Spring 2027 Courses

Courses are subject to change. Please check for most recent updates here.

Undergraduate Courses

SOCI 1110: Intro Sociology

It seems fitting to begin this course with a quote from “The Promise” by a famous sociologist, written in the early 1960s. It refers to changes which occur in a society and the effect of these changes on the individual. During this past 18 months we have certainly witnessed significant changes in our society, and C. Wright Mills’ “The Sociological Imagination” will provide insight to these changes and their effect on society and the individual.

This course will introduce students to the fundamental concepts and principles of sociology. Topics include the study of cultures, patterns of social values, social institutions, stratification, and social change.

  • 1110- 001 | Goodman | MWF 12:00-12:50 | FACE | CRN 50849
  • 1110- 002 | Wilson | TR 09:30-10:45 | FACE | CRN 50850
  • 1110-003 | Torrez | ONLINE | CRN 61945
  • 1110-004 | Torrez | ONLINE | CRN 50854
  • 1110-005 | Torrez | ONLINE | CRN 59407

 

SOCI 2120: Intro Criminal Justice Systems

This course focuses on the study of crime, the criminal justice system and crime-related public policy. Discussion of key criminological concepts, the measurement of crime and delinquency, the distribution of crime in society, victimization, public opinion, the criminal justice system, and crime control strategies and policies.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 1110: Intro Sociology, or consent of the instructor

  • 2120-001 | Trujillo | TR 11:00-12:15 | FACE | CRN 79090
  • 2120-002 | Trujillo | TR 12:30-1:45 | FACE | CRN 82427
  • 2120-003 | Martensen | ONLINE | CRN 50868

 

SOCI 2210: Sociology of Deviance

This course is designed to provide an overview of the study of deviance and social control from multiple sociological perspectives. The instructor will present how sociologists research deviance and social control and the ethical issues involved in studying human subjects involved in these activities. The course also examines central sociological theories for understanding the causes of deviant behavior.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 1110: Intro Sociology

  • 2210-001 | Albright | TR 11:00-12:15 | FACE | CRN 50873
  • 2210-002 | Roman Alfaro | TR 2:00-3:15 | FACE | CRN 83575

 

SOCI 2315: The Dynamics of Prejudice

This course is designed to help students understand how attitudes and beliefs of individuals shape intergroup relations and their impacts on the daily lives of individuals as well as the effects that these beliefs have on the larger social structure of American society. We will examine how profoundly our society and the groups to which we belong, influence us and our beliefs and ultimately how these beliefs shape prejudice in our society. In this course, students are encouraged to challenge ideologies that are considered "common sense" or that are taken for granted and this in turn will allow them to critically engage issues in society such as racism, classism, sexism, and will leave with an understanding on how privilege affects our views on disability, LGBTQ issues, religion and immigration. Rather than investigating these themes in the abstract, students will identify and unpack how these larger structural issues play integral roles in their everyday lives, interactions, and existence. Ultimately, this course aims to address the social inequalities that exists in our society as a result of prejudice and will challenge students to identify and engage in strategies to work towards changing these aspects of society.

  • 2315-001 | Lemus | MWF 11:00-11:50 | FACE | CRN 84965 
  • 2315-003 | Lopez | ONLINE | CRN 82431 | 2nd Half Term

 

SOCI 305: Environmental Sociology

This course examines contemporary environmental problems through a sociological perspective. It also discusses how the sociological perspective relates to other perspectives relevant in New Mexico, such as Indigenous and industry perspectives. Students will learn about the scope of environmental sociology, in addition to learning how to analyze environmental issues using styles of thought central to the discipline, such as structure/agency, material/ideal, and personal/political frameworks, and critically examining inequality. Students will come away from the class equipped to better navigate environmental risks and understand how their actions matter for addressing environmental problems. The scope of environmental sociology topics examined will include, among others, capitalism and political economy, social construction, environmental justice, social movements, people's various relationships with the environment, and environmental risk, and the class will discuss how central social structures such as race, class, and gender relate to environmental issues.
  • 305-001 | Bateman  | TR 12:30-1:45 | FACE | CRN 82428

 

SOCI 308: Sociology of Gender

This upper-division course explores the social construction, dynamics, theory, and research surrounding gender and sexuality in our contemporary social world. The focus will be on both macro and micro-level processes including, but not limited to: privilege, inequality, patriarchy, gender roles, intersectionality, feminism, activism, sexual and gendered violence, masculinity, and gendered processes in various social institutions.
Cross listed as WGSS 379-002 (CRN: 83651)
  • Goodman | MWF 11:00-11:50 | FACE | CRN 85818

 

SOCI 310: Sociology of Aging and the Aged

This course will explore the social aspects of aging, how aging impacts our lives and those around us, as well as communities, states and country. Students will gain insight into the social determinants of the human life course, including biological and sociodemographic dimensions of aging. Sociological theories and research methods in the field of aging, and the ways in which the aging experience is socially constructed will be explored. Students will examine how the U.S. will be challenged by "aging societies" and the effects of this change--positive and negative--for individuals, families, employers, community service provides, and public policy.

