This survey course studies human meaning systems, particularly as manifested in art, literature, music, and other media. It includes study of the production, reception, and aesthetic experience of cultural forms.

Sociology of Culture is a broad field of study encompassing every aspect of our lives, not just those things we typically think of like music and art, but also our clothes, food, language, ideologies, rhetoric, technology, gestures, and symbols; culture is all things created by humans. Culture gives our lives shape, allows us to predict social action, informs our behavior and patterns of thought, and imbues our lives with meaning. In this class we will be focusing on two major concepts within the sociology of culture: cultural capital and symbolic boundaries. We will spend the bulk of the course focusing on the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and class within the educational system. We will examine two very different high school contexts—one a working- and lower-middle class rural school and the other an elite college-preparatory boarding school—before moving on to exploring the college experience. We will look at how cultural knowledge, skills, and embodiment impact not only educational experiences but future prospects. Further, we will see how we can, both knowingly and unknowingly, reproduce inequality through our engagement with culture by how we define and distinguish ourselves through symbolic boundaries.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills