Tuesday Thursday, 2:00Pm to 3:15Pm, SOCY Conference Room
Sociology – Senior Seminar
(SOCY 406-003: 25036)
Spring 2017
Tuesday // Thursday, 2:00pm to 3:15pm, SOCY Conference Room
Professor:Jesse Goldstein, PhD
Founders Hall, 827 West Franklin St, Office 205
E-mail:
Office Hours: W 12:00pm-2:00pm and by appt.
Teaching Asst:Mary Wickline
E-mail:
Office Hours: TBD
COURSE WEBSITE:
Course Overview: Congratulations! Enrollment in this course signifies near completion of your sociology degree! This senior seminar will be a chance for you to develop your personal interest in sociology while actively collaborating with your peers as a community of learners. I expect us all to learn from and with one another. As the instructor, my goal in this class is not to stand in front of the room and ‘teach’ you anything, but to help facilitate an active and exciting learning environment in which each of you can follow your sociological imagination in new and exciting ways. I want you to leave this course feeling confident in your ability to use a sociological analysis to shed light on the world we live in and to make this world a better place.
I assume you all are coming into this class with a strong theoretical and methodological foundation upon which we can build a more nuanced understanding of the practice of sociology. Though all of you will be engaged in your own individual research projects, together we will be asking ourselves questions about what sociology is, what it can (and can’t) do, and how we can apply sociological insights to real-world problems and discussions. In other words, we are going to focus not only on becoming social scientists, but also on becoming informed members of society.
This course is almost entirely student directed. You will be finding your own assigned readings, and working with each other to create engaging research projects. The goal – when it is all said and done, is for you to become a sociological expert in one topic, to know what it means to engage the world as an informed and critical sociologist, and to develop the confidence to know that you’re capable and developing this sort of expertise whenever you should choose.
All of you will complete a capstone research project. I will encourage you all to be creative with your work, and to figure out the best way to apply your research in ways that can have a meaningful social impact.
Learning Objectives:
Research Skills
Critical Information Literacy
Structuring and presenting arguments
Written, visual and oral presentation of arguments
Professional maturity and intellectual sophistication
Assignments:
First Assignment: First Collective Research Project (50 points)
Partial Transcripts and interview summaries (x2) 25 points total
Collective coding 5 points
Data Analysis 15 points
Personal Reflection 5 points
We are going to begin the class with a collective sociological investigation of each other. I want us to understand what sociology means to each of us individually and who we are as a community of learners. For this assignment we will collectively develop an interview protocol that we will each use to interview two classmates.
There are two goals for this assignment. The first is to begin practicing qualitative research methods – specifically long-form, in depth interviews, and the second is to start out the semester engaging with one another and developing our community of learners.
For each of your interviews, you will prepare a partial transcript and overview of the interview. This document will essentially serve as our raw data – so the more thorough it is, the more we will have to work with collectively. Doing this also means that you will have to record your interviews. This is an important aspect of the research process, so please do not forget!
Once we have all of the transcripts together, we will begin to code the data together, using google docs. Everyone will be expected to contribute to this process, which we will discuss in class.
Finally, you will practice turning our data (the interviews) into a meaningful sociological narrative. Ask yourself – are there any abstract sociological themes (about class, race, gender, etc.) that I could relate to these narratives? What are the most important details to include – the ones that actually paint a compelling picture of who these people are? Are there any short quotes you would consider adding, where hearing something in a person’s own words really helps demonstrate a point that you are trying to make?
This is the key: in telling a story with this data – you are not simply “reporting the facts”. You are weaving a narrative – selecting what is more or less significant, choosing how to interpret the responses that we received. That is the work of doing sociology – and its what I want you to dive into at the beginning of the semester.
Lastly, along with your data analysis, you will also write up a brief reflection on the process. I want you to think about how the interviews went, how they differed from one another, what you would have potentially done differently and why.
