Program Specialty Areas

V. REQUIREMENTS AND COURSE/RESEARCH CREDITS POLICIES B. 2013-2018 COHORTS The following requirements apply to students who entered the Rutgers Sociology Graduate Program in the fall semester of 2013 to 2018. Students may petition to participate in the 3-6-9 Plan through submitting the 3-6-9 Petition Form to the GPD. 1. M.A. Requirements (see Appendix B for an M.A.–Ph.D. timeline) a. Four required courses with a grade of B or above •    Soc. 501 - Sociological Research Methods I•    Soc. 515 - Classical Sociological Theory•    Soc. 516 - Contemporary Sociological Theory•    Soc. 541 - Statistical Methods in Sociology I b. Six elective courses; 1 may be an Independent Study, 1 may be outside the department, and 1 may be the Writing Seminar. c. First-year and second-year proseminar (attendance required but there is no course registration) d. One qualifying paper (QP) (see section VI on Qualifying Papers for details) 2. Ph.D. Requirements (see Appendix B for an M.A.–Ph.D. timeline) a. All requirements for the M.A. degree listed in section V.1 b. Two additional required courses with a grade of B or above       •    Soc. 542 - Statistical Methods in Sociology II       •    One other methods/statistics course from the following: Soc. 520 - Comparative Historical Methods Soc. 573 – Ethnographic Methods  Soc. 615 - Qualitative Research Methods  Soc. 570 - Social Network Analysis  Students may request to use an intermediate/advanced statistics courses at RU-Newark in the Criminal Justice program to fulfill this requirement c. Four additional elective courses; 1 may be an Independent Study, 1 may be outside the department, and 1 may be the Writing Seminar if this was not used as an elective for the M.A. degree (see section V.3 below for more details on the writing seminar) d. 24 research credits (these do not substitute for course or independent study credits. See section V. 4 below for more details.) e. Second qualifying paper (see section VI on Qualifying Papers for details) f. Dissertation proposal defense g. Dissertation with successful defense 3. Writing Seminar Students are required to the take the Writing Seminar once to earn the Ph.D. degree. Students may register for the Writing Seminar for course credit (temporarily offered as 570) or for research credit (703). Either registration fulfills the Writing Seminar requirement. Please note that students may only receive course credit for the Writing Seminar once. All subsequent registrations must be for research credit. [However, students under the 3-6-9 plan can only register for the Writing Seminar for research credit (703)]. The Writing Seminar supports the development of writing skills for completing and polishing a piece of sociological work (e.g., QP, dissertation proposal, or manuscript for submission for journal review). This is a single Writing Seminar that is designed for students using any type of method at any stage of the graduate career. This course is graded only as Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. We encourage students to take the Writing Seminar more than one time at varying stages of the program to facilitate progress in completing QPs, submitting papers for publication, and writing dissertation proposals. 4. Research Credits Students must complete 24 research credits to graduate with the PhD degree. The department advises that students complete 20-24 research credits by the end of their 5th year in the program, although the exact number for each student depends on his or her pace to completion of the Ph.D. Subsequently, students should register for 1 research credit per semester while completing their dissertations. Since these credits are paid for by the department, SAS, or the student, it is important to try not to exceed 24 total research credits through the completion of the Ph.D., if possible. Below is the suggested timeline for an incoming student in the program who does not transfer any course credits and who plans to complete the Ph.D. at the end of the 6th year. Note that this timeline will vary based on a variety of individual circumstances that students can discuss with the Graduate Director or Administrator. Year in Program Fall Semester Spring Semester 1 ------ ------ 2 ------ ------ 3 3 3 4 6-8 6-8 5 1-2 1-2 Students should register for research credits with one of their advisers, that is, with either the primary adviser or the lead reader for their final qualifying paper (except when taking the Writing Seminar for research credits). Students should inform faculty that they are signing up for research credits with them and should agree upon the level of communication and work expected in order to earn an S grade. This generally involves making tangible progress on research and producing some piece of writing (e.g., a draft of a final qualifying paper, dissertation proposal, dissertation chapter, or article for submission). The student and adviser should stay in regular contact about the student's progress over the course of the semester. ABD students are required to register for a minimum of 1 research credit per semester and should plan research credits accordingly. Once a student’s funding package is complete, research credits will be need to be paid by the student or external funding arrangements. Note: SAS will not provide financial support beyond 75 credits. Any unapproved lapse in registration will be considered a voluntary withdrawal from the program and the student will be terminated. In extenuating circumstances, students may request a formal leave of absence or register as Matriculation Continued (maximum 2 semesters) with the permission of the Graduate Director. < Previous Section: V. Requirements and Course Policies  A. 2019 Cohort and Thereafter – the 3-6-9 Plan  |  Next Section: V. Requirements and Course Policies  C. Course Information– All Students >

