This course explores the experiences and understandings of class among Americans positioned at different points along the U.S. social spectrum. It considers a variety of classic frameworks for analyzing social class and uses memoirs, novels, and ethnographies to gain a sense of how class is experienced in daily life and how it intersects with other forms of social difference such as race and gender.

Students who migrated to the USA from Mexico or any other country when they were kids are the learner audience. However, this lesson series can be adapted for other types of learners. Each lesson will take up to 30 minutes. The topic of lesson #1 is social stratification and the American dream. The students will learn about these two concepts. The goals of lesson #2 are to learn how to create charts and graphs in a PowerPoint after collecting data through interviews and compare/ contrast results with National Survey 2005 NY Times. Lesson #3’s topic is about race as ascribed characteristics and its influence on social mobility. Students will integrate and evaluate information they collected and present their own ideas in discussions. Lesson #4’s topic is how gender can affect people’s ability to climb the economic ladder. During lesson #5 students will present their findings in class and reflect on their experience learning about the topic of the American dream and whether it is achievable or not.

By analyzing Dear Abby's rant about bad grammar usage, students become aware that attitudes about race, social class, moral and ethical character, and "proper" language use are intertwined.

Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.

From pineapples grown in Hawaii to English-speaking call centers outsourced to India, the legacy of the "Age of Imperialism" appears everywhere in our modern world. This class explores the history of European imperialism in its political, economic, and cultural dimensions from the 1840s through the 1960s.

In 1758, Samuel Johnson noted that the itch of scribbling had seized the nation. 'The rage of writing has seized the old and young' across all segments of society, he observed, so that now 'the cook warbles her lyrics in the kitchen, and the thrasher vociferates his heroics in the barn.' Johnson's observation drew attention to an important development in the eighteenth century literary world: the emergence of the labouring class writer. Over the course of the century increasing numbers of agricultural labourers, household servants, bricklayers, shoemakers, milkmaids, soldiers and sailors not only tool up writing, but also published their work, and, in some cases, made a significant impact on contemporary literary culture. This collection of resources looks at these writers.

This section brings together resources from the across the Great Writers Inspire site to illustrate how these can be used as a starting point for exploration of or classroom discussion about economic and social literary criticism. The 'Economic and Social Literary Criticism' essay introduces a series of topics and questions and gives examples of resources to explore. It is aimed at teachers, students and anyone who is interested in literature who wants to put text into context and be inspired by Great Writers.

Intercultural Communication examines culture as a variable in interpersonal and collective communication. It explores the opportunities and problems arising from similarities and differences in communication patterns, processes, and codes among various cultural groups. It explores cultural universals, social categorization, stereotyping and discrimination, with a focus on topics including race, ethnicity, social class, religion, gender and sexuality as they relate to communication.

Introduction to Sociology 2e adheres to the scope and sequence of a typical, one-semester introductory sociology course. It offers comprehensive coverage of core concepts, foundational scholars, and emerging theories, which are supported by a wealth of engaging learning materials. The textbook presents detailed section reviews with rich questions, discussions that help students apply their knowledge, and features that draw learners into the discipline in meaningful ways. The second edition retains the book’s conceptual organization, aligning to most courses, and has been significantly updated to reflect the latest research and provide examples most relevant to today’s students. In order to help instructors transition to the revised version, the 2e changes are described within the preface.

Law is a common and yet distinct aspect of everyday life in modern societies. This course examines the central features of law as a social institution and as a feature of popular culture. We will explore the nature of law as a set of social systems, central actors in the systems, legal reasoning, and the relationship of the legal form and reasoning to social change. The course emphasizes the relationship between the internal logic of legal devices and economic, political and social processes. Emphasis is placed upon developing a perspective which views law as a practical resource, a mechanism for handling the widest range of unspecified social issues, problems, and conflicts, and at the same time, as a set of shared representations and aspirations.
We will explore the range of experiences of law for its ministers (lawyers, judges, law enforcement agents and administrators) as well as for its supplicants (citizens, plaintiffs, defendants). We will examine how law is mobilized and deployed by professionals and ordinary citizens. We cannot cover all aspects of the legal system, nor focus on all the different actors. A set of topics has been selected to develop understanding of the situational and systemic demands within which actors in the legal system operate and perform their roles; at the same time, we will try to discover systematic patterns in the uses and consequences of law. Throughout the course there is concern for understanding what we mean by legality and the rule of law.

Textbook, slides, and class activities related to social stratification and global inequality. Primary text: OpenStax Introduction to Sociology 2e

Unit 7 – Stratification and Social Mobility in the United StatesChapter 9 – pages 185 – 201Define “Stratification.”Open versus closed stratification.  Is the stratification system in the United States open or closed? Is there social mobility in the United States?Social classes in the United States: upper, middle and lower class.  What is the social stratification of your family tree?  Has your family’s intergenerational social class altered?Watch: Wealth Inequality in America - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM4.      Theoretical Perspectives on Social StratificationRead: Chapter 8.2 “Explaining Stratification” - http://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/8-2-explaining-stratification/ 

The goal of this exercise is to explore the ways in which health status, health care access, and health care utilization differ between social classes. Crosstabulation will be used.

Sociology is shared under a CC BY-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

The founders of sociology in the United States wanted to make a difference. A central aim of the sociologists of the Chicago school was to use sociological knowledge to achieve social reform. A related aim of sociologists like Jane Addams, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others since was to use sociological knowledge to understand and alleviate gender, racial, and class inequality.

Steve Barkan’s Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World makes sociology relevant for today’s students by balancing traditional coverage with a fresh approach that takes them back to sociology’s American roots in the use of sociological knowledge for social reform.

Print on demand edition available here: https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469659282/sociology/

It happens in almost every classroom community: Someone has something someone else wants. Someone has the hottest new video game, sneakers or action figure; someone else feels jealous and expresses these feelings in unproductive ways. Issues of class and materialism underlie these interactions, and children often lack ways to talk productively and openly about what is really going on.

The lessons that follow will start a conversation about material consumption. We will explore why we want the things we want, how it feels not to have everything we want, and how to appreciate non-material possessions that can make us rich in deeper ways. In the upper elementary grades, children will also be encouraged to think critically about media messages and will have an opportunity to engage in a social action project aimed at minimizing materialism and entitlement.

This course introduces academic debates on the nature of capitalism, drawing upon the ideas of scholars as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. It examines anthropological studies of how contemporary capitalism plays out in people's daily lives in a range of geographic and social settings, and implications for how we understand capitalism today. Settings range from Wall Street investment banks to auto assembly plants, from family businesses to consumer shopping malls.