Second Assignment: Artifact Analysis (50 points)
In-class artifact analysis write-ups (x6) 30 points total
Preparing an artifact (and write-up) 20 points
Throughout the term we will be practicing our sociological skills by analyzing things that are happening in the world. To do this, we are going to regularly bring “artifacts” into class for analysis. What is an artifact? It can be a short online article – either an opinion piece or a news piece. It can be something you agree with or something you disagree with. It can be a cultural product – like a music video or a YouTube video. It could even be a specific set of comments that have been posted in response to an article or video on the internet. Your artifact doesn’t have to be online – it could also be something that’s happening in the world – though in that case having some physical or digital trace of the artifact to discuss in class will still be helpful.
Here is how the assignment will work: the class is going to be broken up into 6 groups – each group is going to work together to choose an artifact to present to the class. Then each individual member of the group is responsible for seeking out relevant sociological material to help make sense of that artifact. This will include at least two non-academic, yet still rigorous commentaries, as well as at least two academic articles or books (if the latter try to find a review or summary of the book). In total each group member should have at least four sources to provide links to. Each group member will write up a one-page (single-spaced) analysis, specifically showing how each of the 4 commentaries could be useful in making sense of their artifact. I want you to be reflecting on things like:
- How are the academic sources different from the non-academic sources (not just stylistically, but also in the content of what they offer)?
- Where are these different sources coming from, and does this tell us anything about why they make the claims that they make, or take the position that they take? Do you detect any specific bias or unacknowledged orientation in any of this work? In other words, can you begin to offer a critical analysis of the sources themselves (and not just the artifact they are supposed to help you understand)?
- What sorts of sociological questions can you start to see emerge? If you were going to conduct a whole research project about this artifact, what direction might it take? What sorts of research questions might structure your investigation?
All of your links must be submitted via the “Artifact” form on the course homepage PRIOR to 4pm the day before class. By 5pm an email will be sent out to the entire class with your artifact as well as all of the compiled links. If you don’t get them in on time, you will get a 0 for this part of the assignment. The one page analysis is due at the beginning of the class session that your group is presenting during.
Everyone should take a few minutes before class to review this email – at the very least look at the artifact, and at least one or two of the links to additional sources – enough to get a sense of how your classmates want to think about this artifact. During class we will all review the artifact together, and then spend 1minute jotting down a quick analysis of it – these minute writing exercises are going to be turned in and graded: 2 points for being present, 3 points if you made an analysis but its totally basic or not sociological or all that relevant, 4 points if you made a pretty good analysis, and 5 points if you show that you’re really trying to think critically and sociologically about the artifact.
After the minute writing, we will discuss the artifact together, during which time the members of the group presenting the artifact will be expected to offer insights that they gleaned from the commentaries that they collected.
Third Assignment: Major research project (200 points)
Browsing the Social Science Literature – 5 Points
Initial bibliography and research statement – 10 points
Literature Analysis (x3) – 15 points each – 45 points
Reverse Outline, expanded bibliography and draft abstract – 20 points
Data Collection (x5) – (3 stages worth 10 points, 2 stages worth 15 points) – 60 points
Research Presentation – 20 points
Final research paper – 40 points
Browsing the social science literature:
In class, you will choose a small number of social science journals and look through the last few years of their publication. Pull out articles that seem interesting to you, creating a short bibliography of texts. Write up a short statement about what compelled you to select these articles, and judging from the abstracts (I don’t expect you to read them all!) discuss the methodological approaches these articles employ and the sub-fields that they are from. All together, this should be less than a single spaced page.
Initial bibliography and research statement:
Early in the term you will put together an initial list of articles and books that are related to your proposed research trajectory, along with a short write up about your research interests. This will come after your initial research meeting with me. The write-up should be around half of a single space page, the bibliography should have at least 8 entries.
Literature Analysis (and citation mining)
For this assignment you will select 4 articles or book chapters from the material that you are accumulating for your research. You will need to print out at least two of these articles, which you will read carefully, marking them up as you go. For books that you cannot mark up, you can either create a PDF, or take extensive notes on a word document that you then can turn in. After reading all 4 of these articles/chapters, you will create an analysis document (one to three single spaced pages) that does at least two, if not more, of the following:
- Summarizes what the articles are about in your own words
- Explains how the articles could be relevant to your own research interests/project. What work do these articles do that you can build off of? What parts of your research project will they support?