  • 310-001 | Torrez | ONLINE | CRN 84958

 

SOCI 312: Causes of Crime & Delinquency

A survey of criminological theories exploring why some people are more likely to engage in crime than others and why crime rates vary over time and space and across social groups. Attendant policy issues will also be discussed.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 2120: Intro to Criminal Justice Systems  OR SOCI 2210: Sociology of Deviance

  • 312-001 | Ragan | TR 9:30-10:45 | FACE | CRN 55455
  • 312-002 | Ragan | TR 11:00-12:15 | FACE | CRN 79133
  • 312-003 | Trujillo | ONLINE | CRN 84959

 

SOCI 371: Sociological Theory

The study of how theory is constructed and applied by sociologists including traditions from 19th-century sociological founders and contemporary theoretical formulations.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 1110: Intro Sociology

  • 371-001 | Goodman | MWF 10:00-10:50 | FACE | CRN 55448
  • 371-002 | Weddington | TR 09:30-10:45  | FACE | CRN 55449

 

SOCI 380: Intro to Research Methods

A survey of the major methods of social research: foundations of social research, research design, sampling and measurement, quantitative and qualitative research methods and data analysis.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 1110: Intro Sociology

  • 380-001 | Ruiz-Negron | MWF 09:00-09:50 | Face | CRN 55447
  • 380-002 | Cumberworth | TR 11:00-12:15 | Face | CRN 83776
  • 380-003 | Goodman | ONLINE | CRN 82432

 

SOCI 381L-001: Sociological Data Analysis

Introduction to quantitative sociological data analysis using basic statistics (both descriptive and inferential) and to the use of statistical software to analyze empirical data.

*Prerequisite required: SOCI 380: Intro to Research Methods AND Math 1350: Intro Statistics

  • 381L-001 | Cumberworth | TR 2:00-3:15 & W 1:00-1:50 | Face | CRN 55335
  • 381L-002 | Davis | ONLINE | CRN 56380

 

SOCI 398-001: ST: Sociology of New Mexico

The course will examine the social, economic and cultural changes in New Mexican society from pre-Spanish colonial times to the present.  The process by which New Mexican society has moved from a rural/traditional/self-sufficient society to an urban/modern/capital society will be examined. The social institutions of the family, religion, education and health care services in New Mexico are presented.

  • Torrez | MWF 12:00-12:50 | Face | CRN 61730

 

SOCI 398-002: ST: Sociology of Food & Restaurants

Those of us who love food know that it is so much more than fuel for the body. But why exactly do we eat the foods that we do and how do we go about eating them? What does this say about who we are, both individually and collectively? This course introduces students to foundational sociological frameworks for understanding food, foodways, and commercial food establishments, i.e. restaurants. It explores the complex ways that food reflects—and gets entangled with—pressing social, cultural, and political issues of our time. Students can expect to draw on their own relationships with food to interrogate the broader meanings, relationships, and social inequalities that pattern our current food system.

  • Wilson | TR 2:00-3:15 | Face | CRN 84949

 

SOCI 398-003: ST: Surveillance & Resistance

  • Seyfried | TR 2:00-3:15 | Face | CRN 85809

 

SOCI 407-001: Social Justice in Criminology

This class explores the underlying logics of punishment and retributive justice that are foundational to the U.S. criminal legal system. It examines how these logics perpetuate racial, class, and gender injustice. This course explores various social justice-oriented alternative responses to crime/harm, including restorative justice and transformative justice.

  • Martensen | TR 3:30-4:45 | Face | CRN 84950

This class can fulfill the 400-level Criminology elective requirement

 

SOCI 412-001: Sociology of Police & Social Control

Sociology of Police and Social Control is the study of the relationship between society and law enforcement agencies, including the societal context of policing and how law enforcement impacts society. Discussion will include law enforcement practices, training, and management; the interface of police and communities; historical and contemporary models of policing; and efforts at police reform. 

