"Introduction to Social Justice Studies", Miami University, Department of Sociology/Social Justice Studies (Fall 2016) (original) (raw)
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This introductory course presents a survey of theoretical, conceptual, and practical approaches to the study of social justice, as well as the study of socio-political systems from a justice-centric framework. Students will have the opportunity to focus on issues both historical and contemporary, and through both ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ lenses. The course seeks to critically address a range of topics providing students with a variety of perspectives—for example Marxist, poststructuralist, pacifist, anti-colonial—in order to build their understanding of an inter-disciplinary field. Students will be challenged to interpret issues of social inequality, oppression, and structural violence at numerous levels; from the interpersonal, to the local, and outward towards international conflict. An array of readings will make up the course including scholarly articles, philosophical texts, political texts, primary source documents from perpetrators and survivors of violence, and film.
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A great deal of social change is occurring through the action of social movements, activists, and the organized efforts of non-governmental organizations. From the NoDAPL protestors resisting pipelines, Black Lives Matter activists responding to the patterned killing of African Americans by police, and the rapid rise of right-wing violence and the broader ‘Alt-Right’, social and political activism has migrated from peripheral to central in the minds of many citizens. This course examines socio-political change broadly from all manners of the political spectrum. The course aims to familiarize students with the theoretical models for understanding collective behavior and political identity (i.e. Social Movement Theory), as well as utilize a series of historical case studies to explore specific movements and concepts. The course will explore how, why, and when individuals act collectively for socio-political demands, and examine the lifecycles of these efforts. The aim of the course is to allow students to understand the actions, rhetoric, strategies, and tactics of a variety of non-state socio-political movements and the resulting responses from state authorities.
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]("Social/Political Activism", Miami University, Department of Sociology (Spring 2019)
2019
A great deal of social change is occurring through the action of social movements, activists, and the organized efforts of non-governmental organizations. From networks of eco-activists blocking pipelines, Black Lives Matter activists tying up traffic in response to the patterned killing of African Americans by police, and the rapid rise of far right/‘Alt-Right’ violence, social and political activism has migrated from peripheral to central in the minds of many citizens and governmental institutions. This course examines socio-political change from all manners of the political spectrum—from the electoral to the revolutionary. The course aims to familiarize students with the theoretical models for understanding collective behavior and political identity (i.e. Social Movement Theory), as well as utilize historical case studies to explore specific ideologies and concepts. The course will explore how and why individuals act collectively to put forward socio-political demands, and examine the lifecycles of these efforts. The aim of the course is to allow students to understand the actions, rhetoric, strategies, and tactics of a variety of non-state socio-political movements and the resulting responses from state authorities. Students will focus on how one can study such activism from an inter-disciplinary perspective drawing from Sociology, Peace Studies, Social Movement Studies, Criminology, Communication, Anthropology, and Psychology. Student Learning Outcomes 1. Familiarize students with the sociological study of social movements and social change through a focus on theories of collective behavior, identity construction and resource mobilization. 2. Explore and practice qualitative and quantitative methods for conducting field research focused on social movements, individual activists, and other agents of socio-political change. 3. Familiarize students with a variety of social movement organizations, prominent individuals, and conflicts as well as provide a comparative framework for evaluating their means and ends. 4. Develop a working taxonomy and vocabulary to discuss social movement tactics, strategies, methods of organization, communication and ideology. 5. Provide students a supportive atmosphere to practice and carryout primary source research including the process of design, data collection/fieldwork, analysis, peer review, public presentation and publication.