- Pulls any relatively short quotes that might be of particular interest or use – quotes that illuminate the core ideas that you want to use from these articles. Quotes will be either preceded or followed with your own interpretation or contextualization of why they are interesting (this could become writing that you might directly use in your final paper). This is one of the most valuable parts of this assignment – as it will generate writing that you can directly use in your final paper!!
- Notes any aspects of the articles that you didn’t quite understand, as well as directions for further research that you may want to pursue (Including any citations that you want to explore, or that you want to find out if other people cite).
- Suggests new keywords that might help you in refining or redirecting your literature search process.
(you will get the article(s) back the following class session so you can use it for your ongoing research)
IMPORTANT: Citation mining
Part of the literature analysis assignment is something we can call citation mining. This means that I expect you all to be reading the citations and bibliographies for the articles and chapters that you’ve chosen. You are expected to print out the citations/endnotes/bibliography for all four texts, and then look through them carefully, highlighting or otherwise noting each reference that you think could be helpful and worth finding. This is a crucial part of the research process, and something I will be expecting you all to take seriously as part of this assignment.
Reverse Outline, expanded bibliography and draft abstract
For this assignment, you will take one of the articles you’ve analyzed, and you will analyze the architecture of the author(s)’s argument. Start with a very top-level outline and then follow this with a brief summary of what each section accomplishes and how it accomplishes it. How is the author making her point? How is the author building her argument? How does each piece of the essay fit into the larger whole? This should be one page, single spaced.
Then the second piece of this assignment will be a parallel document, only this time it is an outline for the paper that you are going to write. Again, in one single-spaced page, write a very brief, top-level outline of your essay, followed by a description of what you intend to do in each of these sections, as well as an assessment of what work you have left to do in order to accomplish what you’re setting out to accomplish.
Along with the reverse outline, you will hand in an updated and expanded bibliography – well formatted – and a draft abstract of the paper that you anticipate writing.
Data Collection (5 stages)
This assignment will look different for each of you, depending on the specific work you set out to do. We will agree upon a plan for what you need to accomplish at each stage, and you will be graded accordingly. We will also select which two of these stages are more significant for your work, and those will be worth more points than the rest.
Research Presentation
You will give a brief presentation of your research at the end of the semester Sociology Research Symposium.
Final Paper
A final research paper is due by the end of the finals period. These papers will all be slightly different depending on the course that your research project takes, but I expect them all to be well written, well formatter, properly cited and intellectually rigorous. We will agree on a format suitable to each of you individually, but you should anticipate that the average paper is between 10 and 15 pages in length – though again, specific expectations will be established on an individual basis.
Class Participation
This is a seminar that will require your active participation. That not only means regular attendance, and completing assignments in a timely fashion, but also coming to class ready and willing to participate. Your grade for class participation will be a reflection of the energy and effort that you put into the class, as subjectively assessed by me. If you are ever worried about your class participation grade, please feel free to email me. Instead of adding class participation into the totals for the rest of the assignments, you will receive a score from -20 to 20 for class participation, which will be either subtracted or added to your overall point total.
Attendance Policy:
I expect you to attend class regularly, though I understand when other obligations get in the way. Please let me know ahead of time if you are unable to make it to class. Missing two or less class sessions won’t negatively affect your grade. Missing between 3 and 5 sessions is likely to drop your participation grade significantly. If you miss more than 5 sessions without talking to me prior, I reserve the right to fail you in the class.
Grading:
Each assignment is worth a different amount of points, but here is a general description of the grading scale that I use. For a 20 point assignment just multiply this scale by two, for a 30 point assignment multiply it by 3.
IMPORTANT: Though much of your work is going to be done in groups, you will still receive an individual grade for group work.
3-4 points out of 10 = D
The assignment was handed in, most formal obligations met, but the work shows clear conceptual gaps, flaws and or omissions. There is an overall lack of comprehension, clarity and depth to the work. It is possible that this assignment is totally off-target or basically just paraphrases material found on the internet, without adding much of one’s own analysis or synthesis.