SOC 187 A-Z - (BH) Special TopicsSemester Hours: 3
Fall, Spring
Course deals with innovative topics.
Current Special Topics
SOC 187J (WI), CRN 94151: (BH) Race at Hofstra: Interrogating Ourselves
From the promise of President Obama’s “post-racial era” to the rising rates of racially motivated hate crimes in the past two years, race remains a central issue in the contemporary United States. In the context of these rapidly changing national dynamics, this course will explore how these themes manifest in race relations on campus. The first portion of the class will review the existing literature in order to provide contextual background. Students will then identify core issues on campus that they wish to understand, and they will research those topics using qualitative methods (including ethnographic observation, interviewing, and/or focus groups). Class discussions will encourage collaborative understanding and analysis. Students who sign up for the class should have a genuine and open-minded interest in exploring the idea of race and be prepared to delve into the research strategies that will enable us to accomplish this objective.
SOC 187V: Spacing Out, Zooming In: Coronavirus and Social-Spatial Arrangements
The idea of social distancing (spatial arrangements) is not new. We enlist it in our everyday lives, in how we orient ourselves with others and how we arrange features of our environment. But the Coronavirus Pandemic has shined a light on this hidden dimension of social and structural life and made us reconsider how it has been engaged and going forward how we need to refashion it so as to sustain things we want–keeping and making social connections–and also reduce or avoid things we don’t–isolation and exclusion.
This course will consider the study of physical and social proximity as already understood from several disciplines including sociology, technology, architecture, landscaping, and environmental design. We will look at how various parts of society (e.g. health care, retail, schools, public spaces, public transit) are already refashioning social behavior through technology and intentional design, not only as a response to Coronavirus, but also as part of long-term ongoing social change. The study of proximity will reveal underlying issues that reflect social inequities and problems that persist or have been intensified by the rearrangement of space. We will consider how we can design sustainable local and global social connections going forward.
Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
May be repeated for credit when topics vary. As individual subjects are selected, each is assigned a letter (A-Z) which is affixed to the course number. Specific titles and course descriptions for special topics courses are available in the online class schedule. (Formerly SOC 187.)
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