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A great deal of social change is occurring through the action of social movements, activists, and the organized efforts of non-governmental organizations. From the #NoDAPL protestors resisting the construction of a pipeline to #BlackLiveMatter activists responding to the patterned killing of African Americans by police, social and political activism has recently migrated from peripheral to central in the minds of many citizens. This course examines those seeking socio-political change broadly—from those who opposed the US war in Viet Nam in the 1960s, to those attempting to create an Islamist empire in the modern Middle East. While the Islamic State and 1960s-era countercultural war resisters could not be more different, they both represent a desire to create change through political action. The course aims to familiarize students with the theoretical models for understanding collective behavior and political identity (i.e. Social Movement Theory), as well as utilize a series of historical case studies to explore specific social key movements. The aim is to allow students to understand the actions, rhetoric, strategies, and tactics of a variety of non-state socio-political movements and the resulting responses from state authorities.
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"Applied Sociological Research", Miami University, Department of Sociology (Spring 2019)
2019
This course is focused on understanding and practicing relevant research methodologies for the investigations of sociological issues related to terrorism, extremism, social movements and political violence. Students will explore the research process through engaged scholarship that is methodologically rigorous, and focused on the development of an original research project. Through an engagement with the Prosecution Project (tPP) data set, students will be introduced to a variety of research methods, theoretical positions, and ethical pitfalls hidden through the field of research. Through a focus on both qualitative and quantitative methods, students will practice selecting the best method and data sources, and the basics of how these methods are deployed. Special attention will be paid to issues of knowledge extraction versus knowledge construction, the cooptation of academic research for criminalization and securitization, and the role of action-oriented, community-based, participatory research as a manner of social justice engagement. Students will spend time studying and applying specific research methods including descriptive and inferential statistics, content analysis and typology methods, textual analysis including corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, ground theory, event analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, case study, mapping and GIS, social network analysis, and other emergent methods of data science. Students will have the opportunity to present various components of their research process to the class and engage in peer-review. It is expected that at the conclusion of the course, students will have produced a piece of original research suitable for publication and presenting to a wider academic world. Student Learning Outcomes 1. Identify and understand the steps involved in the research process, and evaluate appropriate methodologies for exploring particular research problems. 2. Investigate ethical issues surrounding the research process paying special attention to issues of intentionally, design, power, and the ethical responsibility of the researcher. 3. Workshop various research methods commonly found in the social sciences, paying particular attention to their benefits and challenges, as well as their applicability for furthering a research agenda situated in a social justice framework. 4. Experience the complete research process-from conceptualizing design to presenting findings in a public forum-focused around constructing a research plan, collecting data, analyzing data and generating findings. 5. Collaborate in the shared process of learning, practicing and refining research methods as well as aspects of public scholarship including peer review, conference presenting and publishing.
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In the modern era, one cannot watch TV, read the news or consume popular media without running into discussions and representations of terrorism. Spawned on by the Syrian Civil War and the rise of the Islamic State (i.e. ISIS, ISIL) there is a sharp rise in academic study not seen since the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite the spectacular nature of jihadist violence, this is only part of the picture. The focus of this course is the production of violence by non-state actors (i.e. terrorism) as understood through the process of original research. This course seeks to build an inter-disciplinary understanding of political violence—from armed terrorist movements to militant social protest movements—through an analysis of strategy, tactics, structures, ideology, propaganda, media and discourse. Through an investigation of primary source documents (e.g. communiqués, videos, magazines, autobiographies, etc.) students will be challenged to investigate why violence occurs, and how such practices are interpreted from both state and non-state positions. Drawing on Sociology, Psychology, Criminology, Critical Theory, Security Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication, and other diverse fields, students will learn to interpret political violence, contextualize propaganda, map networks, identify discourse, and in the end, investigate their own topic of choice through original research. Students will be expected to conduct primary source, original research throughout the course, with a particular focus on research design and methodology. Students will leave the course with not only a working knowledge of contemporary, violent, non-state actors, but also new methodologies for investigating socio-political phenomena with special attention paid to issues of language, communication, and positionality.