D. Course Information: Independent Studies, and Courses Outside the Department This section contains information on some of the various courses one can take, and restrictions concerning them. a. Independent Studies Independent Studies are based on arrangements made between a professor and one or more graduate students to study a mutually-agreed-upon subject for one semester.  In order to register for an Independent Study, the student (in consultation with the professor) must compile a syllabus that specifies the required reading and writing requirements as well as the meeting schedule. This syllabus must be submitted to the Graduate Program Director for approval.  Independent studies are considered as equivalent to seminars in workload and hence they count as elective courses for your degree requirements. They are not meant to give structure to or substitute for an ongoing collaborative project between faculty member and student.  Students may take no more than two Independent Studies during their time in the graduate program, one counted toward the M.A. requirements and one toward the Ph.D. requirements.  [Also please note that Independent Study courses do not count as part of the faculty member’s normal teaching load.] b. Courses Outside of the Sociology Department i. Number of outside courses - Students may take up to three courses in total outside of the Sociology Department (in other Rutgers departments, at other Rutgers campuses, or at Inter-University Consortium schools) that count toward their overall elective requirements.  Specifically, that is to say that they may take 1-2 for the M.A. degree requirements and 1-2 for the Ph.D. degree requirements, but totaling no more than three overall.  These “outside” courses include methods or substantive courses in other departments at Rutgers—New Brunswick, courses at other Rutgers campuses (for example, at Newark), and courses offered at other universities through the InterUniversity Doctoral Consortium.  Some certificate programs at Rutgers may require students to take non-Sociology courses; please be attentive to those requirements as you consider your overall program of study, including how you will make use of the InterUniversity Doctoral Consortium.  Please consult the Graduate Program Director at any time if you have questions.  Our goal is to permit each student to pursue a program of study that maximally serves their intellectual needs while also ensuring that a sufficient portion of each student’s curriculum is responsibly delivered by our own department. ii. Inter-University Doctoral Consortium Courses - Graduate students at Rutgers may take graduate courses at several other universities in the region (e.g., Columbia University, CUNY-Graduate Center, the New School, New York University, Princeton University) at no extra cost.  Many students find these courses to be significantly important in their intellectual development, and we encourage you to seek out stimulating opportunities. Enrollment in courses at other institutions through this program requires the permission of the student’s advisor, the Sociology Graduate Director, and the instructor of the course at the host institution. Students in their first year may not be eligible.  The form required to register for courses in the consortium is available on the Graduate School webpage.  As noted before, these classes count as courses taken outside the department.   c. Grades and Incompletes i. Grades - You must receive grades of A, B+, or B in 14 of the 16 required and elective courses to receive a Ph.D. All required courses must have a B or higher. [Note: Rutgers does not have A+ or any minus grades.] ii. Incompletes - We strongly discourage students from taking an Incomplete in a course. Having an Incomplete frequently impairs a student’s ability to complete subsequent work on time. If a student is unable to complete all the requirements for a course, the instructor may assign a grade of Incomplete if they think the circumstances are warranted. The Graduate School requires that a student make up the work for an Incomplete within twelve months of the end of semester in which the incomplete grade was assigned (e.g., an Incomplete in a course from the fall semester 2023 must be completed and the grade turned in by the end of the grading period for the fall semester 2024).  Excessive Incompletes: Any student with more than two Incompletes in any given semester will face discontinuation from the program. SGS requires that a student with 2 incompletes has only one semester to reduce the Incompletes to one. Any student who has not made-up their final Incomplete within one year will face discontinuation from the program.  d. Transfer of Credits Students may apply to transfer up to 12 credits towards the MA degree requirements at Rutgers. Students may apply to transfer an additional 12 credits towards the PhD degree requirements. Often the number allowed is somewhat less, to ensure you are sufficiently engaged with the curriculum we offer.  These credits may be used for required or elective courses in the degree program upon approval of the Graduate Director.  All transfer courses must be regular numerically graded or letter-graded classes (not courses graded satisfactory/unsatisfactory or pass/fail).  Courses with grades below B cannot be transferred for credit in our program.  Individually arranged reading courses are also not accepted for transfer credit.  Please note: The transfer of credit can only be made after completion of 12 graduate credits at Rutgers.  However, speak with the Graduate Program Director in advance to start making plans for the transfer of credits to take place once it can be effected.  Also please note that the School of Graduate Studies generally does not approve any credits to be transferred for the degree at Rutgers for courses that were taken more than 6 years before the transfer request. < Previous Section: V. Requirements and Course Policies  B. 2013-2018 Cohorts | Next Section: VI. Qualifying Papers  A. 2019 Cohort and Thereafter – the 3-6-9 Plan >

