Introductory Sociology through Literature

Abstract

Responding to Student Diversity-Sociology Through Literature: The course, offered for four semesters at the University of Texas at Austin, has two objectives: (1) to illustrate the sociological perspective through materials already familiar to students; and (2) to give students practice identifying sociological content in new contexts. The initial learning task is to grasp a sociological concept well enough to find an example of it in a literary selection. A later task is to take a whole literary selection and identify what is going sociologically. Comprehension, analogical reasoning, and application are the principal cognitive skills I try to encourage. Lectures move from subjects personally familiar to students to more abstract ideas and from microlevel to macrolevel social patterns. Most of the course readings are taken from fiction. Students usually have some familiarity with literary analysis through English courses, so they are building on partly familiar ground. Although field observation is not possible in my large course, I can help students see with new eyes into the descriptions by