Tues., Wed., and Thur. 1:30pm-5:08pm
This summer 3 class meets Aug. 3-21, 2026 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in-person 1:30pm-5:08pm (includes 30 minute break) and Fri. asynchronous.

Hybrid Asynchronous

Instructor: Chang Liu

New developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies are challenging how people experience feelings and emotional lives within increasingly isolated, virtual-based societies. This course explores emotional authenticity and “humanness” in contemporary technologies. We will review both classical and contemporary theoretical approaches to emotion across sociology, affect studies, and science and technology studies (STS). Through readings of theoretical and empirical works on the commercialization of emotions and emotional experiences, we will (re)examine concepts of emotional labor and emotional capitalism and increasingly intimate human/AI relationships.

Mon., Tues., and Wed.  9:30am-1:30pm
This summer 3 class meets Aug.3-21, 2026 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays synchronous online 9:30am to 1:30pm (includes 20 minute break) with asynchronous work on Thursdays.

Online Mix

Instructor: Talha Issevenler, Ph.D.

Why do we experience time differently when we are at play versus at work, when we are in danger versus in an activity we enjoy? This course examines dynamic forms of social life from cultural, economic, political, and psychological perspectives. These conceptions of time include Durkheim’s distinction of sacred and profane time, Marx’s conception of commodity as externalized/dead labor time, and Virilio’s correlation between military and cinematic perception of movement to mutually reinforcing fluidity of social identities and data. We will see how sociology can bring together these multifaceted aspects of social production of time, speed and historicity.

Mon., Tues., Wed., and Thur. 11:30am-2:25pm

The class will be held synchronously online.

Online Synchronous

Instructor: Shu Hao Chang

This course provides an introduction to the R programming language for social science research. It emphasizes the practical application of R for data description, visualization, cleaning, and basic tests of association. Students will gain familiarity with core R packages and develop the foundational skills necessary for conducting quantitative data analysis. Each student is required to have access to a personal laptop or desktop computer to fully participate in class activities.* No prior experience with R or statistics is required.

*Computers are available at the Tech Center in Cohen library during regular hours.

Mon., Tues., Wed., and Thur. 11:30am-2:25pm
July 6 – 31, 2026

Online Synchronous

Instructor: Nicole Sarette

This course examines how internet subcultures both reflect and reshape social life in the offline world. Through a sociological lens we explore how digital communities on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram influence patterns of consumption, labor, and identity making. Students will investigate how trends such as fast fashion, influencer aesthetics and algorithmic categories reveal new intersections of culture, capitalism, and self presentation. The course connects digital practices to broader structures of gender, class, and work in late capitalism.

Tues., Wed., and Thur. 2:30pm-5:55pm

June 1- June 29, 2026

Online Mix

Instructor: Edward Silver, Ph.D.

After decades of stability and predictability, various societies are experiencing collapsing social institutions, rising political conflicts, increasing climate-related natural disasters, deepening economic uncertainty, and proliferating powerful technologies such as artificial intelligence and algorithm-driven social media platforms. Given these changes, our historical moment seems uniquely anxious, leading some to call it the “Age of Anxiety.” But is this an accurate depiction of our experiences?

From its inception, sociology has given subjective anxiety a pivotal role in negotiating between individual agency and shared structures. We explore this paradox through case studies and contemporary scholarship to understand the following: What kinds of social arrangements generate chronic uncertainty? How do schools, workplaces, healthcare systems, policing, and governments translate structural risks into personal burdens? Why are some groups exposed to more anxiety-producing conditions than others, and why are some forms of anxiety treated as legitimate while others are stigmatized? How have groups grappled with these conditions to introduce small and large changes?

We consider anxiety not only as an individual emotional state, but also as a historically specific response to shifting social conditions like workforce precarity, widening income inequality, status competition, rapid technological change, climate threat, public health shocks, and political polarization.

Tues. & Wed. 8:30-11:25am plus asynchronous work

July 6 – 31, 2026

Online Mix

Instructor: Jennifer Sloan

What are our stories, and what can we share with future generations? In this course, students will explore and critique federal, state, and local policies, ranging from DACA to everyday paperwork, that impact immigration and migrant experiences in the United States. Students will conduct interview-based research about the migration-related experiences and histories of their families, friends, community members, and others. In undertaking this research, students will understand how individual histories and biographies intersect with longstanding, systemic inequalities. Students will learn about major events in the history of migration to the US, how to design and carry out qualitative research projects, and explore creative ways of sharing these with wider audience. Students’ work will contribute towards an open-access textbook on the Sociology of Immigration that will be taught in future classes.

The class meets online synchronous Tues. and Wed. 8:30-11:25am and has asynchronous work on other days. If you have received credit for SOC 31905, please take another course.

Mon. & Thur. 2:30pm-5:25pm

July 6 – 31, 2026

Hybrid Asynchronous

Instructor: Colin Ashley

How are certain places and their populations constructed as dangerous, deviant, or disposable? How can stakeholders challenge these categorizations through individual and collective activities that transform spaces into desired places? Race, Place, & Space considers how unequal configurations of power, such as access to resources and political representation, organize space locally and globally, underpinning racism and stratification and fueling resistance to these. This course examines race as a social construct that is produced by, contested, and experienced through place and space. We investigate how race becomes embedded in the physical and imagined landscapes of cities and communities, and how power operates spatially to propagate exclusion, confinement, and change. The course examines residential segregation, housing and neighborhood inequality, environmental racism, policing and surveillance, and urban protest, while also attending to the narratives and everyday experiences of people navigating these spaces. The course aims not just to analyze spatialized inequality, but to connect theory with collective practices that challenge inequality and cultivate more just and liberatory visions of space and place.

Tues., Wed., Thur., and Fri. 6-8:55pm

June 1 – 29, 2026

Online Synchronous

Instructor: Siobhan Pokorney, LCSW and PhD

In the US, contemporary institutions, such as schools, prisons, and healthcare organizations, under-serve and even harm their constituents. How could these systems be re-imagined through Black Feminist Abolitionist movements so that they serve stakeholders? This course centers the voices of those ensnared in carceral systems and explores key conceptual frameworks, practices, and genealogies of abolition, especially in relation to Black and queer feminisms. This course delves into the relationship between dismantling prisons and other carceral systems, including, but not limited to, family regulation, immigration, capitalism, schools, psychiatry, and gender and family norms. In critiquing Social Work practice within progressive change movements and exploring Abolitionist Social Work, the course creates space for freedom dreaming and radical reimagining of our communities without oppressive and harmful systems.

If you have already received credit for SOC 31189, please take another course.