VI. QUALIFYING PAPERS (QPs) A. Qualifying Paper #1 (aka Master’s Thesis, or Second-Year Paper) a. Qualifying Paper #1 is a piece of original empirical research that is ideally the first step toward a publication. This paper is an integral part of the learning process about how to conduct original research that contributes to the discipline. Many such papers ultimately become published journal articles or components of a larger product (e.g., dissertation or book), but it is not required that the paper reaches that level of excellence before being approved for the purpose of degree completion. Before beginning the second-year paper, students must write a short (about 5-10 page) proposal, to be presented before and discussed with a three-person committee of faculty members (see below for more details). The proposal should specify the research question(s), discuss the potential contribution of the work to sociology relative to past research, and provide a timeline of the proposed work. For empirical papers, the proposal additionally describes the data collected or analyzed and the proposed method of analysis. Papers using quantitative secondary data analysis should include a discussion (or table) describing the proposed dependent, independent, and control variables. The proposal should be submitted to your reading committee (see information on committee structure below) for feedback and revision before scheduling a sign-on meeting (see information on sign-on meeting in section VI, subsection C). Regarding the expected content of the QP1, it should be similar to a single journal article in the scope of the research question (i.e., well focused and delimited), data, and findings, as well as in its length. As such, it is typically 6000-9000 words long, plus any references, endnotes, tables, and appendices (as relevant). The paper should demonstrate a careful and thorough consideration of a sociological problem and clearly articulate the contribution of the research to the discipline. This paper must be empirical (or in rare instances, theoretical), and can use any substantive and/or methodological approach (e.g., analysis of survey data, textual analysis, interviews, field work). Accordingly, they vary in style and structure. [Note that if the project involves research with human subjects, the student must get IRB approval or an exemption before collecting any data.] Each second-year student will be required to take the Second Year Paper (QP1) Seminar to facilitate the paper’s development and completion. b. Committee Structure for QP1 QP1 requires a three-person committee, so that the student develops connections with a somewhat diverse array of advisors. By contrast, all versions of QP2 require only (as a minimum) two committee members. At least one of the readers on QP2 must be new relative to the composition of the committee for QP1, so that each student works with a minimum of four faculty advisors over the two papers. This structure also supports students’ intellectual and methodological breadth. c. Sign On and Sign Off Meetings i. Sign-On Meeting – With the approval of the QP1 committee members, the student schedules a sign-on meeting with the committee to discuss the content and direction of the project. This meeting typically lasts approximately one hour. During the meeting, committee members and the student should discuss and agree upon the research question and conceptual framing of the project as well as the data and methods (when relevant). The committee members and the student should also agree to a written timeline for the proposed work and for communication between the student and committee members (e.g., a progress report every month or two, monthly meeting with the lead reader, etc.). It is also highly advisable for the student and the committee to discuss whether the student might intend to use QP1 as a component of their dissertation, as this can affect the way the work is carried out and the kind of feedback the faculty provide. Upon successful completion of the sign-on meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Director sign the QP 1 proposal form, available through Docusign. This form should be submitted to the department’s Graduate Program Coordinator. At the end of the QP1 sign-on meeting, the committee members should discuss the division of labor and work plan for supervising the student (e.g., work closely with the primary reader before distributing to other committee members, send all drafts to all readers simultaneously, etc.). ii. Sign-Off Meeting – Upon completion of a suitable draft of the paper, and upon the approval of the QP1 committee members, the student schedules a final sign-off meeting with the committee. Again, this meeting is scheduled only after the student has completed and revised the Qualifying Paper in consultation with the committee members. (The process of writing a Qualifying