Sociology 106H has two basic aims: to introduce the student to the sociological way of thinking and to apply that way of thinking to a historical analysis of inequality in America.  In the context of this course, the sociological way of thinking includes the following skills: considering structural as well as individual level explanations for social facts, viewing events as multi rather than uni-determined, distinguishing between a stereotype and a statistically based generalization, and explaining social change in terms of causes that themselves incorporate change.

There is one required text: Who Rules America? Power, Politics and Social Change (Boston: McGraw Hill 2006) by G. William Domhoff (5^th edition, ISBN 0-07-287625-5).  Note that there are earlier editions of this book, but our needs stipulate the newest one.   The book can be purchased at Food for Thought Books, 106 N. Pleasant Street, Amherst (253-5432).  The text takes us through February, after which all the readings are either on electronic reserve or directly accessible on the web.

This course has both a website and a Spark site.

The homepage for the course website is http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~smodel/soc106_index.htm

To log onto Spark, go to https://spark.oit.umass.edu/webct/logonDisplay.dowebct

We will be using both electronic locations during the semester, so please consult both frequently.  Additional information on using Spark will be provided as the need develops.

Students should arrive on time, sit quietly in their seats and remain in the room for the entire class period. It is very distracting to have students walking in and out of class.Ordinarily, students who leave should not plan to return until the next class.  If students do have a legitimate reason for leaving during a class, please alert the instructor in advance.  Cell phones should be both turned off and put away.  Under no circumstances should your cell phone, blackberry, or other electronic device be on your desk.  Class notes cannot be taken on laptops.

If there is an assignment to prepare, students are expected to complete that assignment before coming to class.  They are expected to attend regularly, to pay attention, and to participate in class discussion.  Regular attendance will be taken and occasional pop quizzes will be administered to reward attendance and encourage preparation.  Additional requirements include two in-class exams, a final exam,  and three papers.  Two of the papers are book reviews, one is an evaluation of a personal interview.  Additional information about the papers appears in a separate hand out.

Students are expected to use their UMass e-mail addresses.  The instructor will use this method of communication from time to time, and students are responsible for information conveyed in this fashion.  Students should get in the habit of checking their UMass e-mail the night before a class day, to be sure that they are up to date on issues associated with the class.

Written assignments are due at the beginning of class on the date due.  Papers will be marked down ten points for each class period that they are late.  Papers handed in after class on the date due or left in the instructors= mail box or in her office during the class period when they are due will be considered one class late.  The instructor does not accept papers delivered by e-mail.  Although students are encouraged to get help writing papers, for instance by going to the Writing Center in the Learning Commons, papers will not be accepted from students= tutors, counselors or case managers.  All students must hand in their own work. 

Papers and tests will be returned promptly.  Until final grades are issued, students are advised (1) to print out an extra copy of papers they hand in, (2) to keep all graded work that has been returned to them, and (3) to keep all documentation of indispositions.   All grade changes will be done in the instructor’s office; under no circumstances will the professor change a grade in the classroom. Moreover, re-evaluations of students' work will take into account both previously unnoticed strengths and previously unobserved weaknesses.

Students who miss one in-class exam do not need to make up the test if they can provide documentation of a legitimate excuse.  Similarly, students who miss paper deadlines will not incur a 10% lateness penalty if they provide documentation of a legitimate excuse.  Examples of appropriate excuses include a death in the family, court appearances, travel under University auspices, religious observance and  illness.  In the case of illness, verification that the student either has been seen at University Health Services or has consulted a private physician within two days of the day in question is required.  Students who do not complete all the work for the course can receive an Incomplete if, and only if they have a legitimate reason and meet with the instructor to complete the requisite form.

Academic dishonesty will be treated with the utmost seriousness.  Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to cheating on tests and plagiarizing the work of others.  Students guilty of plagiarizing one assignment will get a zero on it.  Students guilty of plagiarizing more than once will fail the course.  In addition the Academic Honesty Board will be informed of all instances of plagiarism.  Students are urged to review the University's policies on academic dishonesty on the website maintained by the Dean of Students:

http://www.umass.edu/dean_students/code_conduct/acad_honest.htm

As a condition for enrollment in this course, students must submit all assignments to the Turnitin service for textual comparison or originality review for the detection of possible plagiarism. All submitted assignments will be included in the UMass Amherst dedicated databases of assignments at Turnitin. These databases of assignments will be used solely for the purpose of detecting possible plagiarism during the grading process and during this term and in the future.

The instructor's office hours are Mondays from 10:15 am to 12:00 noon in Thompson 616.  (Note this is my Sixth Floor office; I do ‘general advising’ for all Sociology majors in Thompson 724) Students do not need an appointment to come by during any portion of office hours, and, if these hours are inconvenient, an alternate time can be arranged.  The instructor=s telephone number is 545-5975, and, when no one is in the office, an answering device will record a message of considerable length. The instructor=s e-mail address is MODEL@SADRI.UMass.edu  The instructor is always happy to meet with students to discuss issues both course-related and not.

The information listed UNDER a class date indicates the topic that will be discussed in lecture on that date.  Sometimes one or more readings are listed.  An asterisk indicates the reading is in the course packet.  Unasterisked readings are available through the electronic reserve of the DuBois Library.  Information on how to access electronic reserve readings will be given in class. Please do all the assigned reading BEFORE class.

