Sociology

Have you ever looked at your body or someone else's and thought ...? If so, why did you have those thoughts? In Sociology of Body I hope to develop an understanding of, and interest in, the interaction between society and the body.  It is important that we are aware that the body is experienced, and too often crafted, through the influence of societal interpretations and norms.

This course explores the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological understandings most relevant to the sociological study of “race,” racialization, racism, and colonialism. We give particular attention to critical decolonial thinking on race. We examine the process of racialization, through which “being white” becomes the normative standard of “just being human.” We contextualize how the creation of whiteness as an identity-based entitlement has led to social division and oppression. We draw on the experiences of diverse groups of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Colour (BIPoC) in Canadian and global contexts. We begin with the premise that BIPoC share a common history in terms of dispossession, discrimination, and oppression, but also pursue a range of different struggles and dreams in relation to their lands and nation-states. We explore racialization of bodies in contemporary culture to probe a series of assumptions and theories about race, racism, and colonialism in both academic and popular thought.