Paper typically involves multiple drafts and recurrent interaction with your committee members as agreed upon in the sign-on meeting). During the meeting, the student briefly presents the key results and conclusions of the research (about five minutes). The student and committee members discuss whether there are remaining issues to be addressed before the committee agrees to “sign off” on (i.e., approve) the paper, and discuss strategies for moving the paper toward publication or inclusion in future work (e.g., the dissertation). Upon successful completion of the meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Director sign the Second-Year (QP1) Paper sign-off form. Upon completion of QP1, the student will also have an M.A. candidacy form to complete. d. Students Entering with an M.A./M.S. from another Program The department does not accept a prior Master’s thesis in lieu of one of our Qualifying Papers. A student entering the Rutgers graduate program in sociology with an M.A. or M.S. who wrote a thesis may, however, use his/her thesis as the basis for a qualifying paper. To do so, the student assembles a three-reader committee that reads the thesis and provides feedback on the steps required to make the work into a Qualifying Paper that meets departmental standards. The conditions may range from minor to more substantial revisions in content, approach, style, methods, etc. All restrictions on committee membership noted above apply. B. Qualifying Paper 2 (aka QP2, aka Second Qualifying Paper or Second Qualifying Project) The Second Qualifying Paper (QP2) may be completed in four different ways. These four options allow students some flexibility in achieving optimal preparation with respect to their future career goals. A minimum of two readers is required for all versions of QP2. At least two readers must be sociology graduate faculty. a. Research Paper Option with a two-person committee. The goal of this type of QP2 is to produce a sole-authored piece worthy of being submitted for publication. It may be recommended for students intent on a career in academia rather than those committed to careers outside academia. There can be only one overlap in the membership of the committee for QP1 and the committee for QP2. The one permitted overlap cannot serve as chair for both committees. Please note: As always, if your project involves research with human subjects, you must get IRB approval before collecting any data. b. Qualifying Examinations Option. Write and orally defend Qualifying Examinations in two substantive areas. There is flexibility in defining the terms, but normally this would be a take-home written examination, composed over several days or as much as one week, in a general area of scholarship, e.g. Environmental Sociology, combined with a more specialized literature and knowledge, such as Environmental Justice or the Sociology of Climate Change; or Social Network Analysis, and applications of networks to health or to the production of culture. The student may choose more independent areas if they wish. The student has two committee members who first approve an appropriate reading list for the exam’s content. It is typical for a student to take several months to (at most) a year to master this reading list of material. The committee composes the questions and evaluates the responses in the written document and for the oral defense. The examination typically consists of 2-5 questions with a 25- to 30-page document as the final product. This option may hasten students’ progress, but it can also be useful for students who wish to pursue a career in academia and need to be grounded in core sets of literature for the job market. c. Collaborative Research Paper Option. This option pairs the graduate student with two faculty members who supervise the student on a research and writing project, at least one of whom will become a co-author (second author) on a multi-author article submission. The student is responsible for writing a complete first draft of the paper with supportive advice from at least one faculty member who will eventually act as second author. That sole-authored draft is what will be evaluated as QP2. Responsibility for other tasks that may be part of the collaborative project—data collection, data cleaning, literature review, etc.—should be explicitly spelled out in advance. This model of QP2 provides the student with close mentoring regarding the research and publishing processes, while also evaluating them on a sole-authored draft of what will eventually become a co-authored article. The paper may be theoretical empirically-based, or a systematic review. d. Analytical Review Option. Write and orally defend a critical review of a particular sociological topic or topics as determined by a two-person faculty committee and the student. They work collaboratively to define the scope of the review and evaluate its content. The review should have one or more orientating question(s) that serve to structure the review. The objective would be to write a critical synthesis of likely more than one literature (or several specific areas of a large literature) to answer the orienting questions. In the process, the students might identify the main themes over time, debates, and gaps in the literatures, as well as how might several distinct literatures (different disciplines or subdisciplines), be integrated to generate new insights and research agendas. This review of 30 or so pages might be used to generate course syllabi, dissertation literature review, background for social policy recommendations, or a review paper project. The