The Social Animal in the Digital Age

SOCIAL ANIMAL DIGITAL AGE

This course re-examines central theories and perspectives in the social sciences from the standpoint of digital technologies. Who are we in the digital age? Is the guiding question for the course. We consider the impact of modern technology on society including, forms of interaction and communication, possibilities for problem solving, and re-configurations of social relationships and forms of authority. The course integrates traditional social science readings with contemporary perspectives emerging from scholars who looking at modern social life. The course is an introductory Sociology offering.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Sudhir A Venkatesh
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Gender, Sexuality, and Health: Social Sc

Gender and sexuality are fundamental to how we understand ourselves as individuals – but have you thought about them as kinds of social inequality, similar to race, class, or disability? In this course, students will learn about gender and sexuality as elements of social context, as key forms of inequality (heterosexuality/homosexuality, cis/trans or nonbinary, men/women), and as forces that shape health.

The course has four units: 1) Your Body is a Battleground; 2) Technologies of the Self, Intimacy, Sexuality and Gender; 3) Sexuality and Sexual Violence as Public Health Problems; 4) The Price of Power: Understanding Health Disparities. The assessment strategies, developed to promote a high-critical thinking, low-stress learning environment, include in-class exams with one short 250-word essay and short answer questions, pass/fail quizzes after every lecture, and a final exam. One quote from last year’s teaching evaluations: “This course changed my life. Whether you know nothing about the topic or feel like you already know everything about it (like I did) I guarantee you will walk away from this class a changed scholar and person.” The course, which has no prerequisites, may be of particular interest to students majoring in sociology, anthropology, or gender and sexuality studies, and to students interested in health science careers (note, our engagement with questions about inequality and social structure speak to topics on the MCAT).

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jennifer S Hirsch
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

SOCIAL THEORY

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries. Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels. Selected topics: individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Andreas Wimmer
  Wikipedia h-index: 41 Info
• 4 points

Social Theory- DISC

SOCIAL THEORY- DISC

Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).

• R 9:10 a.m.-10 a.m.
• W 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Robin I Hart
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• Instructor: Ari Galper
  Info
• 0 points

ISRAELI SOC & ISR-PLS CONFLICT

The purpose of the course is to acquaint students with Israeli society through the lens of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. The underlying assumption in this course is that much of the social, economic, political, and cultural processes in contemporary Israel have been shaped by the 100-year Israeli- Arab/Palestinian conflict.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Yinon Cohen
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia h-index: 33 Info
• 3 points

Social Stratification: Past, Present, an

Social Strat: Past, Pres,

This is an undergraduate seminar in social inequality and mobility. Social inequality is broadly defined as the unequal distribution of scarce resources and of the processes by which these resources are allocated to individuals, groups, and populations. The study of inequality en-compasses income and wealth inequality, socioeconomic hierarchies and privileges, poverty and unemployment, social mobility over the life course and across generations, inequality in the educational system, race-ethnic and gender inequality, globalization and the future of work, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions of inequality and opportunity, neighborhood segregation, and the consequences of inequality and policy interventions. Over this semester, we will investigate such questions as: How likely are individuals to end up in the same social stratum as their par-ents? Will globalization and automation exacerbate or reduce inequality in workplace? Is there growing inequality in the U.S. and around the globe and, if so, why? In this class, we cover the concepts, theories, facts, and methods of analysis used by sociologists to understand social inequality and mobility. This course takes most of its examples from the contemporary U.S., but we will place U.S. in historical and comparative perspectives as well.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Xi Song
  Info
• 4 points

ORGANIZING INNOVATION

This course examines major innovations in organizations and asks whether innovation itself can be organized. We study a range of forms of organizing (e.g. bureaucratic, post-bureaucratic, and open architecture network forms) in a broad variety of settings: from fast food franchises to the military-entertainment complex, from airline cockpits to Wall Street trading rooms, from engineering firms to mega-churches, from scientific management at the turn of the twentieth century to collaborative filtering and open source programming at the beginning of the twenty-first. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between organizational forms and new digital technologies.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: David Stark
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 4 points

