Thursday, December 16, 2021

Transferring Dual Credit

Below is helpful info about transferring credit from our dual credit course to your university.

Usually, the process to transfer credit is to go to Loyola's website and request a transcript. Then you send in a copy to your university and you request credit. But I would call the admissions office of your university to be sure. Transcripts will not be available until a grade is posted.

I recommend requesting two transcript copies - one for your own record and one for the college you are attending.

Official Transcripts


There are 3 ways that you can request a transcript depending on your circumstances:


1.  If they attempt to access transcripts within 30 days of the end of the semester, they can log into LOCUS as a current student.  Go to the Locus website and then follow the directions here.

2.  If the semester has been finished for 30 days or more, students will be considered alumni in which case:
a.  If the student applied with their social security number, follow these directions using their SS#. 
b.  If the student did not provide their SS# in their dual credit application, follow these directions for this circumstance. (MOST STUDENTS WILL NEED THIS LAST LINK)

Sometimes they want the following info:

Syllabus:  I will attach a link to the syllabus here.
Dept & Title:  the course title from Loyola is SOCL101; Society in a Global Age (SOCL is the sociology Dept.)
Text:  The class uses the text Real World Sociology by Ferris and Stein 6th Ed.
ReadingsJust Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.  Course Packet with selected readings.




For Additional Help from Loyola with transcript:
Try the Luc.edu webpage
Or Call the Office of Registration and records at 312.915.7221 


General Info. about schools accepting credit:
Finally, here is a database from the U of Conn about what colleges accept dual credit.

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Fall 2021 Course Evaluation

For Finals Experience - 

You may be called out for the "final experience"- you won't miss anything.

If you are missing any evidence, you may be in danger of failing.  Please see me.  


Course Evaluation

Please click on the following link and complete the course evaluation.  All responses are anonymous and I would really appreciate your honest and thoughtful input. After everyone is finished with the survey, there will be some time to share your input with me personally. Thanks so much!

 Here is the course evaluation.

Monday, December 13, 2021

Performance Event 6: Gender

 Click here to demonstrate evidence for gender and previous units.  Complete this in class today.



If you are submitting evidence for units 1-3, please use the link below and complete it by the start of tomorrow's class.

Submit evidence for previous units here.


Friday, December 10, 2021

Monday, December 6, 2021

Gender Lesson 4: Masculinity in the binary

HOMEWORK: 
Who is most often a random school shooter and why?
Please read Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence Random School Shootings, 1982-2001 It is a qualitative study in American Behavioral Scientist about who randomly shoots up schools and why.  It is also available from Scribd here.  
It is a really interesting reading.  The author looks at who shoots up high schools and why.   The article was published in 2001 which was after a few major school shootings such as Columbine high school.


How does the binary affect males (and put them at risk)?


Now that you have learned how gender is socially constructed into a binary, we will examine one pole of the binary: masculinity.    


Getting started

Before we begin, please answer the following questions.  Answer each quickly with the first words that come to mind.  Please don't worry about foul language, just write the words that come to mind:

Here is the Google form for this lesson.

QUICKLY, without thinking, brainstorm, the first three words that come to mind:

1. What are three words that describe what it means to be a man?


2.  What are three words that describe someone who is not a real man?



CJ Pascoe's research 

One of the most important gender researchers is  CJ Pascoe, a University of Oregon sociology professor.  In a 2007 ethnography called "Dude You're a Fag", Pascoe studied high school peer groups and how they sanction gender norms. An excerpt is here.  Pascoe wrote about her research in an essay in Contexts here.   And, here is CJ Pascoe's micro lecture on bullying and masculinity.  Please watch the video below.

1.  What does Pascoe's research show about masculinity?

2.  Do you think Pascoe's research applies to SHS?


Males are at risk because of masculinity norms
Recall the chart below from our lesson on the gender binary.  Use the chart to assess each of the three areas below in which males are at-risk.


Males and School
  • In school, boys are 30% more likely to flunk, 250% more likely to be suspended and 300% more likely to be diagnosed with learning and emotional disabilities.
  • Males are less likely than females to: go to college and earn a bachelor's degree, earn a master's degree or earn a PhD.
What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?  (Use the chart above to try and explain why traditional masculine traits might  lead to these educational outcomes.)


