This course demonstrates that crime and deviancy, rather than being found ready made in society, are produced, strengthened, and challenged by numerous competing forces and actors. Using Italy as a launchpad, the course approaches, analyzes, and discusses contemporary and historical case studies in which these forces and actors are located, in order to develop precisely those skills needed to question and dissect unfolding events in a sociological fashion. Italy has long had associations with organized crime, and the course studies first-hand this complex historical, sociological phenomenon, while simultaneously questioning those more socially immediate and recognizable forms of social "deviance" found in the modern Italian context. To aid this analysis, case studies are navigated in parallel with the pillars of sociological theory relating to crime and deviance, in order for discussions and theses about events to be rooted in, and aided by, models which facilitate thought and hypotheses.