Greetings,
I look forward to meeting many of you in the upcoming academic year. I wanted to let you know about this conference “Global Capitalism and the Worlds of Socialism,” which I am participating in next week, and wanted to tell you about my fall course:
SOCI 860: Sociology’s Historical Imagination: Comparative Historical Sociology
Wednesdays 4:30-7:10pm
Sociologists have always used their historical imagination to reconstruct the past and answer sociological questions. What is capitalism and when did it begin? Why is it now neoliberal and global? How are slavery systems the same and different across time?
Why do revolutions happen and how do they actually change societies? How do different religions shape economies? These are just a few of the possible questions explored in historical and comparative sociology. In this class, we start with an exploration of
the classic texts in the field. Then we plunge into hands-on historical methods: archival, oral history, census data, and newspaper and content analysis. We will practice these methods, including visiting several archives. Along the way, we will discuss excellent
examples of these methods, surveys of developments in the field, and intriguing issues brought up by this field. (See attached syllabus; I have also included MA-specific requirements in the syllabus.)
Global Capitalism and the Worlds of Socialism