Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.” Coretta Scott King “We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” Angela Davis “I’m not sure what freedom is, but I know damn well what it ain’t. How have we gotten so silly; I wonder.” Assata Shakur .... Senior seminar, which also counts as an S-course (speaking and oral communication), provides an opportunity for you to go deep. In this course, you will take a deep dive into your sociological toolkit to pursue an innovative research project. This project will not only culminate into a 25-35 pp. research paper that serves as your senior capstone, but you should consider it a living document that reflects your journey at DePauw as a Sociology major; the highs and lows, good and bad, favorite courses, and personal interests. This will be important and formative work that will carry you through to graduation, so take seriously this task set before you. This may be your hardest task yet, but we will get through it together. As you gleaned from the course title, this seminar will emphasize themes of freedom and justice. These themes are meant to be vague/broad as you will connect these themes to your thesis topic of choice. Over the semester, we will review the structure (organization of ideas) of sociological articles, book chapters, and media that focus on themes of justice and freedom, so you gain a full grasp of what is meant by these frameworks as well as how they have been levied by other scholars. These sources will also aid in our analysis of the craft of research – or how “good” academic research is scaffolded. To support you throughout the writing and research process, we will begin the course by exploring topic selection: how to pick a project idea you are passionate about and invested in. This is imperative as this will be your project for the next three months. From there, we will examine how to effectively ask a research question. Then, we will examine how to use the literature to explore what has been studied and what gaps in knowledge exist that need to be filled within your topic of choice. Next, we will review method and theory selection as the two work in tandem to give us the “how” you’ll go about answering your question and the “why” should we care about your social problem. Following this, we will explore how to effectively analyze your findings and make formal conclusions that can contribute to research in and beyond the discipline of sociology. Lastly, we will talk about the importance of your research project’s implications on scholarly and justice-based communities and organizations. Goal: To write a robust senior capstone that explores a sociological topic of interest that is currently under-researched or under-theorized in the discipline AND is connected to course themes of justice and freedom. This thesis will reflect your knowledge of the discipline, which you have honed over the last 4 years, including your methodological and theoretical training, as well as your knowledge of various subfields of sociology as gained through topical and specialty courses offered across the major.

Student Outcomes

Students will be able to: - Learn the craft of doing sociological research from topic selection, data collection, and theoretical analysis - Learn the craft of writing sociologically through analyzing academic research with an emphasis on the pitfalls to avoid and successes to emulate - Examine literature on themes of freedom and justice as it relates to applying them to your thesis - Develop speaking and oral communication skills - Develop formal presentation skills

Download

Share

COinS