Welcome to Fall Semester 2017 and to my SOCI 475 students.

Hi folks! Welcome to Sociology 475 - Senior Seminar. As you know, the framework for this class is public sociology. We are going to think about how our sociological perspective, social science research methods, and sociological analyses can be useful outside of academic spaces. Our course blogs will be our practice of communicating our sociological perspectives on the social problems about which we are interested to a public audience.

Here is the prompt for our first blog post:
In two to three paragraphs, consider what draws you to sociology and how you might use it in the future. Begin your post by telling us something about yourself and why it matters to you.

Throughout your post, answer the following questions:

• How would you define sociology? What is the sociological perspective? 
• What is useful about sociology? What are the benefits of the sociological perspective? 
• How can it be used outside of academic walls?

A note for Criminal Justice Studies students:

• Your answers might be somewhat different as you think about how the criminological (and sociological and feminist) perspectives about crime, punishment, policing, etc., are and could be useful for nonacademic audiences. 

For folks who are visiting: Here is a Wikipedia page about Public Sociology (not a scholarly source, but very useful!). 

Welcome - Students Read This First!

Welcome to the Sociology Considerations Blog. This blog is meant to add to our in-class discussions and readings. Our face-to-face time is limited and often focused on information "delivery." So this space will provide another outlet for us to interact with the material and each other. As sociologists, we examine what we take-for-granted in everyday life in order to develop a “sociological imagination” that helps us see the connections between micro-level individual experiences and macro-level social institutions. This blog provides a space to take sociological concepts from the course and apply them to examples from our own lives. Here each of us are teachers and students as we use sociology to explain our experiences of the social worlds that we inhabit; here we can engage in the production of sociological knowledge.

You will receive more explicit instructions for setting up your blogs, what you should be blogging about, and how you will be graded in class (hint: check GauchoSpace). But in short, your TA and I will post prompts for you to reflect on and respond to in your own blogs - which are linked here. In your blogs, take the course concepts and apply them, using them to explain and evaluate what you see and experience in your lives. Make "the familiar strange" and "the strange familiar." Your course-mates (and perhaps others - this is a public blog) will be reading your blog (not just your TA and I) and you will be required to comment on each other's work, so have fun with this and make it your own. I encourage you to use pictures and media - be creative! 

Finally - I don't want to sound preachy but I feel compelled to make one quick note about privacy. As you know, nothing on the Internet is truly secure. Do not share details about you and your life that you wouldn't want everyone to know. Your virtual persona will follow you into the real world and may have (positive or negative) effects on your future. So take care with what you post.