Sociology

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.

Family has been the most important and critical context for individuals throughout their lifetime. Understanding family dynamics and relationships gains more importance as family and family relationships are closely linked to serious social issues, including low fertility rate and family violence. The main purpose of the course is to explore diverse relations observed within the family with the following detailed goals:  

1) To understand important family theories applicable to family relationships;

2) To examine dynamics of relationships within contemporary Korean families;

3) To explore how socio-cultural contexts of Korea have shaped relationships and relationship problems within families;

4) To understand how family relationships can contribute to social problems such as a decrease of fertility rate, educational issues etc. 

This course is to understand diverse family relationships and changes in Korea; to apply appropriate family theories to interpret family relationships, and to predict family relationship changes in future society.

Prerequisites: basic Family Studies courses

In this course, students explore the German-speaking world through a range of cultural materials drawn from the Medieval period to the contemporary. Work in the course is rooted in an understanding of race as a culturally constructed category whose meanings shift in different historical and cultural contexts. From year to year the course’s primary texts might include films, short literary texts, performances, objects, visual artefacts, music and other forms. These are allocated to thematic blocks that focus on key concepts including borders, language, and the body. Weekly exercises in close analysis, alongside key short readings in theory and method, equip students with the critical skills to analyze how cultural materials both construct and challenge ideas about race and ethnicity.