ORGANIZING INNOVATION-DISC

ORGANIZING INNOVATION-DISCUSSI

• F 2:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
• Instructor: Yanze Yu
  Info
• 0 points

INEQUALITY, POVERTY & MOBILITY

INEQUALITY POVERTY & MOBILITY

This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Thomas DiPrete
  CULPA: 7 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY

Prerequisites: (SOCI UN1000) Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change. State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large. As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Teresa Sharpe
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 4 points

Life on Mars: Building a New Society in

Life on Mars: Society & S

This course explores the interdisciplinary challenges of establishing a human society on Mars. Students explore a number of challenges that are involved in reaching the Red Planet and setting up a functional social habitat for the long term. This includes both the numerous logistical hurdles of traveling to and surviving on Mars, as well as the social, political, and ethical considerations of establishing a new society on the planet. Through analysis and discussion of scientific research, social science texts, and popular media, students will gain a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological, and strategic challenges of long-duration space travel and human habitation on another planet.

The course is not scientific or overly technical in nature. Instead, the perspective being adopted is that of a social scientist seeking to understand how humans can travel to another planet and live together. The first half of the course focuses on the practical, physiological, and psychological challenges of traveling to and surviving on Mars while maintaining contact withEarth. In the first part of the course, students will study the unique environmental conditions of Mars, the health risks of space travel, and how to maintain communication and connectivity with Earth despite vast distances. Students will also engage with how sustainable living on Mars—through food, energy, and resource management—could shape the future of human expansion in space.

The second half delves into the complexities of building social, legal, and economic systems in a new extraterrestrial society. Students will critically evaluate how to create a self-sustaining, functional civilization on Mars. Given the social science focus of the class, there will be emphasis placed on topics such as governance, establishing social contracts and property rights, and building economic systems for an entirely new world.

This course is meant to attract a small group of 10-15 students interested in space exploration. The small size and intensive four-hour class format is intended to foster creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary thinking (see below for discussion of non-traditional format). By the end of the course, students will not only understand the practicalities of space colonization but also develop skills in envisioning and designing innovative solutions for humanity’s future beyond Earth.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Sudhir A Venkatesh
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Political Economy and Society

Are markets self-regulating systems governed by supply and demand, or are they institutions shaped by politics, power, and social relations? In this seminar we examine a basic idea that is simple to state but surprisingly hard fully to appreciate: economic life is always embedded in social and political institutions. If you take seriously that "economic" activity is also, and inseparably, "social" you understand the economy differently than it is understood in the standard narrative put forth not just by mainstream economics but also in a lot of popular (journalistic) economics writing. Key topics include the organization of work, access to housing, land development and resource extraction, credit and financial systems, and the rise of powerful digital platforms. Through these cases, students examine how markets form, how they are governed, and how they shape the distribution of power and opportunity in modern societies.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Joshua Whitford
  h-index: 14 Info
• 4 points

Asian Americans and the Law

Asian Americans and the Law invites students to examine how U.S. law has shaped the experiences of Asian Americans for nearly 150 years by pairing landmark legal cases with evidence‑based social science research. The course traces a sweeping arc from Chinese Exclusion Acts and Japanese American incarceration to contemporary debates over immigration, affirmative action, and workplace discrimination. By the end of the course, students will gain a broader understanding for the ways in which law operates as a force that structures social life, opportunities, constraints, belonging, and exclusion.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jennifer Lee
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Crime and Policing

This course will introduce students to the literature on crime and policing. Readings for the course will be from a broad range of disciplines, including sociology, criminology, law, and public policy.  Most weeks, the readings will include relevant “popular press” articles that will help situate the literature in the context of current debates. The course is organized in two parts. The first half will focus on the problems of crime and violence in urban environments. We will review classic and modern ideas and theories explaining crime and violence, and we will look at the evidence describing patterns and trends in crime in recent history. The second half of the course will focus on the approaches to confront crime and violence, with a strong emphasis on policing. We will review the literature on the relationship between crime and policing, and we will learn about the impact that policing practices have on individuals and their communities.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa
  h-index: 6 Info
• 4 points

Race, Discrimination, and Racial Inequal

Race, Dscrmttion, Rac Inq

This course focuses on race, discrimination, and racial inequalities. The course will address three key questions: (1) What is race as perceived in the U.S. and Europe, and what are the sources of racial inequalities? (2) What does social science research tell us about patterns and trends of racial inequalities? (3) What policies can alleviate racial inequalities? The course will systematically adopt comparative perspectives focusing on the North American and European contexts. We will also address research on race and racial inequality within an interdisciplinary lens particularly building on sociology, economics, and social psychology.

