(Week 1) Feb. 22  Introduction

*The Stanford Prison Experiment (watch in class). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0

(Week2) March 01  National Holiday

**No Class**

(Week 3) March 08  Theory and Methods

Davis, Kingsley. 1947. "Final Note on a Case of Extreme Isolation," American Journal of Sociology 53: 432-437.

Durkheim, Emile. “Social Fact.” 50-59.

(Week 4) March 15  Social Class, Reproduction and Mobility

Lowrey, Annie. 2013. "The Rich Get Richer through the Recovery." New York Times.

(http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?_r=0)

Zuesse, Eric. 2013. “United States Is Now the Most Unequal of All Advanced Economies.” The Huffington Post.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/us-is-now-the-most-unequa_b_4408647.html))

*People like Us, episode 1: Social Class in America (watch in class)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF

(Week 5) March 22  Education

Chin, Tiffany. 2000. “Sixth Grade Madness: Parental Emotion Work in the Private High School Application Process.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (2): 124-163.

Gladwell, Malcolm. 2005. "Getting In," The New Yorker (October 10, 2005), pp. 1-6.

Khan, Shamus. 2011. Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Ch. 1 (p. 1-17).

*The Higher Education Bubble (view in class)                      

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAwBN2Q8L14)

(Week 6) March 29  Family                                       

Fong, Vanessa. 2002. "China's One?Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters." American Anthropologist 104 (4): 1098-1109.

Goode, William. 1959. “The Theoretical Importance of Love.” American Sociological Review 24(1): 38-47.

(Week 7) April 05  National Holiday

**No class**

(Week 8) April 12  Culture

Calarco, Jessica. 2014. “Coached for the classroom parents’ cultural transmission and children’s reproduction of educational inequalities.” American Sociological Review, 79 (5): 1015-1037.

Miner, Horace. 1956. "Body ritual among the Nacirema." American anthropologist 58 (3): 503-507.

*People like Us, episodes 2 and 3 (watch in class)

(Week 9) April 19  Midterm exam

(Week 10) April 26  Gender

Leidner, Robin. 1991. "Serving hamburgers and selling insurance: Gender, work, and identity in interactive service jobs." Gender & Society 5 (2): 154-177.

 

(Week 11) May 03  Nation State and Power

Domhoff, G. William. 2005. “Who Rules America?” (http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)

(Week 12) May 10  Health and Medicine

Mullainathan and Shafir. 2013. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Introduction and Ch. 1 (p. 1-38).

Scott, Janny. 2005/5/16. “Life at the Top in America Isn’t Just Better, It’s Longer.” The New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/us/class/life-at-the-top-in-america-isnt-just-better-its-longer.html)

(Week 13) May 17  Science, and Technology, and Society (1) Experiments

Guest Lecturer: Yen-Sheng Chiang, Associate Researcher at Academia Sinica

Salganik, Matthew J. Bit by Bit: Research in the Digital Age. Ch 1. Introduction (http://www.bitbybitbook.com/en/1st-ed/introduction/)

(Week 14) May 24  Science, and Technology, and Society (2) Big Data

Guest Lecturer: Wayne Lee, Assistant Researcher at Academia Sinica

Salganik, Matthew J. Bit by Bit: Research in the Digital Age. Ch 2. Observing Behaviors. (https://www.bitbybitbook.com/en/1st-ed/observing-behavior/)

(Week 15) May 31  Race and Ethnicity

Brown, Melissa. 2001. “Reconstructing Ethnicity: Recorded and Remembered Identity in Taiwan.” Ethnology 40 (2): 153-164.

Fredrickson, George M. 2002. Racism: A Short History. Princeton University Press (p. 1-13).

Pager, Devah. 2003. "The Mark of a Criminal Record," American Journal of Sociology 108: 937-975.

(Week 16) June 07  Immigration

Portes, Alejandro and Min Zhou. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and its Variants.” The annals of the American academy of political and social science 530 (1): 74-96.

(Week 17) June 14  National Holiday

**no class**

(Week 18) June 21  Final Exam

Course requirements

1. Participation: 20%

Class attendance is required. We will primarily discuss and do activities on weekly topics. Doing the readings before each class (except for the first week) will help prepare you for classroom participation.

2. Five short reflections: 10 (2% each)
   
   You can choose any five weeks to write a short reflection on the readings. Print out your reflections and bring them to class, each should be approximately 2-5 sentences, no more than one paragraph. Hardcopies will be collected at the beginning of each class. The reflections are intended to facilitate class discussion, so be prepared to share your thoughts with the class. For example, you can state what you find most interesting in the readings, how the readings connect to everyday life (such as an example in the news), or how the weekly materials relate to other topics in class.

3. Midterm exam: 30%
   
   Midterm will take place during class. It is closed-book and in the format of multiple-choice and short answers.
   
    


4. Final exam: 40%
   
   Final exam will take place on the date and place determined by the university. The exam will be in the same format as the midterm: closed-book exam with multiple-choice and short answers. Materials tested in the final are topics after the midterm. Please keep close attention to the date (announced by the university) and plan your travel accordingly.

Welcome to the course!