Sociology

Studying the state of society, social problems and social issues; understanding the ever-changing patterns in social life; and developing a sense of one’s own social “location”

www.bucknell.edu/sociology

Related Student Organizations

Alpha Kappa Delta (sociology honor society)

Anthropology and Sociology Club

Bucknell Anthropology and Sociology Society (BASS)

Pre-Health Professions Society

Pre-Law Society

Career Paths

Sociology majors pursue careers in journalism, politics, public relations, business, criminal justice, law, non-profit organizations or public administration. Some examples of the careers of recent sociology graduates are:

  • Program Manager, Princeton Project 55, Inc.
  • Project Assistant, IP-Central, LLC
  • Supports Coordinator, Case Management Unit
  • Teacher, Teach for America
  • Account Assistant, Masterplan
  • Account Executive, Manhattan Marketing Ensemble
  • Case Assistant, American Capital Strategies

Grants & Awards

Bucknell’s sociology faculty members have recently achieved the following:

  • Linden Lewis recently participated in the UN group meeting in Geneva on promoting equal responsibility for caring between men and women, especially with respect to the care of patients suffering from HIV/AIDS disease. He is currently the President of the Caribbean Studies Association.
  • Elizabeth Durden was recently in Mexico doing research on Mexican organizations with connections to migrant groups in the U.S. She was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Award.

Selected Faculty Publications

Sociology faculty members’ recent publications include:

  • Deborah Abowitz (with David Knox and Marty Zussman), "Emotional Abuse among Undergraduates in Romantic Relationships," International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 2010
  • Deborah Abowitz (with T. Michael Toole), "Mixed Method Research: Fundamental Issues of Design, Validity and Reliability in Construction Research," Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2010
  • Beth Duckles (with Joseph Galaskiewicz and Olga Mayorova), "Childcare Networks and Embedded Experiences," in Contexts of Social Capital: Social Networks in Communities, Markets and Organizations, 2009
  • Beth Duckles (with Mark A. Hager and Joseph Galaskiewicz), "How Nonprofits Close: Using Narratives to Study Organizational Processes," in Advances in Qualitative Organizational Research, 2005
  • Elizabeth Durden, "Nativity, Duration of Residence, Citizenship and Access to Health Care for Hispanic Children," International Migration Review, 2007
  • Elizabeth Durden (with Robert A. Hummer), "Access to Health Care among Working Aged Hispanic Adults in the United States," Social Science Quarterly, 2006
  • Linden Lewis, ed. (with Glyne Griffith), Color, Hair and Bone: Race in the Twenty-first Century, 2008
  • Linden Lewis, "Man talk, Masculinity, and a Changing Social Environment," Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 2007
  • Katherine McCoy, "Beyond Civil-Military Relations: Reflections on the Control of a Private, Multinational Force," Armed Forces & Society, 2010
  • Katherine McCoy, "Yesterday's Civil Warriors, Today's Global Guards: Latin Americans in the Privatized Military Industry," in Private Military and Security Companies: Trends and Challenges for Latin America, 2009
  • Alexander Riley, Impure Play: Sacredness, Transgression and the Tragic in Popular Culture, 2010
  • Alexander Riley, Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented, 2010

Internships

Many students gain practical experience through internships or fieldwork with volunteer agencies and nonprofit organizations. Sociology majors have worked as congressional interns, as social work aides and as interns with local magistrates, juvenile delinquency programs, the Lewisburg Penitentiary, the SCI-Muncy (a maximum security prison for women), the Bucknell public safety staff and the community center in Lewisburg. Other recent examples of internships include:

  • Maybelline/Garnier
  • CBS News
  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

Graduate and Professional School

Field research and internships increase students’ chances of success when they apply to graduate, law or medical school. Each year, several students go on to Ph.D. programs in sociology. Recent graduates have gone on to:

  • Rutgers University
  • Villanova University School of Law
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • Boston University
  • Drexel University
  • Pace Law School

Program Details

  • Sociology offers four concentrations: a general major in sociology, a concentration in legal studies, a concentration in human services and a concentration in culture, media and leisure studies.
  • The concentration in legal studies is for students interested in careers in law, law enforcement, and criminal justice policy and planning, as well as for students who would simply like to understand how an increasingly litigious society works.
  • The concentration in human services is for students interested in careers in health, social work, human services administration, education or other human services fields. The focus is interdisciplinary and is especially concerned with social policy, examination of particular institutions and local communities.
  • The culture, media and leisure studies concentration is for students 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.
  • Students planning a career in law, law enforcement or criminal justice policy and planning benefit from legal studies and methods training, which provide important skills that translate well to professional programs.
  • Students interested in counseling careers find the pre-social work program in sociology as important as training in psychology.
  • Students in the culture, media and leisure studies concentration 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.
  • Students gain hands-on experience collecting and interpreting social data. Learning about surveys and statistical analysis provides students with skills important in the job market.

