Specializations
Crime, Law, and Deviance
Courses are offered in criminology, juvenile delinquency, criminal justice, and deviance.
Coordinator: Michael Sierra-Arevalo
Demography
Demography involves the study of family change, health and mortality, fertility and reproductive access, and global migration as well as rigorous methodological training. The Demography area comes with a training certificate for Demography Specialization.
Coordinator: Bridget Goosby
Education
The sociology of education examines how social institutions and individuals' experiences within these institutions affect educational processes and social development.
Coordinator: Chantal Hailey
Family
Issues include family decline, deinstitutionalization of marriage, gender roles, demographic trends, life course, trends in the welfare of children, and family change and poverty.
Coordinator: Lauren Gaydosh
Gender
Social consequences of changing gender roles in politics, the economy, education, and the family are explored.
Coordinator: Jennifer Glass
Health
The health area emphasizes psychosocial epidemiology, demographic methods and research on fertility and mortality, marriage and family issues, ethnicity, institutions, and aging.
Coordinator: Rob Crosnoe
Political Sociology, Development, and Globalization
Students examine the cultural dimension in political theory and the causes and effects of development.
Coordinator: Michael Young
Race and Ethnicity
The sociology of race and ethnicity examines questions of global racial formations in reproducing social inequalities. Ongoing interdisciplinary and multi-method research by faculty and graduate students explores the complex effects of racism and ethnic differentiation in relation to culture and identities, gender and sexuality, education, poverty, socioeconomic mobility, health and mortality, immigration and citizenship, law, and labor.
Coordinator: Robert Reece
Theory
The theory area examines the dominant schools of thought and investigate how and why they differ. In this context, it also considers the implications of the theoretical debates for the nature of social research in the discipline.
Coordinator: Daniel Fridman
Work, Occupations, and Organizations
Major areas of interest include work, organizations, occupations, economic sociology, stratification, poverty, labor, consumption, markets, and intersectional approaches to understanding inequality.
Coordinator: Kim Pernell