This course is designed for advanced undergraduate students from Columbia University and Science Po (Paris). We aim for a class of 30 students (15 from each partner university). Class will take place once a week (for 2 hours). In addition, the Columbia TA will conduct a discussion section once a week in which Columbia and Sciences Po students will work together in small groups on class projects that will be presented over the course of the semester. The classes will be organized in a hybrid format. In each campus, the professor will teach his/her class in person and the two classes will be connected via Zoom. The Columbia and Science Po professors will thus co-teach a virtually connected class. The professors will closely coordinate and alternate in leading the lecture and discussion parts of each class.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 4 points

Senior Thesis Seminar I

This seminar is an opportunity to do original sociological research with the support of a faculty member, a teaching assistant, and your fellow classmates. Over the next two semesters you will formulate a research question; design a research strategy; collect and analyze data; and write up your findings. At the end of the academic year, you will submit a completed thesis.

The class is intended as scaffolding to support you in what can sometimes feel like a lonely and disorienting process. The goal is to balance structure to facilitate your work with freedom to develop your projects independently.

This seminar is open only to Sociology majors. Please email the professor for permission to join the course.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Tara Gonsalves
  Info
• 4 points

INDIVIDUAL STUDY I

Prerequisites: open only to qualified majors in the department; the director of undergraduate studies permission is required. An opportunity for research under the direction of an individual faculty member. Students intending to write a year-long senior thesis should plan to register for C3996 in the spring semester of their senior year and are strongly advised to consult the undergraduate studies as they plan their programs.

• Instructor: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa
  h-index: 6 Info
• Instructor: Sudhir A Venkatesh
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 1-6 points

WORKSHP ON WEALTH & INEQUALITY

Participants may elect to enroll in the 1-credit CWI independent study offered through the Sociology Department. CWI takes place Thursdays from 2-4pm in Knox Hall, room 509. The course ID for Fall 2025 is SOCI4043GU.

The Center for Wealth and Inequality (CWI), in this course, is a forum for students interested in social science topics broadly related to inequality. In particular, it will provide an opportunity for students to read and discuss the works presented in the weekly CWI seminar series, while also sharing and refining their own works in progress.  The CWI seminar series is sponsored by Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy (ISERP) and is devoted to the investigation of social and economic inequality.  The seminar invites speakers from both within and outside of Columbia to present recent papers covering a wide range of topics pertaining to inequality, such as poverty, labor market behavior, education, and the family.  The research topics and methodologies are at the cutting edge of the interdisciplinary study of wealth and inequality, as the CWI seminar invites speakers from multiple social science disciplines and fields. Past speakers include Annette Lareau, Adam Gamoran, Timothy Smeeding, Lisa Kahn, Mario Small, Rob Warren and Florencia Torche, among numerous others.

The primary preparation for these gatherings is to read the papers slated for presentation, whether written by an outside speaker or a student within the course. Students will meet to constructively critique these papers collectively, raising key questions and concepts for discussion and debate.  One student will serve as the discussion leader each week by kicking off the dialogue.  This student also will have the opportunity to prepare a review of the paper, if desired.  When discussing CWI seminar papers, the product of each meeting will be a shortlist of pertinent questions for the visiting speaker, which participants will be encouraged to ask during the Q&A following each seminar. When focusing on student papers, participants will provide detailed comments geared towards supporting further development of our peers’ work. We regularly will be joined by the CWI presenters.