This course is the study of police as an institution of social control. In this course we will chart the development of professional policing in the United Kingdom and the United States from night watchmen slave patrols to the community policing and the “militarization” of policing. We take a critical analytical lens of policing, noting the complexities in understanding its evolution as an instrument of powerful groups but also as a powerful force in society, in its own right. Guiding our discovery and discussions will be the importance the police play in maintaining and shaping the status quo—whatever it is—by managing, suppressing, and silencing dissenting voices in the public sphere.  

*Prerequisite required: Soc. 312 : Causes of Crime & Delinquency

  • Olson | MWF 10:00-10:50 | FACE | CRN 82434

 

SOCI 415-001: Inequality and Power

This course focuses on the contemporary dynamics of social inequalities and power in US society. It lays particular emphasis on racial, gender, and economic oppression while outlining how these intersect with other systems and institutions.

  • Ray | Online | CRN 61945

 

SOCI 416: Sociology of Law

For the average citizen, there are few ways to be heard and even fewer to challenge power and authority. The American jury system stands out as the primary avenue through which an individual can confront powerful institutions such as governments and corporations. Through this system, even the most vulnerable and marginalized citizens can challenge even the most powerful entities.

This class aims to illuminate this reality through the lens of prisoner lawsuits.  These lawsuits filed by otherwise voiceless and powerless prisoners challenge the prison industrial complex, which comprises both powerful governmental actors and influential prison contractors.

We will delve into how plaintiff trials and juries play pivotal roles in shaping public policy and fostering societal change.  Juries, also often mocked, maligned and even feared, hold all the power at the end of the journey.  The first task for any trial lawyer or budding trial lawyer is to understand, respect and effectively communicate with potential jurors during jury selection and with the seated jurors throughout the trial.  The jury must be the focus from day one of a prisoner lawsuit. 

Prisoner lawsuits present a virtual minefield of issues, biases, prejudices against prisoners, government, prisons/jails and corporations.  It will be a fascinating journey of exploration as the students, the instructors and guests unravel the social science of trials and juries together and then piece together the stories that will appeal to a jury of 12 ordinary citizens.

  • Olson | MWF 11:00-11:50  | FACE | CRN 82435

 

SOCI 418: Sel T: Labor, Crime, and AI

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a radical new technology. This course has a different starting point: the institutions and practices that make AI possible have a much longer history. States, bureaucracies, prisons, businesses, police departments, and other institutions learned to render people visible, classify them, compare them to norms, record their behavior, predict their actions, and intervene in their lives long before machine learning. The semester is divided into two parts. Part I asks how modern societies became legible, classifiable, disciplined, standardized, and technically organized. Part II turns to artificial intelligence itself, examining AI through histories of labor and automation, algorithmic culture, and digital policing and punishment.

  • Olson | TR 09:30-10:40  | FACE | CRN 79160

 

SOCI 420: Race & Ethnicity

Envisioned as preparation for graduate-level coursework in the sociology of race and ethnicity, this upper division undergraduate class is an introduction to the major theories, core concepts and debates in sociology used to interrogate racial and ethnic inequality in the U.S. and beyond. Throughout our seminar we will examine the social construction of racial and ethnic inequality through multiple “eyeglasses” or paradigms-theoretical frameworks, unpacking their ontologies, epistemologies, central assumptions, discourses, key research questions, anchoring concepts, methodological approaches, key findings, contributions, strengths, limitations, as well as public policy implications. This course fulfills the “Critical Analysis of U.S. & Global Cultures” undergraduate graduation requirement. It also counts for the race and social justice undergraduate certificate.

  • 420-001 | Weddington | TR 11:00-12:15  | FACE | CRN 84970

 

SOCI 424-001: Race, Class, & Crime

This course examines how incarceration and criminalization affect people along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines. The class will explore historical and modern contexts of mass incarceration and punishment in the racialized U.S. context. This class will discuss contemporary research as it relates to race/ethnicity and criminal legal institutions, including the racialized contexts of modern criminal justice reforms.

  • Olson | ONLINE | CRN 84976

 

SOCI 427-001: Sociology of Madness

Different historical and cultural frameworks for defining, making sense of, and responding to madness are examined. The social causes and social distribution of madness are critically examined. 

  • Barker | ONLINE | CRN 84977

 

SOCI 430-001: Seminar: Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class for Social Policy 

This course focuses on complex configurations of social inequalities across several policy arenas by focusing on intersectionality or sustained attention to the simultaneity of settler colonialism/tribal status, imperialism/empire, heteropatriarchy/gender, structural racism/race/color/street race, heterosexism/sexual orientation, nativism/citizenship, ethnocentrism/ethnicity/culture/language, racialized capitalism/class, ableism/disability, etc.) as systems of power, inequality, oppression and resistance that are visible at the individual, institutional, structural and ideological levels. This course fulfills the “Critical Analysis of U.S. & Global Cultures” undergraduate graduation requirement. It also counts for the race and social justice undergraduate certificate.