Monday Jan 28

Introduction to Course

Wednesday Jan 30

Film: People Like Us  (124 minutes)

Friday Feb 1

Domhoff, Chapter 1

Monday Feb 4

Domhoff, Chapter 2

Wednesday Feb 6

Film:  The Corporation (145 minutes) 

or Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (110 minutes)

Friday Feb 8

Domhoff, Chapter 3

Monday Feb 11

Domhoff, Chapter 4

Wednesday Feb 13

Film: So Goes the Nation  (90 minutes)

or

Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? (82 minutes)

Friday Feb 15

Domhoff, Chapter 5

Tues Feb 19

Domhoff, Chapter 6

Wed Feb 20

Domhoff,  Chapter 7

Film: Running in High Heels [(part one) 50 or 90 minutes]

Fri Feb 22

Paper One Due

Film: Running in High Heels [(part two) 50 or 90 minutes]

Mon Feb 25

Domhoff, Chapter 8

Wed Feb 27

Test One

Fri Feb 29

Irving Seidman, Interviewing as Qualitative Research, Second Edition.  NY: Teachers College, 1998, pp. 63-78.

Mon Mar 3

What is Race?

Wikipedia - "Race: Classification of Human Beings"

Wed Mar 5

Film: Race: The Power of an Illusion Part 3 (56 minutes)

Fri Mar 7

Racism - Sociobiology

van den Berghe, Pierre. The Ethnic Phenomeon. New York: Elsevier, 1981. Pp. 15-36.

Mon Mar 10

Racism - Split Labor Market

Bonacich, Edna. "A Theory of Racial Antagonism: The Split Labor Market." American Sociological Review 37 (October 1972): 547-59.  

Wed Mar 12

Film - Skin Deep (53 minutes)

or  One Drop (49 minutes)

Fri Mar 14

How the Irish Became White

Roediger, David.  The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.  London: Verso, 1991.  Ch. 7 "Irish-American Workers and White Racial Formation in the Antebellum United States" pp. 133-63.  

Mon Mar 24

Black History

Pinkney, Alphonso.  Historical Background, pp. 1-33 in Black Americans, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969.

Wed Mar 26

Film: Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (55 minutes)

or

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (224 minutes)

Fri Mar 28

Attack on Segregation

"Brown vs. Board of Education," in Stephen J. Herzog, Minority Group Politics: A Reader.  New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971, pp. 39-43.   

Southern Regional Council, "Direct Action in the South," in Arnold Rose and Caroline Rose (eds.) Minority Problems. New York: Harper and Row, 1965, pp. 400-405, 407-411.

Film: Eyes on the Prize: Ain’t Scared of Your Jails (Freedom Riders - 30 minutes)

Mon Mar 31

One Volunteer’s Summer

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/sources/ps_summer.html

"Summary of the Main Provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," in Arnold Rose and Caroline Rose (eds.) Minority Problems. New York: Harper and Row, 1965, pp. 422-24.  

Massey, Douglas and Nancy Denton. "Enforcing the Fair Housing Act," in American Apartheid. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 195-200.

Wed Apr 2

Desegregation in Boston

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3563642.html

Film: Eyes on the Prize 2: Keys to the Kingdom (Busing in Boston - 30 minutes)

Fri Apr 4

Contemporary Blacks in the Housing Market

Pattillo, Mary E. ASweet Mothers and Gangbangers: Managing Crime in a Black Middle-Class Neighborhood.@  Social Forces 76 (March 1998):750-74.

Mon Apr 7

Contemporary Blacks in the Labor Market  

Expanding the Black Middle Class

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/900828_holzer_072905.pdf

Wed Apr 9

 Interview Assignment Due

Film: The Way Home (92 minutes)

Fri Apr 11

Contemporary Black Incarceration

“Race, Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System”  ASA Report

http://www.asanet.org/galleries/Research/ASARaceCrime.pdf

Mon Apr 14

Test

Wed Apr 16

Film: Not for Ourselves Alone (3 hours)

Fri Apr 18

Sociobiology on Gender Inequality

van den Berghe, Pierre. "The Sociobiology of Human Mating and Reproduction”, Chapter 3 in Human Family Systems. New York; Elsevier, 1979, pp. 32-69. 

Wed Apr 23

Film:  A Century of Women: Work and Family (95 minutes)

Fri Apr 25

Marx on Gender Inequality 

C. Guettel, Marxism and Feminism, Toronto: Women’s Press, 1974, pp. 7-15. 

Lilian Thompson, “How the Oppression of Women Began and What That Implies for Fighting Oppression Today,” http://www.workersliberty.org/node/7357

Mon Apr 28

Chafe, William H. “The Road to Equality, 1962-Today,” Pp. 529-54 in Nancy Cott, editor, No Small Courage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Wed Apr 30

Film: I Was a Teenage Feminist (62 minutes)

Fri May 2

Women’s Labor Force Participation

England, Paula, Carmen Garcia-Beaulieu and Mary Ross, “Women’s Employment Among Blacks, Whites and Three Groups of Latinas,” Gender and Society 18 (4) (August, 2004): 494-509 (skip pp. 498-502).

Mon May 5

Women’s Earnings

Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2006

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2006.pdf

Wed May 7

Film: Defending Our Lives

Paper Three Due

Fri May 9

Women in Prison

Pollock, Joycelyn M. Women, Prison and Crime, 2cd ed. (Chapter 1, pp. 1-4; Chapter 3, pp. 40-64.)  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002.

Mon May 12

Housework

Shelton, Beth Anne. AUnderstanding the Distribution of Labor Between Husbands and Wives@, Pp. 343-55 in  in Linda J. Waite (ed.), The Ties That Bind. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000.