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In their 2004 book Multitude, political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri discuss the early years in the Global War on Terrorism, writing: “the concept of terrorism does not (any more than the concept of evil) provide a solid conceptual political anchor,” adding that, “The current meaning of the term is a recent invention. Terrorism has become a political concept.” The sociological study of political violence and terrorism is faced with this particular challenge. Amongst scholars, practitioners and all those in between, a great diversity of opinion exists as to what constitutes terrorism. Furthermore, much of the research in this field lacks the empirical rigor and independent review common within the social sciences. Though a lens grounded in the sociological tradition, and borrowing from Communication, Conflict Analysis, Cultural Studies, Security Studies, Political Science, and Psychology, this course will examine violent non-state actors through a focus on radicalization, recruitment, targeting, organizational structure, media production, ideology and membership. Students will learn how to investigate political extremism, terrorism and radical social movements through the design, implementation, and sharing of original research projects focused on the excavation of data from movement ephemera, and practice the collaborative production of knowledge. Through an investigation based in primary source documents (e.g. communiqués, videos, magazines, autobiographies, etc.) students will be challenged to investigate political violence, and how such incidents are interpreted from both state and non-state positions. Students will leave the course with not only a knowledge of contemporary, violent, non-state actors, but also new methodologies for investigating socio-political phenomena with special attention paid to issues of language, communication, and discourse.
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The theme of conflict has a long history in Geography and cognate fields. Geographers have long produced knowledge about and even contributed to colonial dispossession and anti-colonial movements for self-determination, violent exploitation and impositions of labor discipline, locational conflicts that animate contemporary environmental justice organizing, the creation and destruction of identities and territories around which conflict is staged, and other such processes that generate geographies of conflict. This upper-division course is taught online. To be a successful student, you must actively engage with course material (lectures, readings, videos, handouts, and discussion boards) that I post to our course webpage, which is described in greater detail below. We will also meet once each week, using our Zoom classroom. See more details below, under “Habits of Successful Students in this Online Class.” This course is organized around theories and cases of conflict at multiple scales. Selected theories reflect priorities in the interdisciplinary literature on conflict, and selected cases are meant to highlight distinctions and also to suggest relationships between disparate regions. You will also do some independent research through the university library system. Writing assignments and group discussions will facilitate development of shared understandings of cases, theories, and methodologies in the study of conflict.
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"Criminology", University of Cincinnati, Department of Sociology (Spring 2016)
This course will explore the relationship between crime and society—the sociological interpretation of crime, criminal behavior, the criminalization of individuals (and communities), as well as the policies and institutions (e.g. police, courts, prisons) that are the result of such transgressions. Through an examination of a variety of theoretical, conceptual and legal perspectives, we will understand some of the ‘causes’ of crime, as well as the social, political and institutional responses. A series of diverse guest speakers will compliment these perspectives with experiential knowledge, and providing valuable resources for learning. Throughout the course, special attention will be focused on the relationship between race, class, gender, sex and sexuality in constructing crime and victimization, as well as the social responses to crime and criminal behavior. Students will be challenged to adopt both traditional and critical lenses, and to build a nuanced understanding of complex phenomena by discussing individuals as intersectional beings—constituted by a variety of social forces simultaneously. Students will become knowledgeable of specific historical examples, as well as frameworks for analyzing criminality and victimization more generally, at both the level of the individual and that of policy.
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"Social Change", University of Cincinnati, Department of Sociology (Spring 2016)
This course will examine the processes, drivers, and theories of social change—significant alterations in social structures and cultural patterns—through a variety of sociological perspectives. Through a focus on the causes, patterns, strategies, mechanics, and consequences of broad-based socio-political contestation and transformation we will explore how, why and when change occurs. By adopting a sociological imagination, students will be guided through the classical and contemporary theories of social change, and will explore their histories, premises and applications. This will be complimented by a series of diverse guest speakers who will provide their own perspectives on social change drawn from experiential knowledge and research. While the class will focus on macro-level changes, it will also include an investigation of personal, inter-personal, consumer, and micro-levels of social change. Students will examine the basics of social movement theory, notions of state power and coercion, forms of traditional and contentious politics, and individual subjectivity, to answer a central question: Why and under what conditions does social change occur?
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