Available for graduate credit, except for MA/PhD Sociology students

  • Lopez | ONLINE| CRN 84979 | 2nd Half Course

 

SOCI 488: Sociology & Criminology Internship

The Sociology and Criminology Department offers a 3 or 6 credit upper division course that gets you out in the community. If you are interested in getting some practical experience in the community either out of intellectual curiosity or for professional development or both, consider taking the Sociology and Criminology Department’s internship course. The course, taught by Dr. Colin Olson, introduces the civic and professional aspects of internships and helps students develop the skills of an organizational ethnographer. At the end of the semester students write a short ethnographic paper on their internship site.  

  • 3 and 6 credit options
  • 10-20 hours weekly field experience
  • Junior and Senior status
  • Fall/Spring Semesters
  • 1 hour hybrid weekly small group discussion of organizational ethnography
  • Taught by Dr. Colin Olson
  • For more information, contact Dr. Olson at  colino@unm.edu
  • See more information here.

Restriction: junior or senior standing, permission of instructor, 6 hours upper division SOCI course

  • Olson | M 12:00-12:50 Arranged | FACE  | CRN 84979

Graduate Courses

SOCI 513: Contemporary Theory

What is contemporary sociological theory? In fact, what is theory? These questions can be answered in innumerable ways, and we can get trapped in interminable debates over whose answers are “correct”. Unlike classical sociological theory, which is largely restricted to Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, contemporary theory represents a vast terrain, covering roughly a century of material, with no widely accepted canon. To attempt a comprehensive review is to pursue a fool’s errand, to delineate some account of “what every student should know” is to tilt at windmills. Thus, this course is guided by two general principles. First, it embraces an ecumenical, broad definition of what theory is. Rather than restrict ourselves to abstract treatises by self-identified “sociological theorists”, it includes a diverse set of writings from differently situated authors. Second, it eschews abstract “theory for theory’s sake” and instead maintains a constant focus on the empirical project underlying sociology, recognizing the mutual connections and interactions between theory, methods, and empirical data. As such, we will familiarize ourselves with new concepts and theories with an eye toward applying them in our own research; we will learn theory in order to theorize about social phenomena.

  • Whooley | Thursday 3:00-5:30 | Face | CRN 84974

SOCI 585: Qualitative Research Methods

This graduate-level course offers a hands-on introduction to qualitative research design, data collection, analysis, and theory building. Students will explore a range of methodological traditions, including ethnography, interviewing, grounded theory, interpretive sociology, Indigenous and feminist methodologies, comparative-historical research, and archival, documentary, and digital methods. We will examine how researchers develop questions, select cases and research sites, negotiate access, and generate and interpret qualitative evidence. Through practical exercises and critical discussions, students will also consider how positionality, power, and relationships shape the research process, and how to navigate ethical questions around consent, confidentiality, and representation. Students are encouraged to bring an ongoing project or a research idea to class and will have opportunities to develop a coherent research design that connects their questions, methods, analytical strategies, and ethical commitments.

  • Roman Alfaro | Tuesday 4:00-6:30 | Face | CRN 84975

SOCI 595: Gender, Race, and Nation

This course will introduce students to a wide range of scholarship, theoretical and empirical, that examines both the distinct categories of gender, race, and nation AND explicates how gender, race, and nation are necessarily co-constituted. Students will understand how to conduct local and global empirical research while situating gender, race, nation as intersecting constructions within institutions, individuals, and discourses. 

Ray | Wednesday 12:30-3:00 | Face | CRN 82438

Independent Study Options

You must communicate with the faculty member on record before enrolling. Make sure you adjust variable credit hours on Loboweb.

SOCI 551: Problems: This independent-study course is taken for a grade. Students and faculty should create a plan for substantiative study in lieu of coursework. 

SOCI 596: Professional Paper: This is a CR/NC course that can be taken for up to 6 hours to fulfill enrollment requirements and formalize advisement in preparation for writing the MA thesis.

SOCI 696: Reading in Sociology: This is a CR/NC course that can be taken to fulfill enrollment requirements and formalize advisement in preparation for the PhD comprehensive exams.

SOCI 699: Dissertation: Students in the dissertation stage (post-comprehensive exam) are required to enroll in SOCI 699 every Fall & Spring until they defend their dissertation.