review must be designed for academic audiences. Simple summaries like an annotated bibliography would be insufficient. An approximate model would be a draft of an Annual Review piece, for examples please see https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/soc.  e. Committee Structure for QP2 Unlike QP1, all options for completing QP2 require only a two-person committee, who must be graduate sociology faculty. Students may add a third or fourth member to the committee if they wish, but there is no requirement to do so. However, at least one of the sociology faculty readers on QP2 must be new relative to the composition of the committee for QP1, so that each student works with a minimum of four faculty advisors over the two papers. As noted earlier, this structure encourages intellectual and methodological breadth. f. Sign On and Sign Off Meetings for QP2 i. Sign-On Meeting – The sign-on and sign-off meeting process works pretty much identically for QP2 as it does for QP1. With the approval of the QP2 committee members, the student schedules a sign-on meeting with the committee to discuss the content and direction of the project. This meeting typically lasts approximately one hour. During the meeting, committee members and the student should discuss and agree upon the research question and conceptual framing of the project as well as the data and methods (when relevant). The committee members and the student should also agree to a written timeline for the proposed work and for communication between the student and committee members (e.g., a progress report every month or two, monthly meeting with the lead reader, whether or not to send all drafts to all readers simultaneously, etc.). It is also highly advisable—even more so than for QP1—for the student and the committee to discuss whether, and how, the student intends to use QP2 as a component of their dissertation, as this will affect the way the work is carried out and the kind of feedback the faculty provide. Upon successful completion of the sign-on meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Program Director sign the QP2 proposal form, available through Docusign at Final QP2 Sign On Proposal Form.] This form should be submitted to the department’s Graduate Program Coordinator. ii. Sign-Off Meeting – Upon approval of the QP2 committee members, the student schedules a final sign-off meeting with the committee. This meeting is scheduled only after the student has completed and revised the paper in consultation with the committee members. [Except for the Qualifying Exams option, the process of writing a qualifying paper typically involves multiple drafts and recurrent interaction with your committee members as agreed upon in the sign-on meeting.] During the meeting, the student briefly presents the key results and conclusions of the research (about ten to fifteen minutes, perhaps longer). Members of the committee will ask questions concerning the content of the written work produced. The student and committee members discuss whether there are remaining issues to be addressed before the committee agrees to “sign off” on (i.e., approve) the project, and discuss strategies for moving the paper toward publication or inclusion in future work (e.g., dissertation). Upon successful completion of the meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Director sign the QP2 Sign Off Defense Form. Upon completion of QP2, the student should also fill out the Ph.D. candidacy form. < Previous Section: V. Requirements for Program Completion: The 2-4-6 Plan | Next Section: VII. Dissertation >

VI. QUALIFYING PAPERS B. 2013-2018 COHORTS 1. Standards and Expectations A. Qualifying Papers (1 and 2) A qualifying paper (QP) is a piece of original research (empirical or theoretical) that is ideally the first step toward a publication. A QP, particularly the first QP, is part of the learning process about how to conduct original research that contributes to the discipline. Many QPs ultimately become published journal articles or components of a larger product (e.g., dissertation or book). a. Qualifying Paper Proposal - Before beginning a qualifying paper, students must write a short (typically about 5 page) proposal. The proposal should: specify the research question; discuss the potential contribution of the work to sociology relative to past research; and provide a timeline of the proposed work. For empirical QPs, the proposal additionally describes the data to be collected or analyzed and the proposed method of analysis. QPs using quantitative secondary data analysis should include a discussion (or table) describing the proposed dependent, independent, and control variables. The QP proposal should be submitted to your reading committee for feedback and revision before scheduling a QP sign-on meeting (see information on QP sign-on meeting in section VI.C). b. Content of the Qualifying Paper - A qualifying paper should be similar to a single journal article in the scope of the research question (i.e., well focused and delimited), data, and findings as well as in its length. As such, a QP is typically 20-30 pages long plus any references, endnotes, tables, and appendices (as relevant). Each paper should demonstrate a careful and thorough consideration of a sociological problem and clearly articulate the contribution of the research to the discipline. One of the qualifying papers may be theoretical but at least one QP must be empirical. QPs can use any substantive and/or methodological approach (e.g., analysis of survey data, textual analysis, interviews, fieldwork). As such, they