Motivation to Teach Social Action:
I am fortunate to teach a short (week-long) course every year for graduate students on Community Organizing. This course combines social movement theory with training in the hands-on skills of organizing for change. This is a course that I teach in my capacity as the Co-Research Director of Activism and Advocacy for a research center at Syracuse University called PARCC (the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Cooperation). I'm interested in participating in this program for two reasons. First, I am, in general, a professor eager to continue honing my pedagogical skills and I am excited to have an opportunity to do that amongst a community of faculty members all committed to social action. Second, and more specifically, I am looking forward to learning how to more effectively incorporate social action into my larger, topical undergraduate courses.
Course Description:
[Sociology of Work] Work is something with which, by necessity, the vast majority of us already have a great deal of familiarity. It's not only the means of our livelihood, but often the basis of our identity and sense of belonging. It is also a primary site and driver of social inequality and class conflict. This upper-division undergraduate course aims to introduce students to key concepts, theories, and debates within the fields of sociology of work and labor studies. Our focus will be on understanding the landscape of work and workers' movements predominantly - though by no means exclusively - in the context of the U.S. The course is anchored around two core questions: (1) how and why has work changed over the last half century? and (2) how have these shifts impacted workers, unions, and the politics of the working class?
[Sociology of Housing] TBD
Taught By:
Gretchen Purser
Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of Law, Society, and Policy
Sociology
Maxwell School of Syracuse University
Read profile here.