Concentration in Culture, Media, and Leisure Studies (CMLS)
Supervisor: Prof. Alexander Riley
The CMLS concentration is for sociology majors interested in the social production and reproduction of systems of meaning in the modern world. The concentration takes as its field of study all realms of cultural production and consumption. A specific focus is provided by mass media, popular culture, and public ritual forms (e.g., television, film, radio, popular press, the Internet and new media, video games, sport, fashion, popular music) that have assumed such critical importance in contemporary Western culture and increasingly in non-Western cultures under Western influence. Culture is studied in many forms (symbolic, ideal, material and visual), and theoretical frameworks for the study of all of those forms are promoted in the concentration. CMLS is deeply interdisciplinary and connects sociology’s basic interest in understanding modernity with the anthropological sense that cultural symbols, narratives, and values are the keys to understanding human societies.
Students in the CMLS concentration have access to much of the conventional range of occupational fields available to general majors in sociology, but they will be especially well-prepared for careers in fields of cultural production (e.g., the mass media, sport and entertainment, marketing and consumer research and consulting, tourism and leisure industries), for work in local, state, and federal arts and cultural agencies and organizations, and for advanced studies or policy and research work in the cultural and social sciences.
The CMLS concentration requires students to take ten courses, no more than two of which can be at the 100 level and at least five of which must be SOCI designates. At least one course with the ANTH designate (or a CAPS offered by an anthropologist) must be taken.
A) The concentration has a core of five required courses:
Theory (one course): SOCI 211: Classical Sociological Theory or SOCI 212: Contemporary Sociological Theory
Methodology (two courses): SOCI 208: Methods of Social Research or SOCI 209: Analyzing the Social World and SOCI 201: Field Research in Local Communities
Cultural Sociology (at least two courses from the following list):
- SOCI 240: Sociology of Religion
- SOCI 265: Culture and Politics in the 1960s
- SOCI 270: Popular Culture
- SOCI 275: Sociology of Mass Media
- SOCI 335: Topics in Cultural Sociology
- SOCI 338: Culture and The Self
- SOCI 321: Sociology of Knowledge and Science
B) Beyond these five courses, students must take at least one 300 or 400 level course from the following list which is not being applied to the cultural sociology component of the core:
- SOCI 306: Ethnographic Video
- SOCI 311: Globalization, Technology, and Cultural Change
- SOCI 312: Globalization and Conflict
- SOCI 321: Sociology of Knowledge and Science
- SOCI 332: Seminar in American Society
- SOCI 335: Topics in Cultural Sociology
- SOCI 338: Culture and The Self
- SOCI 410: Remembering the Holocaust
- SOCI 428: Race, Citizenship, and Human Rights
- SOCI 434: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Identity
- SOCI 447: Semminar in Social Mobility: Rags to Riches in America
- CAPS 428-02: Mating and Marrying: Families in America
- CAPS 429: Disease, Bodies, and Culture
- ANTH 329: Religions in Africa
- ANTH 410: Environmental Issues from a Cross-Cultural Perspective
C) At least one additional course in Sociology or Anthropology must be taken from the following list:
- SOCI 100: Introduction to Sociology
- SOCI 123: Law and Society
- SOCI 130: Medicine and Society
- SOCI 140: American Culture and Society
- SOCI 213: Race in Historical and Comparative Perspective
- SOCI 239: Deviance and Identity
- SOCI 243: Race and Ethnicity
- SOCI 245: Remaking America: Latin American Immigration
- SOCI 246: Activism and Social Change
- SOCI 269: Power, Protest, and Political Change
- SOCI 280: Twentieth-Century Afro-Caribbean and African-American Thought
- SOCI 290: Caribbean Sociology
- ANTH 109: Cultural Anthropology
- ANTH 228: Ritual, Myth, and Meaning
- ANTH 245: Consumption and Material Culture
- ANTH 247: Japanese Film as Anthropology
- ANTH 253: Folklore and Ritual
- ANTH 265: Food, Eating, and Culture
- ANTH 267: Anthropology of Tourism
- ANTH 270: Sexuality and Culture
- ANTH 273: Women Writing Culture
- ANTH 282: Performance and Culture
- ANTH 283: Interpreting Culture
D) At least two courses outside the disciplines of Sociology and Anthropology are to be selected from the following list (students may petition the department chair to have one non-SOC/ANTHRO course not on this list accepted toward the requirement):
E) Finally, one course must be taken in either Sociology or Anthropology that is unrelated to the concentration.
