Sociology

This course explores the psychological and mental health impacts of Spanish culture, focusing on traditional lifestyle behaviors, diet, work-life balance, and community. Students examine how recent shifts—such as changes in food habits, increased sedentarism, technological use, and growing cultural diversity—affect health, relationships, and society, while analyzing responses through collective and individual initiatives. This course discusses how different generations marked by distinct historical periods—postwar and Francoist dictatorship, transition to democracy until 1990s, and the 21st century global digital era—view and shape well-being and mental health models through the lens of cultural change, resilience, and identity. 

This course provides an interdisciplinary examination of online dating and hookup culture. Moving beyond a public health focus on sexually transmitted diseases, it explores the communicative, psychological, and sociocultural dimensions of online dating platforms. Topics include online relationship development, motivations for app use, platform design, gender politics, queer world-making, and sexual racism, with case studies drawn from diverse global contexts. The course develops the ability to critically evaluate the opportunities, challenges, and broader social implications of dating and hookup apps. Some required readings involve quantitative reasoning.

This course examines health and illness from a cultural perspective. Specifically, It analyzes the social meanings associated with health and illness, medical knowledge production, medical decision-making, and global health in cross-cultural contexts. Students will have a chance to delve into issues related to the social processes of framing illness, the medicalization of life in China and elsewhere, the complexity and uncertainty surrounding medical decisions, and the cultural aspects of health practices across the globe.

This course is an introduction to race and colonial studies. Why do ideas about race feature in social relations today? What structures of knowledge do ideas about racial difference rely upon? How do historical projects of race-making come to be refashioned in contemporary social life? This course engages with such questions by examining the provenance of race and its defining role in the formation of colonial modernity. It provides an overview of key theoretical approaches and methodological debates in the study of race, racism, and colonial formations across various disciplines and intersecting sites of modern power.

This course introduces a computational approach to the sociology of ideas. It is structured around a classic research question in the social sciences requiring the collection of data relevant to the circulation of bodies and ideas between France and the USA in order to study these datasets and produce insights relevant to the research question. The educational objective of the course is to immerse students in the practice of research in computational social sciences through a variety of tools presented in class. It does so while maintaining a shared object of study. This year, the course studies Franco-American academic and intellectual exchanges since 1945. French scientists and intellectuals have long benefited from the hospitality of American institutions. These exchanges have led to an intense circulation of knowledge, the transformation of both U.S. and French academic scenes and the achievement of lasting results. They have transformed American universities to some extent, and, to a greater extent, they have affected French institutions through both brain drain and reverse brain drain. Yet, unlike larger diasporas (Chinese, Indian, or post-Soviet), the Franco-American scientific exchange has never been systematically studied. This course fills this gap by devising a methodology to study three dimensions - Mobility: French academics in the U.S., American academics in France; collaboration: Franco-American partnerships; and influence/attraction: French ideas on American campuses, American ideas on French campuses.

This course enables the class to recognize and assume each person's responsibility for the generalized environmental crisis and its impact on climate change. Furthermore, the class fosters an understanding of one's agency on four dimensions: a) as a person, b) as a citizen, c) as a professional and d) as a consumer, so that they can become and active participant in its solution.

This course provides a broad, interdisciplinary overview of the study of what has been interchangeably called nonviolent social movements, nonviolent civil resistance, nonviolent activism, and strategic nonviolence. It explores questions surrounding the ethics of nonviolent activism, when and where it has been used, the conditions under which it is more or less effective, and its consequences for local communities, state polities, and the international system. The course draws from seminal texts, historical accounts, cutting-edge social science research, and guest speakers. Students gain a foundational understanding of both the normative and empirical debates surrounding the practice of nonviolent activism, a familiarity with key cases in which it has been used, and an understanding of how this form of civic engagement is resourced. The course entails substantial discussion in class.

This course analyzes the human body not just as a biological entity, but as s a cultural construct and a medium for social interactions. 

This is an introductory course on scientific research methods for social welfare research. The course covers the process of formulating appropriate research questions and hypotheses; issues on conceptualization and measurement; components of research designs; basic techniques for testing hypotheses and relationships among variables; and ethical issues associated with conducting social welfare research. Topics include Human inquiry and science, the research process, problem formation, searching and reviewing literature, conceptualization and measurement and scales, assessing quality of measurement instruments, sampling, research designs, evaluation research.

Students will be required to prepare research plans according to a social research framework. 

The course provides an introduction to key areas of analysis in contemporary sociology. Students learn about critical research and debates within the discipline, and of how sociology engages with topical real-world issues. The course centers on the ways in which power relations, social and economic inequalities, forms of identity and difference are shaped in contemporary societies – focusing on both political and socio-economic structures and everyday experiences and identities. These issues include: class, capitals and social mobility; race, ethnicity and culture; gender and sexual identities; politics, social movements and the nation-state.