Semester:
Spring
Offered:
2020
Course Description: This course introduces students to the complicated, conflictual, and often contradictory theoretical origins of sociology as a discipline. We begin by reading the standard sociological “canon”—Marx, Weber, and Durkheim—and interrogating why their ideas were canonized over others. We then read scholars who have been historically “written out” of the social sciences to evaluate their important, yet historically underappreciated, contributions. By the end of the course, students should (1) master key concepts in classical sociological thought, (2) understand what it means to theorize, and what makes for good theory, and (3) learn to critically interrogate the relationship between power, standpoint, and the production of knowledge.
