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Featured Group Activities
I believe in the transformative power of integrative and experiential learning to make sociological concepts tangible and relevant to students' lives. I design interactive learning environments where theory comes alive through collaborative investigation and creative application. Below are select examples from two of my undergraduate courses.
Sociology of Culture
Meme Creation Contest
Groups create memes illustrating sociological concepts of their choice. They present their memes, analyzing how they represent the concepts and discussing factors contributing to meme popularity and cultural significance.
Cultural Capital
Creator: Cece Boswell (Soc of Culture, Spring 2025)
Social Norms
Creator: Cece Boswell (Soc of Culture, Spring 2025)
Cultural Capital Scavenger Hunt
Students explore campus environments to identify how various forms of institutional resources accessible using cultural capital (e.g., language, dress, institutional know-how) confer privilege or create barriers. They analyze how class-coded behaviors operate in educational spaces, drawing on Anthony Jack’s work to assess implications for first-generation and low-income students.Media Consumption Diary & Analysis
Students track their personal media use for one week, then visualize and analyze the data using sociological theories (e.g., subcultures, identity, symbolic interactionism). In group discussions, they reflect on how media consumption patterns relate to status, taste, and cultural belonging.Subculture Balloon Debate Tournament
In this tournament-style debate, teams represent stigmatized subcultures (e.g., gamers, cosplayers) and use theoretical tools to argue for their group’s legitimacy. The culminating “balloon pop” vote forces teams to navigate both theoretical rigor and performance strategy.
Sociology of Gender
Meme-Busters: Gender Myths Decoded
Students challenge essentialist claims about gender (e.g., “men are natural leaders”) by using scientific research and sociological concepts to create counter-memes. This gallery-style activity invites critical engagement with popular discourse and teaches students how to contest pseudoscientific claims through visual creation.Leadership Style Photo Runway
Students curate “fashion show” collages of leadership styles by gender. They perform interactive runway presentations that highlight double standards and gendered perceptions of authority.Time Travelers
Groups create fictional letters from 1950s time travelers confused by modern work-family roles. Peers write sociologically informed responses that connect personal experiences to institutional shifts.
Course Descriptions
This course provides a survey of basic statistical concepts and techniques, with a focus on their application in social research. Throughout the semester, students will learn social statistics as a powerful tool for investigating and explaining relationships in data. The course emphasizes both conceptual comprehension and practical application of statistical methods.
This course surveys key concepts and frameworks in the sociology of culture in mass society. Students will read empirical studies written by scholars in the field and learn to view everyday cultural objects such as literature, film, popular music critically. We will also explore interesting questions drawing on sociological perspectives, such as: How do cultural industries work? What makes popular culture popular? How come cultural tastes define/reproduce one’s social status and class? What makes/changes a fine line between popular culture and high arts? Students are strongly encouraged to connect their own experiences to key concepts in the course materials. This will help them understand and analyze cultural aspects of social issues such as status, class, and inequality.
This introductory course examines how gender shapes our daily experiences and how it intersects with other aspects of social life. We will explore how gender impacts opportunities and constraints across various domains including education, work, family, and relationships. Through engaging with sociological concepts and contemporary examples, students will develop critical thinking skills to analyze gender as a social structure rather than simply an individual characteristic.
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