Here's a syllabus for one of the semesters, Spring 2006, that I taught Methods of Sociological Inquiry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I used to post teaching and research materials on UW's website but didn't move those after I left. In the future, I'll re-create it, but I will post this syllabus for now in case someone is searching for some teaching ideas. Many of the links are no longer OK. (Not all of this is aligning correctly, so I'll try to fix it later.)
My version seems to be more hands-on with a variety of research activities and includes lots more historical examples, such as from
The Philadelphia Negro by Du Bois because of his use of systematic observation and interviews in the study of race. Many of the readings in my sections of research methods ended up examining the topics of race and order using different methods. In addition to Du Bois on race, Duneier used mainly participant observation but also interviews, conversation analysis, a simple field experiment, and historical research. LaPiere ran a famous field experiment in the 1920s followed by a questionnaire, and there are the field experiments by Pager (black and white men, with and without criminal records, applying for jobs) and by Massey and Lundy (undergrads at Penn calling landlords about apartments).This Spring 2006 syllabus has less on order than what I assigned in previous semesters. That topic pops up in Du Bois, Duneier, as well as Zimbardo on street vandalism.
Sociology 357—Methods of Sociological Inquiry
Spring 2006, the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Lecturer: Chuck
Ditzler
Office 7105 Social Science Building Office Hours: Tuesday 11am-noon,
Office Phone:
262-7458 Thursday
11am-noon, or by appointment
Email: cditzler@ssc.wisc.edu
Class Scheduled: TR 9:30am-10:45am Class Location: 6232 Social Science Bldg.
Course Description
This is a hands-on course that introduces methods of sociological
research. Two themes thread throughout much of this version of the course:
recognizing facts inconvenient for one’s position and developing one’s
imagination or ways of perception in research.
The primary task of a useful
teacher is to teach his students to recognize “inconvenient” facts—I mean facts
that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion
there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less
than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere
intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the
existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression
“moral achievement,” though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something
that should go without saying. Max Weber
“Science as a Vocation”
Shams and delusions are esteemed
for soundest truth, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe
realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it
with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments. Henry David Thoreau
“Where I Lived and What I Lived For” Walden
From the Undergraduate
Catalog, 2003-2005:
357 Methods of Sociological Inquiry. (Crosslisted with Rur
Soc) I or II or SS; 3-4 cr (I). Scientific methods and their application in the
analysis of society; procedures in testing sociological theory: problem
definition, hypothesis construction, collection and evaluation of data. P: So
st; not open to stdts who have taken Soc 358.
I wish that I'd looked into this more while a grad student at UW. John Muir, the environmentalist who is often called the "Father of the National Parks," used this clock-desk to study while an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin. A slotted box under the toothed wheel contained books. After the time he'd set for studying a book, it would be returned to a slot and another get pushed up. The front legs are shaped like compasses for drawing circles and the back legs like stacked books. This device apparently connected to his "wide-awake bed," which would tilt him up and light a lamp as a sort of alarm clock. But other sources seem to describe the "wide-awake bed" and clock-desk as separate. Visitors to Muir's dorm room say he let them try out the bed.
Muir describes the clock-desk in "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth" (1913):
"I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then, after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study."
Seckel pears are about two inches long and sweet. Even though their history stretches back to the 1700s in the Philadelphia area, they're not so common these days, probably because their size makes harvesting more costly for growers. Eating them seems easier, and the core is often so small that I can eat the whole thing except for the stem and the tiny end. They're my favorite pears, so I'm posting about them to encourage others to be on the look out for Seckel pears at farmers' markets and maybe to suggest that orchards grow these.
