In addition, students will give group presentations on a predetermined topic, for which they will prepare outside of class during the regular meetings. Throughout this class, students will be reminded of the goals of learning together, of teaching one another, and of the accountability of community. This course functions well in its current form. The course is particularly well suited for the research module add-on, however. To many of our students, learning political sociology is like learning a foreign language.
Students tend to have little advance knowledge of the issues that are discussed.
In addition, much of the reading material and class discussion revolves around seemingly abstract theories. For example, several weeks are spent considering the merits of competing theoretical perspectives concerning the role of the state in democratic societies. Students are better equipped to understand these theories when they are grounded in empirical observations. Students will make empirical observations through secondary analyses of pre-existing data sets. For example, they may use Rory McVeigh's data on the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, or the General Social Survey, or other data sets that I will make available to them.