Sociology

This course examines the field of environmental sociology. In particular, it examines how societies build a sense of human/nature divide into their concepts of collective identity and how the struggle to responsibly utilize natural resources is a vexing social problem. It focuses on environmental social movements globally, analyzing how this growing site of social conflict interacts with other inequalities. It also explores the social transformations being enacted globally to build sustainability, improve human/animal coexistence, address environmental racism, and to think about climate change risk beyond the nation-state.

Group social work is an important method among the three major practice methods of social work. This course mainly introduces the basic principles of group social work, the theoretical basis of group work, group types, elements of group systems, group dynamics, group social work process and the evaluation of group social work. The purpose of setting up this course is to enable students to systematically understand the meaning, origin and development of group social work as well as the theoretical basis of group social work practice, to have an in-depth understanding of the structure, process and development of the group, and to master the principles and characteristics of each different implementation stage. On the basis of comprehensively using various methods and techniques of group social work to organize the implementation of group social work. The course will explain practical theories while supplementing them with relevant cases. While paying attention to the analysis of practical theories, it will also focus on teaching group work skills and methods to prepare students for group social work.

This course examines the relationship between crime and the media. It encourages students to develop an understanding of how the media help to influence the public views of crime and criminalization. It will do this by focusing on media portrayals of crime and criminal behavior, media effects and theories of media and communication.

This course examines three areas: the interaction between language structure and use on the one hand, and social structure and social norms on the other (sociolinguistics); the relationship between linguistic and cultural knowledge (anthropological linguistics); and the inter-relationship of language and other cognitive structures, especially as it is revealed through language acquisition (psycholinguistics).

This course takes students on the path to understanding of how religious ideas, movements, and institutions shape and are shaped by individuals, groups, and societies. Students engage with ideas and theories of classical thinkers, such as Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, and with innovative and often provocative views and concepts of contemporary sociologists. Among the questions for discussion are whether religion serves as "social cement" or causes conflict; why and how it can reinforce the existing social order or encourage change; and how we can explain why people stay in conventional faiths or choose new, even exotic, religions – or maybe they are brainwashed into them? Students discuss methods and approaches that sociologists use to study religion – and why their methodology often leads them to discoveries that challenge common assumptions about certain religious beliefs, practices, and groups.

This course offers a thematic approach to selected literary, cultural, and socio-political processes from across the Spanish and Portuguese speaking-worlds we call Global Iberias. Encompassing Spain and Portugal, Latin America, and Lusophone Africa and Asia, lectures and seminars explore questions of power and creativity, and introduce students to the key concepts for the discussion of social movements, urban regeneration, colonialism and postcolonialism, and literary and cultural movements and ideas, from Modernism and Futurism to Magical Realism. Overall, the course provides students with core conceptual, interpretative, methodological, and presentation skills for the study of the cultures and societies of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds.

This course examines the nature of crime in Australia and the different approaches to understanding criminal behavior. The course seeks to ground students with an understanding of the causes of crime, the major methods for measuring crime, as well as the dominant theoretical perspectives in the field of Criminology.

The purpose of this course is to give students the tools/skills to use when working with parents using theoretically-guided and research based knowledge of parent-child relationships. Parenting practices are examined to gain an appreciation for and an understanding of the experiences parents have while child rearing. 

This course also provides an opportunity to examine personal beliefs, values, assumptions, and biases about parenting in order to recognize how these influences might impact work with parents. This course is to understand the historical and theoretical foundations of parenting research and practice; to summarize the cultural and contextual factors influencing parenthood, parent-child relationships, including topics such as parenting children with special needs and parenting in the various context; to evaluate changes in parenting styles and parenting strategies across developmental stages from pregnancy to adulthood, and to integrate research and evidence-based perspectives to demonstrate the importance of parent education. 

The majority of the course focuses on analysis of inequality and poverty using monetary measures of living standards. The final section of the course broadens the perspective to consider a range of non-monetary and multidimensional measures reflecting the "Beyond Income" agenda.

This course examines concepts of trauma and memory as historically and culturally contingent, asking what counts as trauma, for whom and under what circumstances. The course will open by tracing history of the concept of trauma in psychoanalysis and medicine, followed by critical perspectives from feminist, queer, transgender, critical race, and body studies perspectives. It also looks at different sites, forms and representations of trauma in literature, films, art, oral narratives, memoirs, photographs, and social movements.