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2026-2027 Academic Year

Fall 2026

FYSM 100 First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will: - Critically analyze information and ideas - Examine issues from multiple perspectives - Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason - Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and - Create clear academic writing The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

PHIL 261 Pierre Bourdieu & Symb Viol
Cross-listed with SOCI 313-01 and EDST 391-02.

SOCI 313 Pierre Bourdieu & Symb Viol
Cross-listed with EDST 391-02 and PHIL 261-01. Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the most influential sociologist of the last half century (he's certainly the most cited). His work on the reproduction of inequality, various forms of capital, symbolic power, and symbolic violence has been influential not only in sociology, but in educational studies, philosophy, political science, consumer studies, and anthropology as well. In this course we will read a variety of his works that will enable us to understand the development of these concepts in his work. The multidisciplinary impact of Bourdieu's work is reflected in the multidisciplinary composition of the student body in this course, and it is my hope that we will learn not only from Bourdieu, but from one another and our different disciplinary ways of knowing.

EDST 391 Pierre Bourdieu & Symb Viol
Cross-listed with SOCI 313-01 and PHIL 261-01. Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the most influential sociologist of the last half century (he's certainly the most cited). His work on the reproduction of inequality, various forms of capital, symbolic power, and symbolic violence has been influential not only in sociology, but in educational studies, philosophy, political science, consumer studies, and anthropology as well. In this course we will read a variety of his works that will enable us to understand the development of these concepts in his work. The multidisciplinary impact of Bourdieu's work is reflected in the multidisciplinary composition of the student body in this course, and it is my hope that we will learn not only from Bourdieu, but from one another and our different disciplinary ways of knowing.

Spring 2027

SOCI 313 The Stranger
It can be argued that the existence of things that are or seem strange to us is the reason we have science (and religion before that) at all. When those strange things are people or social processes, we use sociology to study them. Georg Simmel, one of the founders of the discipline, called what is perhaps his most well-known essay The Stranger, describing someone who is neither completely inside nor completely outside our culture. For Simmel, the stranger is a social position at least as much as it is a characteristic of a person. Just a few decades later, existentialist philosopher Albert Camus titled one of his most important books The Stranger. Camus offers an account of someone who sees no inherent meaning in (at least) modern life. How is one to live in such a world? In this theory-heavy WID course, these two accounts will frame our semester investigating strangeness, absurdity, and things that don’t fit. How is that position produced and maintained? How does it function within and across societies? How is it experienced by the people we come to see as strange? Finally, to what extent are we all strangers, and how do we navigate such realities?

SOCI 331 Contemp Sociological Theory
This course will examine alternative ways of understanding the human being, society, and culture as they have been presented in contemporary sociological theory (1925-present). It will focus on the theoretical logic of accounting for simple and complex forms of social life, interactions between social processes and individual and group identities, major and minor changes in society and culture, and the linkages between intimate and large-scale human experience. Prerequisite: 110 and one additional course in sociology, or permission of instructor. Offered every spring.