evaluate selected ethnographies for their theoretical, analytical, descriptive, and writing contributions. The readings will come from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, and range in their themes. This range exposes students to both traditional and innovative works, ones that will help them figure out their own ethnographic approach. In all, this course will serve as a space of dialogue and exchange, where students share field notes and experiences,offer constructive criticism and insights, and practice innovative writing and ideas.

This advanced seminar with focus on a specific area central to the study of the sociology of crime and law. Students will examine theories and debates specific to a particular area in the field. Topics will vary according to the instructor's interests.

This course provides students with an introduction to the research, theories, and methodologies of Indigenous Studies. Topics include, but are not limited to: research ethics, qualitative research methods, decolonization, and Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies.

This is a graduate level course in the sociology of Work, Stratification, and Markets. Instructors will identify and discuss current and classical theoretical and empirical work in the area.

An in-depth examination of selected topics in Sociological Theory. Topics in this course will vary from year to year. See department website for details.

An in-depth examination of specialized topics in the sociological study of crime, punishment, and/or law and society. Topics in this course will be determined by the instructor and will vary from year to year. See the departmental website for details.

This course examines the development, organization, and social dynamics of cities through foundational and contemporary sociological theories. Students will study key processes such as urbanization, neighbourhood change, social stratification, and the formation of urban communities. The course emphasizes sociological explanations of how urban environments shape—and are shaped by—patterns of social life.

This advanced seminar with focus on a specific area central to the study of the sociology of crime and law. Students will examine theories and debates specific to a particular area in the field. Topics will vary according to the instructor's interests.

The professional development seminar provides a strong support structure to PhD students in order to develop their graduate careers and beyond; it offers discussion on topics relevant to sociology as a profession and helps students build research and writing skills early and efficiently. It considers "soft skills" like communicating with others in the department and profession (in person and online), and discussing one's ideas. Overall, the course focuses on the practical matters of professional life, and of reaching career goals with the Sociology PhD.

An in-depth examination of selected topics in the Sociology of Culture. Topics in this course will vary from year to year. See the departmental website for details.

This course provides an in-depth examination of empirical and theoretical literature in Culture and Cognition, encompassing foundational publications to the most recent impactful research in this field. It covers a wide range of topics and areas of research, offering students a detailed survey of research in Culture and Cognition.

An in-depth examination of selected topics in the Sociology of Culture. Topics in this course will vary from year to year. See the departmental website for details.

This course provides a focused overview of key issues in research design and interpretation that are foundational to producing (and recognizing) high-quality research, regardless of whether it uses a quantitative or qualitative approach. It is within this framework that the course will also review key methods used in the field, so that students are able to see past common divides between quantitative and qualitative research, which will expand their flexibility and expertise. This course provides MA graduates with core skills that are more important than ever for conducting and evaluating research in the non-academic world. The course will help students to align a substantive problem with the appropriate research methodologies for resolving it.

As social scientists, we are interested in understanding how social outcomes vary across different groups, or how such outcomes are related to other characteristics and variables of interest. To answer such questions, we often need to collect data and analyze that data in a statistical way. The course builds on fundamental techniques and methods to analyze quantitative data to draw inferences about social processes. Specifically, the course covers linear regression, generalized linear regression, and multilevel models. The emphasis of this course is not only to learn how to apply statistical techniques, but also to identify data issues that could potentially bias results.

This course introduces students to the field of computational social science, a set of commonly used computational tools, and their applications to question of sociological interest. New forms of digital data present enormous opportunities for social research. These data include the finegrained and time-stamped records of human behaviour and interactions online, massive troves of text and other "unstructured" data, and digitized documents and administrative records. Although often defined by the specific set of data sources and tools, computational social science can also be characterized by an attitude toward social research that appreciates the substantial opportunities afforded by the increasing availability of digitized data sources, an openness to novel methodologies, and a willingness to write lots of code and learn on the fly. This course seeks to cultivate this attitude. You will be introduced to a suite of currently popular methods, but you will also be encouraged to develop an aptitude and comfort with coding and to keep pace with the rapidly evolving computational toolkit in your subfield.

This course challenges of translating your general sociological interests into a research project, including formulating a practical research question, choosing appropriate data and methods, and communicating results in a way that engages with and contributes to the broader scientific literature. Like building a house from the ground up, the research process involves a set of practices that require careful implementation at each stage, but can also bring unforeseen challenges requiring strategic choices, hard thinking, reflection and compromise.The Doctoral Research Practicum is designed to guide doctoral students through the process of producing an original research paper, from the specification of an appropriate sociological question to the task of writing up one's findings in a defensible, publishable paper, and everything in-between. To accomplish this goal, students will conduct their own research, obtain, or produce data, conduct analysis, and develop a publishable paper that draws from this research by spring. We meet weekly to discuss each student's progress and suggest ways of improving the research. Toward this end, students will circulate, present, and evaluate each other's work in written and oral formats, receiving feedback from their peers, course instructors, and their advisors. Students will also provide response memos regarding how they address feedback with new versions of the paper.

