Current Course Offerings

2009/2010 Academic Year

SOSA 2291.06R Goblins, Ghosts, Gods and Gurus

SOSA 4013.03 Special Topics:
Body Modification Past and Present

SOSA 4500.06R Honours Seminar in Sociology

SOSA 2291 Goblins, Ghosts, Gods, and Gurus

Societies and groups within societies differ in terms of what their members believe, how people view the world and their place within it, the sources of knowledge, attitudes toward the supernatural and the sacred, the status and authority of different sources of knowledge and what it all means.  What makes religion different from science? What makes them similar? What is commonsense? What are magic and witchcraft? What are the relations between belief and actions? What is the status of religious authority and power? What are altered states of consciousness? What are religious groups all about? Why do people belong to them, join them, leave them? What is involved in conversion and commitment? This class considers such questions drawing on a wide variety of societies, cultures, and groups, western and non-western. 

Required Textbooks:

Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural

SOSA 4013.03 Special Topics: Body Modification Past and Present

This course will be an interdisciplinary and comparative examination of body modification in a number of different time periods and cultures. Methodologies for this course will include sociology of the body, anthropological and cultural aspects of body modification, and ritual studies.

A course reader will be available from Campus Copies in December of 2008.

SOSA 4500 Honours Seminar in Sociology

This seminar provides an opportunity for students to engage in sustained investigative scholarship through independent research initiatives.  The first term concentrates on locating the student’s work within a broader set of theoretical and methodological debates in the discipline, while the second term is devoted to student’s research and writing activities in preparing the thesis required for honours graduation. 

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