This article examines how males choose to be less involved at school and how that affects their ability to succeed.

Males and Health Risks

Young men are much more likely to die from accidental death than women:
Males 20-24 are 3 times more likely to to die as a result of accidents,
4 times more likely to die from suicide and
6 times more likely to be murdered than women. (Ferris and Stein pg 256)

 

3.  What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?  (Again - refer to the chart above.)


Researchers Sandra Nakagawa and Chloe Hart conducted a study examining how gender identity influences eating habits.  

"...in the United States, where men have higher rates of life-threatening health conditions than women — including uncontrolled high blood pressure and heart disease — changing eating habits may be important for their health."

3b. Why do you think males have difficulty changing their eating habits?

4.  Hypothesize why traditional masculine traits might lead men to eat unhealthier.

After your hypothesis, read the explanation for the study here in Contexts.  From the link,
"This study shows that masculinity does matter for how men maintain their health. Importantly, it is not masculinity itself that is the problem here, but the high standards men feel they must meet (pun intended?)— and eat."

5.  After reading the explanation above in Contexts, assess your hypothesis.  Was it correct?


Males and violence

Males are more likely to be both the perpetrator and the victim of violence.
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2010),


  • 40% of teenage girls 14-17yrs say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.
  • 1 of 5 college females will experience some form of dating violence from their male partner.
  • 1 in 3 High School students have been or will be in an abusive relationship.
These stats come from the Zacharias Foundation which is a local organization that will confidentially help individuals deal with sexual and domestic abuse.

6.  What is your hypothesis about why these stats might be connected to gender socialization?  How can these be related to the binary?


Males and work


Some jobs are genderized and males are limited by the sexist socialization messages about gender. 

It is ironic, but misogyny actually hurts males.  Below is evidence about how gender inequality is limiting the jobs that males will do and the feminizing whole industries.  Males don't want to take jobs that they label as feminine.  Because of this, males are passing on some of the fastest-growing industries, like home healthcare.
IGender & SocietyLatonya Trotter finds that it’s not just exclusion from men’s professions, but the inclusionary policies of women’s professions that maintain distinctly gendered fields.
  •  Here is an article in Harvard Business Review written by Janette Dill, an assistant professor in the sociology department at The University of Akron in Ohio:
The Entry-Level Health Care Jobs Men Are (and Are Not) Taking (2017)
This all signals that men, and particularly white men who are able to gain additional training, may be defining some health care occupations as more technical and masculine, preserving the conventional understandings of masculinity within the health care sector. Unfortunately, this also means that women and minority men may continue to be clustered in lower-paying direct-care occupations, where the “dirty work” remains stigmatized as “women’s work.”
And supporting professor Dill's work is this research about gendered language in job postings.
This shows both the ratio of
males to females and gendered language
for the fastest growing jobs.
One example of the gendered language in job ads.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth provides this fact sheet (2017) about occupational segregation.

The genderization of jobs includes some of the following examples (Ferris and Stein 2018, 269-71):
Many jobs still highly genderized: nurses, early education (97%), dental hygenists, secretaries (94%), paralegals, housekeepers are highly female while pilots, carpenters, mechanics (98%), and firefighters (94%) are highly male.
Besides applicants self-selecting jobs based on gender, employers also select based on gender.  This research (2019) documented in Contexts shows that employers hire applicants by gender, based on their perception of what the gender of the job should be.

The Australian Men's Health Forum breaks down the research on jobs and gender discrimination here.




7.  Do you understand how the gender binary affects the jobs that males will take?


How does the binary affect males (and put them at risk)?


The Mask You Live In is a 2013 documentary about masculinity from the makers of Miss Representation.  Here is a trailer:

 

HOMEWORK: 
Please read Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence Random School Shootings, 1982-2001 It is a qualitative study in American Behavioral Scientist about who randomly shoots up schools and why.  It is also available from Scribd here.  

Friday, December 3, 2021

Gender Lesson 1B: CJ Pascoe's research

Today we are reading a seminal sociological work on gender by sociologist C J Pascoe.

Dude, You’re a Fag, by C.J. Pascoe. 2007.  Pascoe is currently working on three projects: conducting fieldwork for her new book on inequality in high school, examining homophobia in online spaces and interviewing GLBTQ young people about their life experiences. She continues to write about bullying, homophobia, LGBTQ young people and contemporary shifts in definitions masculinity.