vary in style and structure. (Note that if your project involves research with human subjects, you must get IRB approval before collecting any data). We encourage you to take the Writing Seminar when you are working to complete your first QP because this facilitates the development and completion of the qualifying paper. To ensure breadth and proficiency in more than a single sub-area of sociology, the two qualifying papers must focus on topics that are significantly different from one another. The committee structure (see section below) helps ensure that the foci of the QPs are distinct. c. Committee Structure - Each committee has a lead reader and two secondary readers. The lead readers for the two qualifying papers must be different. In addition, the two QP committees may have only a one-reader overlap. Thus, the two qualifying paper committees together include five or six different faculty members per graduate student. This structure encourages intellectual and methodological breadth, and ensures that each student interacts intellectually with multiple faculty members. Committee members may include regular sociology faculty and one affiliated graduate faculty member in sociology. < Previous Section: VI. Qualifying Papers  A. 2019 Cohort and Thereafter – the 3-6-9 Plan | Next Section: VI. Qualifying Papers  C. Sign on and Sign off Meetings– All Students >

VI. QUALIFYING PAPERS C. SIGN ON AND SIGN OFF MEETINGS – ALL STUDENTS a. Sign-On Meeting – Upon approval of the QP or Second Year Paper committee members, the student schedules a meeting with the committee to discuss the content and direction of the project. This meeting lasts approximately one hour. During the meeting, committee members and the student should discuss and agree upon the research question and conceptual framing of the project as well as the data and methods (when relevant). The committee members and the student should also agree to a written timeline for the proposed work and for communication between the student and committee members (e.g., a progress report every month or two, monthly meeting with the lead reader, etc.). Upon successful completion of the sign-on meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Director sign the Second Year Paper, QP 1, or QP 2 proposal form. This form should be submitted to the sociology graduate administrator. At the end of the QP sign-on meeting, the committee members should discuss the division of labor and work plan for supervising the student (e.g., work closely with the primary reader before distributing to other committee members, send all drafts to all committee members simultaneously, etc.). b. Sign-Off Meeting – Upon approval of the QP committee members, the student schedules a final sign-off meeting with the committee. This meeting is scheduled only after the student has completed and revised the qualifying paper in consultation with the committee members. (The process of writing a qualifying paper typically involves multiple drafts and recurrent interaction with your committee members as agreed upon in the sign-on meeting). During the meeting, the student briefly presents the key results and conclusions of the research (about five minutes). The student and committee members discuss whether there are remaining issues to be addressed before the committee agrees to “sign off” on the paper, and discuss strategies for moving the paper toward publication or inclusion in future work (e.g., dissertation). Upon successful completion of the meeting, the committee members and the Graduate Director sign the Second Year Paper sign off form or Qualifying Paper sign off form as well as the MA or PhD Candidacy form. For the Final Qualifying Paper options 2, and 4, the sign off process will take place as the end of a successful oral defense. For option 3, the paper’s submission to an academic publication serves as the sign off process. All option completion forms will first be submitted to the graduate administrator, followed by a signature by the graduate director. c. Students Entering with an M.A./M.S. from another Program The department does not accept a prior Master’s thesis in lieu of one of our qualifying papers. A student entering the Rutgers graduate program in sociology with an M.A. or M.S. who wrote a thesis may, however, use his/her thesis as the basis for one qualifying paper. To do so, the student assembles a three-reader committee that reads the thesis and provides feedback on the steps required to make the work into a qualifying paper that meets departmental standards. The conditions may range from minor to more substantial revisions in content, approach, style, methods, etc. All restrictions on committee membership noted above apply. < Previous Section: VI. Qualifying Papers B. 2013-2018 Cohorts | Next Section: VII. Dissertation>