The spirit behind the student independent study is one of collective student growth and learning through semi-structured discussion.  While the course will pose a relatively

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 1 points

Queer Theory

This course surveys the relationship between sociology as a discipline and the body of thought, action and critique that coheres under the term queer theory. Many people understand these two projects to be constitutionally at odds. Sociology as a discipline concerns itself with the empirical study of, as Norbert Elias wrote, “the problem of human societies.” How we do this is distinct. Sociologists have a defined set of technical skills that make use of social categories and classifications. We organize individuals by behavior and identity, document diverse cultural milieus, and even attempt to quantify the demographic details of sexual identities, practices and communities. Queer theory, on the other hand, emerged as a field of academic thought in the early 1990’s, at the apex of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The urgency of the political moment demanded new analytical tools for thinking about gender, sexuality, medicine and bodies. Queer theorists took to task the restrictive categories of gender and sexual life that relegated gay men and lesbians to sociological studies of “deviant” people and practices, in favor of rich and pointed critiques of the organization of culture, institutions and politics that renders some people and practices deviant in the first place. Queer theorists document their suspicion of methods, of categories, and of knowledge practices themselves. Social science is often the target of such critiques.

 

So, is there actually a way to do something we might call queer sociology? Or is it, fundamentally, an oxymoron? As what we think of as data becomes “bigger” and ever more categorically precise, what use has sociology for queer theory? How can a body of thought that operates from an anti-categorical impulse inform empirical work that seeks, at least in some part, to identify and observe particular types of people and particular forms of social life? In this course, we will read a set of foundational texts in the queer theoretical tradition alongside sociology that makes use of queer phenomena, frameworks and world-making projects. Expect to cover topics like ephemera, ghosts, messy affect, political lesbianism, perversion and a variety of other things you don’t typically see on a sociology syllabus. Each week, we will survey a select set of orienting ideas from queer theory–the heterosexual matrix, heteronormativity, antidisciplinarity, and homonormativity–and examine the ways in which sociologists of sexuality aim

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Tey Meadow
  h-index: 8 Info
• 4 points

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

This course emphasizes the perspectives of foundational thinkers on the evolution and dynamics of social life. Readings address key sociological questions; including the configuration of communities, social control, institutions, exchange, interaction, and culture.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Peter Bearman
  CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: 54 Info
• 4 points

PROSEMINAR I

The Proseminar fulfills two separate goals within the Free-Standing Masters Program in Sociology. The first is to provide exposure, training, and support specific to the needs of Masters students preparing to move on to further graduate training or the job market. The second goal is to provide a forum for scholars and others working in qualitative reserach, public sociology, and the urban environment.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Ryan Hagen
  Info
• 1 points

FIELD WORK I

This two-semester sequence supports students through the process of finding a fieldwork site, beginning the field work required to plan for and develop a Masters thesis, and the completion of their Masters thesis.

• F 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Ryan Hagen
  Info
• 1 points

THESIS SEMINAR I

This seminar gives you an opportunity to do original sociological research with the support of a faculty member, a teaching assistant, and your fellow classmates.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Adam Reich
  CULPA: 7 Info
• Instructor: Ryan Hagen
  Info
• 3 points

Intro Social Data Analysis I

Basic techniques for analyzing quantitative social science data. Emphasis on conceptual understanding as well as practical mastery of probability and probability distributions, inference, hypotheses testing, analysis of variance, simple regression, and multiple regression.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Yao Lu
  h-index: 25 Info
• 4 points

Introductory Social Data Analysis I LAB

INTRO SOC DATA ANLYS I LA

LAB for 'Intro Social Data Analysis I', taught by Prof. Yao Lu. The lab sessions are structured to show students how to use a statistical software package (Stata) to carry out data analysis, and will provide a collaborative environment for working on homework problems. This is a two semester lab (fal land spring), as is the course. Course Description This course is designed for first year doctoral students in Sociology. The class will teach the fundamentals of analyzing quantitative data in a social science context. Students will learn effective ways of presenting informational summaries, how to use statistical inference from samples to populations, the linear regression models that are the foundation of most of the research done in the social sciences, and the proper use of such models. The class will provide students with the analytical tools for effectively communicating the underlying intuitions of statistical models and their practical applications.