Pascoe spent a year and a half doing ethnography at a high school in California in order to “write a book about guys” (That’s how she described it to the students).

Pascoe gained access to the high school by writing the school district office about her research topics and requesting access to the students. She was granted permission to come to the school and conduct interviews with students. So Pascoe made her intentions and motives clear before she began her ethnographic research. (Some ethnographers conceal their purposes as researchers and deceive the people they’re studying--generally because they don’t want people in a setting to alter their usual behavior by virtue of being watched).

Pascoe recognized that high school is the perfect setting to study gender and sexuality. Specifically, she wanted to study the role of masculinity in the lives of both male and female students. She formally interviewed fifty students and informally interviewed “countless” students, faculty, and administrators.

A major component of her study consisted of observations. She spent time observing students in classrooms that included “gender-neutral” sites like Senior Government class and traditionally masculine sites such as auto shop class. She also made observations at drama classes and at Gay/Straight Alliance meetings. She took field notes (in order words, she filled notebooks) of her observations about how students, faculty, and administrators constructed meanings of gender and sexuality. She also spent time with students at lunch and popular school events like the Winter Ball, rallies, plays, and dances.

As you read, think about how school and peers combine to create socialization messages about masculinity. Are these messages latent or manifest? How do they affect males? What are the possible effects on females? Is this true at our school? Be sociologically mindful for a few days and see if you can hear similar messages.

Read this excerpt from Dude You're a Fag by CJ Pascoe.


As you read the excerpt answer the questions below in this Google Form.

1.  Describe Pascoe's research.   What is she focused on - both generally and specifically?

2.  What are the gendered meanings of the word "fag"?

3.  What does Pascoe mean by the idea of "fag fluidity"?

4.  What does Pascoe's research show about race and the use of the word "fag"?

5.  Have you heard this type of discourse (not necessarily the same word) at Stevenson?

6.  Have you heard this type of discourse (not necessarily the same word) in middle school?

7.  Pascoe's research is almost 15 years old now, but do you think it is still interesting/enlightening?  Why or why not?



If there is still time left in class, watch Pascoe talk about her research here:

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Special Guest Dr. Everitt

 Welcome Dr. Judson Everitt!



Loyola Sociology undergrad director.

Ph.D., Sociology
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 2009

M.A., Sociology
Indiana Univeristy, Bloomington, IN 2004

B.A., Sociology
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 2000

Courses Taught

  • Society in a Global Age (Intro to Sociology)
  • Social Problems
  • Principles of Social Research (Methods)
  • Gender and Work
  • Inequality in Society
  • Sociology of Education
  • The Logic of Sociological Inquiry (Graduate Research Methods)
  • Qualitative Inquiry (Graduate Ethnographic Methods)
  • Teaching Undergraduate Sociology (Graduate Course)
Author of the book Lesson Plans

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Sunday, November 28, 2021

Urban Violence; A complex problem created by decades of institutional racism

Why is there so much urban violence?

It is a complex issue requiring a more complex answer.  
There's myriad research about it so I will share a few resources that explain the complexity.

Urban Ghettoes and Crime; A long history
First, urban crime has a long history as does urban racism.  Sociologist Mitchell Dunier details this history in his sweeping 2016 work Ghetto, reviewed in American Journal of Sociology here.    And another resource documenting crime in early Chicago is Northwestern University's index of homicide in Chicago from 1870-1930.  These resources shed light on a widely studied phenomenon sometimes called scaling of crime; Crime multiplies exponentially in urban settings.   This 2017 PLOS One Journal article explains it.  And, Science Daily (2019) explains it here.

Chicago's History of Crime and Ghettoization
In the US, urban gangs were often dominated by low-income and low-status immigrant groups such as Irish gangs followed by Italian and Jewish gangs among others.   But the highly segregated, urban crime of today came after the first great migration and was layered with the second great migration.  As Black Americans sought jobs and to escape Jim Crow in the northern cities, they were redlined into very limited neighborhoods (in Chicago sometimes called "the black belt").   