The question of how societies maintain compliance with social norms and boundaries is a foundational concern within sociology. Crime is also important within sociology, both as a salient challenge to social control and a means through which societies affirm their values and norms. The Department of Sociology faculty has long addressed the sources and consequences of crime and social control for individuals and society. Three of the sociology faculty (Dahaghi, Hirschfield, and Martinez-Schuldt) in this core cluster are also affiliated with the inter-disciplinary criminal justice program within the School of Arts and Sciences established in 2000. Robert Apel, Jody Miller, and Sara Wakefield, three faculty members from the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, are Affiliated Graduate Program Faculty. The six Department of Sociology faculty members that presently comprise the cluster in crime and social control represent a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches. However, they share a distinctly sociological orientation, situating crime, whether in the form of adult offending, delinquency, or violence, in relation to inequalities and differences along the lines of race/ethnicity, class, gender, or geography. These scholars also examine social institutions both as sources of crime and deviance and as agents of prevention, control and suppression. Institutions, practices, and subjects of particular interest to faculty include urban communities (Dinzey-Flores and Martinez-Schuldt), civil and criminal courts (Dahaghi), urban policy and design (Dinzey-Flores), schools (Hirschfield, Shepherd), families (Phillips), peer groups (Shepherd), law enforcement (Hirschfield and Martinez-Schuldt), segregation, immigration, and ethno-racial inequality (Dinzey-Flores, Martinez-Schuldt, and Phillips), and non-government organizations (Dahaghi, Martinez-Schuldt). The Sociology faculty conducting research in this area have assembled or help manage unique community-level, state, or national data sets that provide opportunities for graduate students to engage in research on the intersection of various social control institutions (schools, neighborhoods, police, courts, and juvenile justice) and crime. Cluster members have taught a variety of graduate courses related to crime, social control, and punishment and supervised several dissertations pertaining to such topics. Our graduate students have had success in winning university and national awards and in obtaining excellent placements upon graduation. At the undergraduate level, we offer a number of dynamic courses in the area of crime and social control as well as the opportunity to minor in criminology. Students who minor in criminology are particularly likely to encounter faculty in this cluster both in sociology courses and in criminal justice courses.

The field of sociology of culture addresses questions of the social creation and implications of symbols, language, ideas, art, religion, science, media, law, institutions, interactions, and subjective experiences. The field also provides distinct frameworks for approaching social research, and theoretical perspectives on the nature of human action and thought. It is a big and diverse subfield of sociology that accommodates many substantive topics, theoretical traditions, and methodological perspectives. Many cultural sociologists are interested in using the lens of culture and insights about shared meanings to understand issues such as inequality, race, gender, politics, health, migration, economics, and organizations. The Rutgers sociology department has been at the forefront of an approach to culture that takes seriously the role of cognition, including mental representations, cognitive processes, and their interaction with the body. Scholars of culture and cognition are interested in topics such as: the nature of mental structures, representations, and memory; the social bases of cognitive processes; and processes of human behavior. Work in this area often draws on insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Emeriti professors Karen Cerulo and Eviatar Zerubavel pioneered important and distinct perspectives on cognition and culture that are widely acclaimed and used within sociology. Faculty and students at Rutgers work on a number of topics within the sociology of culture including how technology, art, and media are produced and contribute to the circulation of symbols and meanings (Chaudhary, Davidson, Jones, Kempner, McLean, Shepherd); how knowledge and expertise are produced and deployed (Handsman, Jones, Kempner, Lee, MacKendrick, Shepherd); how social networks capture interaction, meanings, and relationships (McLean, Shepherd); how social context contributes to the meaning of identity, especially regarding race, class, religion, sexuality, and gender (Brooks, Chaudhary, Dinzey-Flores, Hwang, Jones, MacKendrick, Salime, Stein); how the physical body, bodily experiences, and representations of the body interact with the social world (Kempner, Lee, MacKendrick, Stein); and finally, how aspects of culture are associated with differential power and can be deployed in the service of power and exclusion (Brooks, Dinzey-Flores, Handsman, Hwang, Jones, Lee, McLean, Salime, Stein). The Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers provides faculty and graduate student fellowships to pursue work in cultural sociology. Graduate students interested in this area have pursued many different types of projects using diverse methods and approaches to research. We offer a wide array of graduate classes in this area, and graduate students interested in the sociology of culture benefit from methodological training in qualitative methods such as interviews, narratives, and ethnography, and in quantitative methods including computational and network methods. Our graduates have been highly successful in crafting award-winning articles and dissertations, and in obtaining outstanding placements upon completion of our program. At the undergraduate level, students interested in the study of culture and its associated phenomenon can take classes in the Sociology of Culture (220), Seminar in Cognitive Sociology, Law and Society, Race, Science, and Medicine, and topics classes such as Food, Culture and Society. Many undergraduate sociology majors pursue honors projects related to the sociology of culture.  