Faculty

Bucknell’s sociology professors are active in research and encourage students to work with them. Some of their research interests include economic development, community action programs, race and ethnic relations, the role of women in society, and symbols and meanings of American popular culture.

Deborah A. Abowitz
A.B. McGill; A.M., Ph.D. Brown University
Scholarly interests: social demography (courtship, marriage and the family, aging), social stratification and inequality (gender and poverty), social movements, comparative genocide, sociology of the Holocaust

Beth Duckles
B.A. Earlham College; M.A., Ph.D. Arizona
Scholarly interests: nonprofit and social movement organizations

T. Elizabeth Durden
B.A. Millsaps College; M.A. Georgetown; Ph.D. Texas at Austin
Scholarly interests: social demography (immigration, health inequalities), race and ethnicity and Latin American area studies

Michelle C. Johnson
B.A. University of Washington, M.A., Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lusophone Africa (Guinea-Bissau); Africans in the contemporary diaspora (Africans in Portugal); religion and ritual; Islam; ethnicity; transnationalism; the life course.

Linden Lewis
B.A. University of the West Indies; M.A., Ph.D. American
Scholarly interests: globalization, sociology of development; race, class, and gender; the Caribbean

Carl Milofsky
B.A. Brandeis; M.A., Ph.D. California at Berkeley
Scholarly interests: nonprofit organizations, human services, sociology of medicine, sociology of education, community

Alexander Riley
B.A. Ohio Wesleyan; M.A., Ph.D. California at San Diego
Scholarly interests: cultural sociology, social and cultural theory, mass media and popular culture

Clare Sammells
A.B. Harvard College, M.A., Ph.D. University of Chicago
Scholarly interests:

Edmund Q. Searles
B.A. Bowdoin College; Ph.D. University of Washington
Scholarly interests: expression of indigenous identity and power among native North Americans, particularly the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic

Allen Tran
Education
Scholarly interests:

Undergraduate Research

Through the generosity of a former department major, Tracy Meerwarth ’96, and her family, funds are available from the department to assist students with research expenses, including travel, and for the presentation of their research findings at professional meetings. Recent student research projects include:

  • "Visualizing Sustainability: Sector and Visual Images of Green Buildings"
  • "Childhood Obesity in Central Pennsylvania and the Effects of Community Culture on Body Mass Index"
  • "Hey, Hey, He Gay, He Gay . . . Okay" . . . Or Is It?: The Sociological Importance of Bruno"

Courses Offered

Advanced Reading in Sociology
American Culture and Society
Analyzing the Social World
Classical Sociological Theory
Community Organizations in Northern Ireland
Contemporary Sociological Theory
Criminology
Culture and the Self
Deviance and Identity
Educational Policy and School Organization
Field Research
Field Research in Local Communities
Globalization, Technology and Cultural Change
Honors Course in Sociology
How Holocausts Happen
Human Service Systems
Introduction to Sociology
Law and Society
Mass Media
Medicine and Society
Methods of Social Research
Popular Culture
Power, Protest and Political Change
Public Service and Nonprofit Organizations
Race in Historical and Comparative Perspective
Remaking America: Latin American Immigration
Remembering the Holocaust
Sectarian Conflict in Northern Ireland
Seminar in Law and Society
Seminar in Race/Ethnicity and Gender
Seminar in Social Mobility: Rags to Riches in America
Senior Thesis
Social Problems in the 21st Century
Social Services and Community: A Practicum
Sociology Capstone
Sociology of Caribbean Society
Sociology of Developing Societies
Sociology of Medicine
Sociology of Race/Ethnicity
Sociology of Religion
Third Sector Organizations:
Nonprofits in America
Topics in Cultural Sociology
Twentieth-century Afro-Caribbean and African American Thought
The Urban Condition
Video Ethnography
Violence and Society
Women in Crime

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 7

Average number of majors per class year: 30

Study Abroad

Many sociology students spend a summer, semester or year abroad in various regions of the world. Recently, students have gone to:

  • Barbados
  • Costa Rica
  • Spain