Criminal Behavior and Social Control

This course combines sociological and criminological perspectives to examine how societies understand and act on crime. Three questions guide the semester: how social groups develop understandings of what constitutes deviant and criminal behavior; how social structure shapes opportunities and perspectives related to crime; and finally, how power, knowledge, and conflict have shaped our contemporary systems for responding to crime. The course substantively examinea race, class, and gender throughout the semester, reading and discussing pieces from Indigenous criminologists on rehabilitative punishment, critical Black feminists on mass incarceration, and conflict theorists on labelling and white-collar crime.

Social Theory

This course provides an introductory, yet thorough, background in classical and contemporary social theory in a Web-based format. We draw upon in-depth readings of important theoretical works to gain a better understanding of how key theoretical developments in sociology can help us better understand the world we live in today. Put simply, the purpose of this course is to develop a basic but critical understanding of the Big Ideas in social theory and why we should care about them.