Allan Spear details the rise of Chicago's black enclave as a neighborhood of fluid race relations and opportunity and how that beacon gave way to a segregated ghetto.   Drake and Cayton's Black Metropolis is a really important sociological study of Chicago's black neighborhood before the second great migration detailing the amazing accomplishments of Chicago's early Black residents.  When whites returned from WWI there was competition for those jobs - this resulted in the 1919 race in Chicago which Dominic Pacyga explains was a riot over class and jobs misnomered as a race riot.



After the second great migration during World War II, Chicago's black population expanded even more in the same, small, redlined area.  Historian Arnold Hirsch details that ghettoization in his book Making the Second Ghetto.  Despite amazing accomplishments within the black community, eventually, overcrowding and lack of city services led to neighborhood disintegration.  Roger Biles details the increasing ghettoization in his historical account here.  This left an overcrowded neighborhood full of poorer, less educated Americans identified as Black
At the same time, because the neighborhood was poor and Black, the city neglected the services and development of the neighborhood.
In fact, some infrastructure like the Dan Ryan (94) expressway was purposefully added to physically sequester the poor Americans who were identified as black into a limited area.  
As the Black population continued to compound, cities, especially Chicago, used dense housing to contain the poor minorities.  For example, in Chicago the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) built high-rise housing projects - these were high-density, low-income apartments.  Along State Street they were called Stateway gardens, and the largest was called Cabrini Green (good summary at that link).  These high-rise buildings concentrated people who were Black and poor into a highly dense area.  The city continued to neglect both the buildings themselves and the residents.  This resulted in a permanent underclass that relied on an underground economy.  




This combined with de-industrialization and a loss of working-class jobs as detailed by U of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson in Truly Disadvantaged (1987).  










That led to many middle-class black and white families moving away and creating highly segregated, low-income neighborhoods such as detailed by sociologists Massey and Denten in American Apartheid (1995).  With the loss of blue-collar jobs and middle-class residents, these urban neighborhoods were truly segregated and low-income, and void of jobs and opportunities.  








As residents turned to crime and gangs for protection and financial opportunity they faced violence from within the neighborhood (Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street, 2000), while police and laws targeted these disenfranchised communities from outside.  Read about it in the Atlantic.









Similarly, Sudhir Venkatesh details the way that public housing created a complex relationship between poor urban residents, police, city officials and street gangs in his book, American Project (2002).  
















The Criminalization of Poor Urban Minorities



Sociologists like Forest Stuart and Alice Goffman make the case that police target poor communities.  And other social scientists (Sentencing ProjectMarshall ProjectEqual Justice Initiative, Michelle Alexander) explain that the disparity in the criminal justice system which has incarcerated nearly 1/3 of all black males has torn apart families and disenfranchised entire zipcodes (Paul Street's Vicious Circle).   



And, more recently, SHS grad Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve explains in her 2016 book, Crook County that the criminal justice system is embedded with racism that disproportionately punishes poor minorities.   All of this leads to an incredibly segregated and poor community with little economic opportunity and with families torn apart.  Street gangs fill the institutional voids of policing, economic opportunity, and family stability.  And as street gangs gain control over neighborhoods they take membership/control of the residents living there - not the other way around.  In other words, because the gang controls your neighborhood, residents are forced to align with gangs - as opposed to residents joining gangs that leads to the neighborhood being controlled by the gang.


Did contemporaries know that bad policy was creating such a poor quality of life?

One telling case of someone understanding the decline was Dorothy Gautreaux.  She was assigned a CHA apartment but after the civil rights laws of the 1960s, she sued the CHA claiming that their assignment of housing was 99% black and therefore segregationist and illegal. She won the right to move to an area outside of this segregated ghetto of highly concentrated poverty.  Her move became a test case eventually called moving to opportunity which showed that black residents who were allowed to move to middle-class areas benefitted greatly from the move.  They were surrounded by people who went to college and had connections and good jobs.  This showed the enormous impact of housing segregation.  In fact, a former student of mine, Rahul Gorawara from SHS wrote a paper about Gautreaux and his paper was second in the national history fair.  Gautreaux won her case after a record decades-long lawsuit and it became an important model for housing reform.  


What is being done?

To answer your question about what is being done, Chicago has torn down all of its high rise low-income segregated housing,  but the legacy remains in the lives of those who were affected for generations by the racist segregation.  The physical buildings are gone but the legacy of poverty, lack of education, disinvestment and disenfranchisement all persist.  And these are the neighborhoods that experience high crime today.  