• 0 points

Historical Approaches in the Social Scie

Historical Aprchs Scl Scn

This course introduces students to historical approaches in sociology and political science (and some economics). In the first part, the course surveys the major theoretical approaches and methodological traditions. Examples of the former are classic comparativist work (e.g. Skocpol’s study of revolutions), historist approaches (such as Sewell’s), or the historical institutionalist tradition (Mahoney, Thelen, Wimmer, etc.). In terms of methodological approaches, we will discuss classical Millean small-N comparisons, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, process tracing, actor-centered modeling, quantitative, large-N works, and causal inference type of research designs. In the second part, major topics in macro-comparative social sciences are examined, from world systems and empire to the origins of democracy.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Andreas Wimmer
  Wikipedia h-index: 41 Info
• 4 points

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: THE ORIGINS

Prerequisites: this course is intended for sociology Ph.D. and SMS students. No others without the instructors written permission. Foundational sources and issues in sociological theory: Adam Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Mauss, others; division of labor, individualism, exchange, class and its vicissitudes, social control, ideas and interests, contending criteria of explanation and interpretation.

• T 9 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Gil Eyal
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 26 Info
• 3 points

DESIGNS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH

Required of all incoming sociology doctoral students. Prepares students who have already completed an undergraduate major or its equivalent in some social science to evaluate and undertake both systematic descriptions and sound explanations of social structures and processes.

• W 9 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Peter Bearman
  CULPA: 19 Wikipedia h-index: 54 Info
• 4 points

MPHIL THESIS WRITING SEMINAR II

MPHIL THS WRTNG SMNR II

This seminar is PART 2 for second and third year students who are writing their MPhil thesis. It will assume the form of a yearlong seminar during which students design, research, and write up their MPhil projects. These projects can be based on any kind of sociological method, quantitative or qualitative. The thesis will assume the form of an article that can be submitted to a social science journal. The seminar will help you to find an interesting question, a way to answer it, and a mode of communicating this to fellow sociologists in a way that they might find worth paying attention to. The summer break between the two semesters will allow students who don’t come to the first semester with ready-to-analyze data to gather such data (through ethnographic work, archival research, scraping the internet, combining existing survey data, etc.).

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Barbara J Kiviat
  Info
• 4 points

Dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian Conf

The seminar will explore the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Arab) conflict from the beginning of the 20th century  until today. The first part of the seminar will focus on the historical background informing the conflict and leading  to the Palestinian refugee problem and the establishment of a Jewish, but not Palestinian, state in 1948. The  second part of the seminar focuses on Palestinian-Arab citizens in Israel, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and  Gaza, the settlement project, and possible political solutions, as well as the USA's role and its impact on the  conflict, the occupation, and the current Gaza war.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Yinon Cohen
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia h-index: 33 Info
• 4 points

Longitudinal Data Analysis & Causal Infe

Longitudinal Data Anal &

Panel data or longitudinal data consist of multiple measures over time on a sample of individuals. These types of data occur extensively in both observational and experimental studies in social, behavioral, and health sciences. This course will provide an introduction to the principles and methods for the analysis of panel data. Whereas some supporting statistical theory will be given, emphasis will be on data analysis and interpretation of models for longitudinal data. Problems will be motivated by applications primarily in social sciences.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Xi Song
  Info
• 4 points

NEW DIRECTION IN ECON SOCIOLOGY

NEW DIRECTIONS IN ECONOMIC SOC

This is an advanced graduate seminar in Economic Sociology looking at new developments in this field. It addresses the disciplinary division of labor in which economists study value and sociologists study values; and it rejects the pact whereby economists study the economy and sociologists study social relations in which they are embedded.

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: David Stark
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 3 points

INDIVIDL STUDY IN SOCIOLOGY I

Prerequisites: the director of graduate studies permission if taking more than 3 points of study with any one faculty member. Individual writing on a topic agreed upon by the supervising faculty member.

• Instructor: Marissa Thompson
  Info
• Instructor: Tey Meadow
  h-index: 8 Info
• Instructor: Xi Song
  Info
• Instructor: Gil Eyal
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 26 Info
• 1-6 points