Researchers use qualitative methods to study the everyday interactions, experiences, and meanings that contribute to, challenge, and sustain ideas, institutions, and inequalities. Qualitative researchers consider gender, race, class, and sexuality in public street behaviour; play during children's recess; support groups for women with post-partum depression; drag king and queen competitions; and survival strategies among the homeless. In these studies, researchers interview people, watch their behavior, participate in groups' activities, look at the documents and other texts that people produce, and try to immerse themselves in people's everyday experiences and meanings. The aim is usually to explore the relationship between the day-to-day and broader social structures and ideologies. The course may include: 1) data gathered through archival research, interviewing, and participant observation, 2) emotion as a source insight in qualitative research, and 3) writing as a means to record information, develop analyses, and share ideas.

Seminar discussions, in-class writing workshops, readings, and assignments may engage canonical, Chicago School, community-engaged, critical race, feminist, intersectional, and queer qualitative research. Readings will come primarily from sociology, and many appear on the Sociology Department's Qualitative Methods comprehensive exam list. Like qualitative methods, we will reach across disciplines and fields and types of authors. We will discuss readings, share work in progress, practice data collection and analysis, and apply ideas from the readings to our research projects and goals. We'll pay special attention to writing, thinking about how we can best use writing 1) to record the information we gather through observation or interviews, 2) to develop our analyses, and 3) to present our ideas to others. We’ll also grapple with the challenges of relying on writing to generate and convey our analyses. Throughout the semester we will consider how field methods illuminate, challenge, and sometimes reinforce social conditions; we'll also think about the influence of social conditions, including inequalities, on people's experiences as researchers and as research subjects.

This seminar analyzes the politics and practices of qualitative interviewing in local and global contexts. By addressing both its technical and theoretical aspects, the course examines: 1) the roles of qualitative interviewing in knowledge production and reproduction; 2) the constructive process and the inter-subjective dynamic of qualitative interviewing; 3) the technical aspects of asking questions and beyond; 4) doing reflexivity, hearing data, and interpreting silences. Using primary interview data about immigrant families from the Caribbean, China, Italy, and Sri Lanka, students will acquire first hand experience of doing qualitative interviewing by: 1) reading, commenting on, and revising good examples and mistakes from transcripts of 39 immigrant interviews; 2) carrying out and reflecting upon an in-class interview practicum; 3) analyzing interview process, coding interview transcript, and writing reflective essays; 4) engaging in and opening to constructive criticism.

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar focuses on mainly three qualitative research methodologies — archival research, ethnography, and oral history — with particular attention to significant ongoing debates regarding the epistemologies underpinning each of these. The course focuses on both the practical aspects of these methodologies and examples of works that employ them. An underlying aim of the course is to evaluate critically the dualisms central to positivism — a paradigm that is challenged, and yet continues to be influential as part of the "disciplinary unconscious" that informs contemporary social science and humanities scholarship.

The seminar challenges graduate students to discover and hone their teaching styles, to develop a personal philosophy about teaching and learning, to learn about the teaching resources that are available to them throughout the university and elsewhere, to experimentwith designing engaging courses of study, and to discover that teaching can be a rewarding and stimulating element of an academic career. The seminar will discuss the major components of a course, including course goals, topic outline, use of readings, use of class time, evaluation of students, and evaluating yourself. In each case, we will consider the options available and their strengths and limitations.

A detailed study of the external and internal history of the language. Topics treated: a brief outline of factors involved in linguistic evolution and language formation; fragmentation of Hispano-Latin into several Romance dialects; preliterary Spanish; medieval Spanish; formation of the literary language and the evolution of modern standards. The main features of the phonetic evolution from Latin to Spanish are studied with emphasis on the formation of speech sounds and the factors which spearheaded the mutations. It should be noted that the references to Latin are of a general nature and no formal knowledge of this language is required.

This course is designed for future teachers of Spanish who wish to strengthen their grammatical background. We will review traditional topics of Spanish grammar such as the verbal and pronominal systems, the two copula verbs, and issues on subordinate clauses. The course will focus on reflection on grammatical structures and detailed analyses of structures based on current analytic approaches to grammar. It will help students develop critical thinking and acquire conceptual tools to develop pedagogical strategies in the foreign language classroom, including basic form-oriented lessons and error analysis.

Target audience: MA and PhD students who have not taken a comparable course; not recommended for graduate students in Hispanic Linguistics.

Explore the foundations of the Spanish simple and complex sentences, with particular interest in grammatical topics of pedagogical interest. This course provides an introduction to the formal analysis of language applied to the basic grammatical construction of Spanish, covering topics in Spanish morphology (the analysis of word structure), Spanish syntax (the analysis of sentence structure) and semantics (the study of sentence and word meanings). Classroom activities focus on the analysis of actual language use, and the explanations for why speakers do what they do, rather than on prescriptive or stylistic approaches to grammar. Students will prepare a research project on one aspect of Spanish grammar of potential pedagogical interest.

This course is conceived as an introduction to the study of linguistic variation across the Spanish speaking world. It covers the central issues in phonological, morphological, and syntactic variation, analyzed from a geographical as well as from a social point of view.

This course introduces students to experimental approaches in linguistics, with a special focus on central topics in Hispanic linguistics. It will cover all aspects of experimentation, including hypothesis development, experimental design, and data-collection techniques. The course will also cover discussion and training in presentation of experimental results. Students will receive training in the use of different experimental and corpus analysis techniques and will discuss paradigmatic examples of research papers in the areas of phonetics-phonology and morpho-syntax. Students will undertake empirical research on a theoretically relevant dimension of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, or semantics of (any variety of) Spanish or Portuguese. This course is taught in English.