Sociology

Through the review and viewing of various documentaries and works of art, the aim is for students to recognize some of the impacts generated by the 1973 Coup d'état in Chilean society, emphasizing how it has affected the subjective constitution of societal impunity and the problems in the articulation of a social memory.

The course addresses current problems related to social, political, environmental and technological transformations, using as a common thread the production of dystopian series broadcasted in recent years on Internet audiovisual platforms. 

This course examines the comparative analysis of women's roles in politics and the challenges they encounter in attaining positions of power within the political arena. The seminar is split into two parts. The first part explores various aspects of women's involvement in politics, such as the historical struggle for women's suffrage, the gender gap in voting behavior, ideology, and political involvement, and their variation across countries and time. The second part focuses on various aspects of women's representation in political institutions, including the challenges they face when seeking public office, their portrayal in the media, their impact on political decision-making, and the relationship between their presence and corruption. Additional topics include the entry of women into politics and the degree of this transformation varying across different countries and regions. Questions covered include: what factors underlie these variations? Why have some political systems successfully integrated women into politics while others lag behind? Do men and women approach politics differently in terms of understanding and engagement? Is there a disparity in political involvement and aspirations between genders? Additionally, how has media coverage affected female candidates? Furthermore, once in power, do women govern differently from men? 

This course discusses the evidence for the deepening crisis of the gap between Islamic countries and the rest of the world and how it has continuously widened since the 1970’s. Students explore potential causes, the Arab Spring, including Western colonialism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relation between state and religion in Muslim countries, political and economic effects, effects on immigration, and the rise of religious fundamentalism.

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

The rise of cities in the British Isles since the modern era has fostered the development of a collective culture linked to spatial markers, material objects and forms of expression. Forged in a history of conflict, this culture is defined through rituals, works of art, monuments, oral, printed, and audiovisual narratives. This course explores the specificity and diversity of cultural forms and practices whose context, breeding ground, object, and methods of expression are urban spaces and urban life. It approaches the articulation between cities and cultures through the prism of the social, political, and cultural history of the United Kingdom in the 20th century through cultural productions and practices such as cinema, visual arts, literature, music, and leisure. It introduces the approaches of cultural history, sociological analysis, and the history of forms. The course is structured around key topics, including identities, conflicts, expression, democracy, protest, spaces, time, class, art, memory, representation, history, rituals, tourism, hauntology, and psychogeography.

This course addresses the theme of the ecological crisis and presents the discussion surrounding the Anthropocene. It questions the conceptual separation between the cultural order and the natural order and reflects on the meanings that the categories of nature and the environment acquire in different currents of anthropological thought. It presents ecological movements and philosophical and anthropological aspects surrounding the problem of the global ecological crisis. This course includes discussion on the environmental issue in anthropological thought; humanity and animality; global environmental crisis: intrusion of Gaia and the Anthropocene; boundaries between nature and culture; multispecies studies; and decolonial ecology.

This introductory course explores the origins of universal civil rights in the USA with an emphasis on historical events, review of biography and legacy of significant activists and change makers from the USA and other countries. The course also presents cases to examine the relationship between the causes triggering civil rights development, and how these events can relate to impactful social events and movements in the last decade in different regions of the world. The course intends to provide a theoretical background, a historical review of events, and a social analysis of movements that students can study by using varied resources for data collection and examination of influential media resources or independent documentation of these processes.

This course examines specific topics which vary from year to year. Generally, they can be genres, systems of representation, cultural forms, issues and/or theories related to the dynamic process of interactivity among cultures.

This course exposes students to many different facets of the Black lived experience, thereby encouraging the development of a more informed, nuanced perspective. Critical engagement with topics such as the history of the Black diaspora, debates surrounding the decolonization of the curriculum, the soft colonialism of Irish religious aid, and social justice movements encourages a global perspective among students and enable them to act on the basis of this knowledge and understanding.