BA/BS in Sociology

Sociology at Hampshire is not a fixed track. Students put together their own concentration, drawing on faculty and classes from several fields where social analysis plays a part. The study centers on how societies and cultures shift over time and what those shifts mean in ordinary lives. Coursework frequently compares cases, looks to history, and crosses disciplinary lines, and it treats race, gender and class as basic lenses for understanding social patterns. Students can approach the subject through questions of personal and group identity, through the institutions that organize social and cultural life, or through political economy. Areas that come up include schooling, gender studies, American history, health and law. Each student plans an individual course of study and completes an independent project, so the final work reflects the particular questions that person chose to pursue.