Another resource that traces the rise of Black metropolis followed by ghettoization and the rise and fall of high-density public housing see David Greetham's study, Chicago's Wall: Race, Segregation and the Chicago Housing Authority (2013).

Racial Diversity and Racial Strife; A Cross-cultural Examination

 I had a question about the racial strife within the US as a product of a more diverse country:


Is the racial strife in the US a natural product of the US being a more diverse society?

I am not sure I have a specific answer but I do have a number of ideas to consider:

  • To understand "race," it is necessary to understand the social and political history of a country.
  • "Diversity" is relative; just like race is a social construction, diversity can be defined in different ways making it difficult to quantify.
  • Myriad ways of measuring "diversity" show the USA is less diverse than many other countries.

Racial Formation; The Importance of Social and Political History

First, I think the most important piece to consider is the Omi and Winant conclusion that I mentioned in class regarding the social construction of race.  Essentially, their claim is that race is shaped by each country/society's social and political history.  And because race is NOT biological, think of it in terms of social group.  So in other words, each country creates social groups based on the dynamics within that country's history.  This makes "diversity" and "race" (i.e. social groups) relative to each country.  So, while the U.S. looks diverse to Americans by seeing people who look: African, Desi, East Asian, Indo-European, etc...  We only notice these differences because our society points them out.  Other societies notice differences that Americans do not - for example within Africa there are numerous different ethnicities and cultural groups, and biologically, Africa has the greatest genetic variation of any continent.  However, all of that diversity in the United States would simply be considered black.  This is the most important baseline to your question.  We must start out with this understanding.  And, by many measures, there is myriad evidence that the US is NOT the most diverse country around the world.

Second, not only do we notice the tensions and diversity more in the USA because we live here but also those tensions are exacerbated by a social and political history that:

  • sought to justify domination by race for nearly 250 years of brutal slavery beginning in 1619
  • Fought an extremely destructive war over the racial slavery practices but never came to terms with slavery despite the end of the war (1865)
  • Created a political and criminal justice system after slavery ended that lasted for another 100 years (Civil Rights legislation 1964)
  • And then for decades created a system of ignoring "race" while still creating race-based policies of incarceration and political dog whistles until the Black Lives Matter Movement ushered in a second civil rights movement (2014).
In other words, our country has not come to terms with its long history of racism so even though the USA might not be the most diverse country in the world, it has a particularly painful history of dealing with diversity that we, as a country,  have not come to terms with yet.

"Diversity" is Relative

This PEW research explains the relative views about diversity within various countries around the world.  Views on diversity vary from country to country but also within countries based on demographics.  Intranationally, more diversity is seen as positive by younger and more-educated people worldwide and seen as negative by people supporting populist and conservative parties.  Internationally, diversity is more favored by Western nations.  Below are some graphs explaining the findings:








"Diversity" is Difficult to Measure

Stanford U. professor James Fearon explains the difficulty of defining "ethnic diversity" in this 2003 paper, Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country:  



Despite the difficulty, Fearon attempts to create a proxy (including language) for defining "diversity" around the world.  His conclusion rates the USA at less "diverse" than many of the other countries examined - 6th out of Western nations and much lower worldwide.  Here are some graphs from Fearon:



And this PEW research from 2013 explains which countries are more "diverse" based on a German study.  The graph below highlights that there are many countries considered more "diverse" than the USA:




World Population Review explains the most diverse countries based on the same German study mentioned above by the PEW.



This Washington Post article explains research from Harvard Institute for Economic Policy that shows "diversity" is a social construct and is relative to each country or population.  The article explains how the research attempts to measure diversity and the effects of diversity.  The first map below shows that the USA is only moderately ethnically diverse, while the second map shows that US respondents are very open to having neighbors of a different race.


Share of people who said that did not want a neighbor who was from a different race:




 World Atlas created its own measure of ethnic diversity here.  It does not list the USA among the most diverse countries worldwide.  Africa dominates the list.



Religion can also serve as a proxy for diversity.  The Pew examines religious diversity in countries around the world here.  Using religion as a measure, the USA is also less "diverse" than many countries worldwide.






Diversity within the USA:
Here is an article from The Census Bureau explaining the diversity in the US.
Here is a diversity map from the Census Bureau of diversity within the US: