Angel Medina’s Profile Student Toggle navigation

This laboratory course is a co-requisite for General Chemistry – 1110. One three hour laboratory meeting per week and a total of 15 meetings per semester.

This laboratory course is a co-requisite for General Chemistry – 1110. One three hour laboratory meeting per week and a total of 15 meetings per semester.

Sociology is the field of study that takes up to explain social, political, cultural and economic phenomena in terms of social structures, social forces and group relations. The course introduces students to several sociological topics, including socialization, culture, the social construction of knowledge, inequality, social stratification, social institutions such as religion, government, family, race and ethnic relations, poverty and deviance, among others. Sociology is the art of asking questions; big questions such as “What is race?” or “How class structure and social stratification impacts people’s lives?”, “How culture matters?”, “Why states go to war?”, or more detailed and focused questions, like: “Why working class children get working class jobs?”, “How fast food chains impact American family relations?”, “How the social media impact communication?”, “How college education has changed over the past decades?” Acquiring the conceptual and methodological tools to address more broad but also narrower sociological questions of that kind is one of the main objectives of this course. While sociology assumes that human actions are patterned, it also suggests that individuals have ample of room to change their conditions and direct social change. In that sense the quest to understand society is important and always urgent, for if we cannot understand the social world that we live in, we are more likely to be overwhelmed and ultimately incapacitated by it. As a specialist, the sociologist systematically gathers, processes and analyzes information with the objective to provide insights into what is going on in a situation, present alternatives and often assist policy-makers in making informed decisions and formulating policies. Sociology however, and the sociological imagination is not the prerogative solely of specialists. Sociology, further than being a discipline, a field in social sciences, it constitutes a mode of thinking. Thinking sociologically is also directly related to acting socially. An important objective of this course is to learn how to think alongside others, connect our condition to those of others and understand the importance of not only thinking but also acting collectively. The course, in addition to the theoretical texts assigned for reading and analysis, incorporates journalistic accounts of social issues, autobiographies, memoirs, oral histories and materials like photographs and film, in order to encourage students to experiment with original sociological research. Learning, also, to apply sociological language and concepts to events and situations we encounter daily, like ‘sociological location’ (identities like race, gender and class) and ‘social institutions’ (organized entities that structure society, like education and religion) is of key importance. By the end of the course, students should be well on their way to developing their own ‘sociological imagination.’

Sociology is the field of study that takes up to explain social, political, cultural and economic phenomena in terms of social structures, social forces and group relations. The course introduces students to several sociological topics, including socialization, culture, the social construction of knowledge, inequality, social stratification, social institutions such as religion, government, family, race and ethnic relations, poverty and deviance, among others. Sociology is the art of asking questions; big questions such as “What is race?” or “How class structure and social stratification impacts people’s lives?”, “How culture matters?”, “Why states go to war?”, or more detailed and focused questions, like: “Why working class children get working class jobs?”, “How fast food chains impact American family relations?”, “How the social media impact communication?”, “How college education has changed over the past decades?” Acquiring the conceptual and methodological tools to address more broad but also narrower sociological questions of that kind is one of the main objectives of this course. While sociology assumes that human actions are patterned, it also suggests that individuals have ample of room to change their conditions and direct social change. In that sense the quest to understand society is important and always urgent, for if we cannot understand the social world that we live in, we are more likely to be overwhelmed and ultimately incapacitated by it. As a specialist, the sociologist systematically gathers, processes and analyzes information with the objective to provide insights into what is going on in a situation, present alternatives and often assist policy-makers in making informed decisions and formulating policies. Sociology however, and the sociological imagination is not the prerogative solely of specialists. Sociology, further than being a discipline, a field in social sciences, it constitutes a mode of thinking. Thinking sociologically is also directly related to acting socially. An important objective of this course is to learn how to think alongside others, connect our condition to those of others and understand the importance of not only thinking but also acting collectively. The course, in addition to the theoretical texts assigned for reading and analysis, incorporates journalistic accounts of social issues, autobiographies, memoirs, oral histories and materials like photographs and film, in order to encourage students to experiment with original sociological research. Learning, also, to apply sociological language and concepts to events and situations we encounter daily, like ‘sociological location’ (identities like race, gender and class) and ‘social institutions’ (organized entities that structure society, like education and religion) is of key importance. By the end of the course, students should be well on their way to developing their own ‘sociological imagination.’

Feminist philosopher Judith Butler famously theorized over a quarter century ago that a person’s gender is an ongoing performance: “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; […] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Gender Trouble 25). Rather than being determined in some divine or legal sense, then gender is socially constructed: it is what it is because of how individual people behave and impose (or refuse to impose) limits on others. In this class, we take ideas like Butler’s as part of a deep investigation into gender and gender-bending in music (as well as other performative spaces like movies, drag, and stand-up comedy) from the 1950s to today. We’ll consider questions like: What is gender, and how have different creative and cultural artists, academics, activists, and thinkers subverted and even upended gendered expectations? How is gender expression expected of people? Why do we believe there is a gender binary, and what does white supremacy have to do with it? How do the ways society enforces gender impact your life and what can you do to shift it? This course is an adventure in collaborative and student-centered learning (often called student-centered pedagogy). That means that we all share responsibility for the quality of discussion and kinds of learning that we do (and it also means that you will invest in your learning in this course in ways that might be new or unfamiliar to you). Part of my job is to help you learn to express ideas cogently, reasonably, and effectively, and part of your job is to enter into that learning enthusiastically and whole-heartedly (which doesn’t mean you have to love it, just that you should engage as best you can). Part of learning to write on the college level is taking these kinds of responsibility, by diving in, by asking questions, and by sharing your knowledge as you work with each other (and me) to learn. (IMAGE: Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe at a Hollywood nightclub, November 19, 1954.)

Feminist philosopher Judith Butler famously theorized over a quarter century ago that a person’s gender is an ongoing performance: “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; […] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Gender Trouble 25). Rather than being determined in some divine or legal sense, then gender is socially constructed: it is what it is because of how individual people behave and impose (or refuse to impose) limits on others. In this class, we take ideas like Butler’s as part of a deep investigation into gender and gender-bending in music (as well as other performative spaces like movies, drag, and stand-up comedy) from the 1950s to today. We’ll consider questions like: What is gender, and how have different creative and cultural artists, academics, activists, and thinkers subverted and even upended gendered expectations? How is gender expression expected of people? Why do we believe there is a gender binary, and what does white supremacy have to do with it? How do the ways society enforces gender impact your life and what can you do to shift it? This course is an adventure in collaborative and student-centered learning (often called student-centered pedagogy). That means that we all share responsibility for the quality of discussion and kinds of learning that we do (and it also means that you will invest in your learning in this course in ways that might be new or unfamiliar to you). Part of my job is to help you learn to express ideas cogently, reasonably, and effectively, and part of your job is to enter into that learning enthusiastically and whole-heartedly (which doesn’t mean you have to love it, just that you should engage as best you can). Part of learning to write on the college level is taking these kinds of responsibility, by diving in, by asking questions, and by sharing your knowledge as you work with each other (and me) to learn. (IMAGE: Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe at a Hollywood nightclub, November 19, 1954.)