The contemporary conditions of black families are explored, as well as the historical events that have influenced the family patterns we currently observe. Special attention will be given to social policies that have evolved as a result of the prominence of any one perspective at a given point in time. This course will consider research in which the instructor has been personally involved, and its policy implications, in order to dramatize the relation between basic research and social policy. Human Development A survey of sociological research and theory on life cycle stages from infancy through adulthood with emphasis on continuity and change. Topics will include sociology of birth and infancy, child and adolescence as a transition period for young adulthood, and the various stages of adulthood into old age.
Major themes are life-course issues, including cohort historical effects.
The tension between quality and equality in American education, as developed in the various writings of James S. Coleman, will be the focus of this course. Major works to be considered will include The Adolescent Society, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Youth in Transition, Trends in School Segregation, and Public and Private High Schools. Political Sociology Analyzes the relations of the state to society and economy in several nations which occupy distinctive positions in the world system, with special attention to the effects of different class structures and patterns of regional inequality on political protest, mobilization, and change. This course introduces graduate students and upper-level undergraduates to medical sociology, which is the application of the sociological perspective to health and health care. Major topics include stress, social epidemiology, and the social organization of health care.