SOCS14

This course examines the family as a social institution and personal family stories, with attention to structural inequalities and their intersections with individual lives. Course materials include sociological memoir, qualitative research on family experiences, engagement with local initiatives related to families in Lewiston-Auburn, and a range of story-telling media like documentaries, podcasts, and other creative work. Students explore these topics and materials in the context of dynamics of privilege, exclusion, and marginalization, including systemic racism, capitalism, and inequalities of gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, nationality, and citizenship. Throughout the course, students also construct sociological analyses of their own families, with a variety of options for creating final products that document those individual family stories.