Sociology

Sociologists are fascinated by the fundamental question: why do people do what they do? Sociologists describe and explain the ecological foundations of society, major institutions and the ways in which people interact, organize their lives together and bestow meaning on the world. In so doing we seek a wider cross-cultural and multi-cultural understanding, striving to make people’s lives intelligible across the boundaries of culture, class, race, and gender.

The sociology program at Seattle University both embodies and extends these core principles of sociology.  The sociology program is comprised of faculty who are engaged in a sociology for the 21st century.  This undergraduate sociology program affords students a critical, interdisciplinary, and community-focused approach to doing sociology.  Its faculty often seek to create a learning environment that acknowledges the canon of sociology while, simultaneously, affording students a more multidimensional, cutting-edge, and applied perspective on the discipline of sociology.  This is made possible by a diverse community of sociology faculty who engage their students and the larger community through a range of critical pedagogies and scholarly interests that span from gender and sexuality studies, to narrative analyses, to political sociology, to punishment and social control, to feminist theory, to religion and sexuality, to mental illness, to ethnographic and community-based research, to public sociology, to urban studies and global social movements.

Alumnus in the News: Richard F. Beers II, '07

Opportunities expand for faculty-student research in sociology thanks to an endowment created by Richard F. Beers II, class of 2007. Learn more.

Contexts

Contexts is a quarterly magazine that makes cutting-edge social research accessible to general readers. We're the public face of sociology. It is a publication of the American Sociological Association, edited by Jodi O’Brien (Seattle University) and Arlene Stein (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey).