WRIT 088: SOCIOLOGY
Spring 2022 Courses
WRIT 088 302
TR 10:15 AM -11:45 AM
Starner
Self and Society
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Before you change that Facebook status or share another tweet, it's worth considering how those seemingly innocent actions reflect a wealth of information about you and the community you move through. There is a long history of scholars in disciplines as diverse as economics, anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, attempting to explain and predict how individuals move through their social worlds. In this class, we'll read the book that started it all: Erving Goffman's 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Rightly considered a classic, Goffman's book is a careful observation of a combination of performance cues, unremarked habits, and societal expectations that will transform how you see yourself and the people you interact with. In addition to Goffman's theoretical paradigms, this discussion and activity-based seminar will introduce students to contemporary research in the area of self and society through writing in a variety of 'real world' genres.
WRIT 088 303
MW 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
Ferrell
Love's Labor: The Invention of Dating
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Are you worried about your dating prospects? Have you and your friends ever wondered whether anyone was serious about dating, or looking for love anymore? Believe it or not, we have societally pondered these questions throughout history. That is, historically, we have been both fascinated and concerned with dating and the prospects of the process. Therefore, in this course, we will venture on a journey to understand how we have come to conceptualize and date the way that we do. We will read Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating by Moira Weigel, which employs a feminist lens to trace the development of modern dating.
WRIT 088 304
MW 5:15 PM - 6:45 PM
Ferrell
Love's Labor: The Invention of Dating
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Are you worried about your dating prospects? Have you and your friends ever wondered whether anyone was serious about dating, or looking for love anymore? Believe it or not, we have societally pondered these questions throughout history. That is, historically, we have been both fascinated and concerned with dating and the prospects of the process. Therefore, in this course, we will venture on a journey to understand how we have come to conceptualize and date the way that we do. We will read Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating by Moira Weigel, which employs a feminist lens to trace the development of modern dating.
WRIT 088 305
TR 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Ferrell
Let's Talk About Food
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
How did you decide which foods would occupy space in your refrigerator? To make this decision, you likely assessed factors like whether food items were affordable or expensive, organic or processed, and if they were craft or mass-produced. These distinctions allow us to see that the food we eat may mean more than sustenance. Thus, in this class, we will employ a sociological lens to understand the meanings we give to food. We will explore how our meanings for food allow people to do things such as develop tastes, construct identities, gain membership to gastronomic systems, and distinguish categories of people (e.g., class). As we gain a greater understanding of these food meanings, we will be able to make sense of food trends such as the rise of gourmet, organic, ethnic, and diet foods. We will read Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution by Margot Finn to understand how class serves as one of the underlying factors that inform our food meanings.