Moodle at Lafayette College: Courses

This course will examine the social creation of knowledge and the consequences of knowledge for social organization through the medium of biography. As literally embodied representations of knowledge, eminent and obscure figures such as George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Charles Darwin, Martha Ballard, Ignatius Sancho, Rigoberta Menchu, and Nick Flynn represent fascinating case studies for social theorists. Combining readings from Habermas, Mannheim, Swidler and Foucault with biographies and life writing of the founding fathers, scientists, everyday persons, and pop memoirists, we will explore the changing politics and poetics of knowledge production across three centuries. Class activities will emphasize the resources provided by the 250th anniversary celebration of Lafayette at the College, including outside lectures, an exhibition tour, and a workshop with a contemporary biographer of both Washington and Lafayette.

Students will engage in class discussions and online discussions on the assigned texts, and will pursue their own research and analysis in an essay portfolio and a final research paper on a biographical subject of their choice.

This course takes a social scientific approach to the study of human social relationships. Its purpose is to introduce the basic concepts, theoretical orientations, and methods of the sociological perspective. Topic areas include the socialization of personality, culture, urbanization, alienation, deviance, inequality, and the rationalization of society.

This course takes a social scientific approach to the study of human social relationships. Its purpose is to introduce the basic concepts, theoretical orientations, and methods of the sociological perspective. Topic areas include the socialization of personality, culture, urbanization, alienation, deviance, inequality, and the rationalization of society.

The course explores the idea of human nature, as a cultural construct and as the focus of philosophical, scientific, and anthropological inquiry. We will consider primate behavior, hominid evolution, and the origin of cultural diversity through the Stone Age. Films, novels, and artifacts are used to supplement class discussion.

The course explores the empire created by the Incas, noting the ways that the ordered their society and reconstructed their natural world through terracing, irrigation, and architecture. Using archaeological evidence and eyewitness accounts of their society, students consider how Inca political organization and handiworks reflect an Andean orientation toward the supernatural world. The course concludes with an examination of native resistance to Spanish rule.

This course examines key social issues in contemporary American society through the lens of the tumultuous and often controversial changes of the last decades—as interpreted by anthropologists, sociologists, journalists, activists, social critics, bloggers, and documentary filmmakers. We compare these different perspectives through four thematic units tracing large-scale trends in business, culture, and politics and their effects on diverse communities and everyday livelihoods. Throughout, the course asks students to investigate landscapes of power: those inequalities and uncertainties within production, consumption, geographic mobility, and resource scarcity that have become defining elements of American life.

Intended to serve as a springboard for students’ independent work, class activities are geared towards developing critical analysis skills and facilitating articulate presentation and communication of complex issues. Students will be asked to collaborate in researching, selecting, and presenting readings, and are expected to bring their own knowledge of current events and unique interests in contemporary American society to the discussion. The capstone of the course is a final research paper on a topic of the student’s choice.

The family is the most universal of all institutionalized human groups and yet, in our own society, seems fragile and unstable. A primary theme throughout the course is in the changing forms and functions of the family with emphasis on contemporary society. Consideration will be given to class, ethnic and life-style variations in family form.