Advanced study in sociology, with specific topics to be announced at the beginning of each semester.

How do Americans try to achieve success today? Workers browse job listings during their break; parents sign their children up for a range of activities and lessons; college students pick up a minor or a second major. Success today means being flexible, able to thrive in different contexts, prepared for unpredictability. In this course, we will examine how this flexible ideal permeates all aspects of our lives, from how we learn to how we form relationships, from how we work to how we spend our free time. Drawing primarily on economic and cultural sociology, the course will cover a variety of topics: outside CEO hires, finance workers’ compensation schemes, “personal branding” discourse, elites’ education, “omnivorous” cultural tastes, and more. The readings will help us connect the pressure and desire we feel to be flexible with broader changes in technology, the labor market, and—through a discussion of code-switching—racial stratification in the United States. Throughout the course, we will think about the consequences of this flexible ideal for inequality and the self: Who has the resources to meet these demands for flexibility? How has this flexible ideal changed our sense of ourselves, of status, of success?

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills