BA/BS in Sociology

Sociology investigates social life and how societies change, posing basic questions about individuals, institutions, and worldwide processes. Students learn to link personal experience to broader historical forces, a habit of mind often called the sociological imagination, and use it to interpret complicated social relationships. The discipline is interdisciplinary by nature and overlaps with anthropology, art, economics, history, literature, politics, and media, gender, postcolonial, and ethnic studies. Its methods are varied: archival and comparative-historical research, ethnography, interviews, surveys, statistical analysis, and data visualization. Majors graduate as analytical thinkers prepared to contribute to social innovation and change. The department is shared with anthropology and confers a Bachelor of Arts. After their first year, students may ask to complete an independent study covering a range of research projects, some of which grow into honors theses.