The Department of Sociology at Rutgers University offers one of the most expansive and outstanding national graduate programs in the sociology of the environment and sustainability. Environment and sustainability (or environmental sociology) is a subfield of the discipline that captures society-environment interactions and sustainability across a number of research areas, theoretical orientations, and methods. The sociology of environment and sustainability is inherently interdisciplinary, open to a wide range of interpretations and approaches. Eleven sociologists make up our graduate faculty, with three located in the neighboring Department of Human Ecology (School of Environmental and Biological Sciences), one in the School of Communications & Information, and one in the School of Management and Labor Relations. Faculty in our program employ multiple research methods and maintain active research programs across numerous research and teaching areas, including: climate change, mitigation, adaptation, justice, and forced migration climate finance, policy, advocacy and promotion energy and energy use environmental health environmental history and policy environmental justice  environmental and sustainable organizations (industry, nonprofits/civil society, and international organizations, “green” publicity and marketing) environmentalisms, media and environment; public opinion food and sustainable food systems gender green jobs and just transitions sustainable consumption, development, and environmental behaviors risk and disasters Students in our graduate program are exposed to varied professional experts and networks, and have access to a deep bench of faculty members for mentorship, supervision, and committee assignments. In addition to earning a Ph.D. in Sociology, graduate students who specialize in environment and sustainability have the opportunity to earn a Graduate Certificate in Human Dimensions of Environmental Change.  Graduates from our PhD program have successfully secured research and teaching positions across many settings – from top liberal arts colleges to large research universities in sociology, human ecology, and environmental studies programs, to employment in nonprofits, government agencies and think tanks. Our undergraduates have the opportunity to take a variety of sociology courses centered on environmental issues. A number of these courses fulfill requirements in the interdisciplinary major/minor, Environmental Studies, housed in the Geography department.

Mission Statement Rutgers University has long been known for its strengths in the area of gender and women's studies. The Department of Sociology builds upon those strengths, and today includes eleven core faculty members who regularly offer graduate seminars in race, class and gender; sociology of gender; feminist theory; inequalities; sexualities; the body; gender and globalization; and gender and the self. Our approach to the sociology of gender focuses upon issues of difference and inequality. We look at gender across racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious differences, drawing linkages to cultural studies, post-structuralism, race studies, and post-colonial and globalization studies, and to theories of identities, boundaries, performance, and symbolic representation. We are also centrally interested in issues relating to the distribution of resources, comparing the situations of women and men, looking at inequality among women, among men, and at different local, state, and global structural locations.Our students work on a wide range of projects, including transgender issues, transnational identities, gender theory, the body, and emotions, among others, as the following list of dissertation topics indicates. Our work in the Department is enhanced by ongoing interdisciplinary efforts in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, which offers graduate courses and a Graduate Certificate in women’s studies, the Institute for Research on Women, which hosts a yearlong interdisciplinary seminar for faculty and graduate students, the Center for Women and Work, the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and other programs at the university.

Mission Statement There is nothing normal or inevitable about the way in which the world is arranged. The globe as we know it is a historical product: Its current structures used not to exist – they have emerged over time – and they will eventually give way to other structures. The world is not a natural composite of competing and/or cooperating nation-states. Nor is it an even playing field, in which individuals (currently just over seven billion of us humans) compete for resources, power and recognition through a gallant and fair game so that the best win and the undeserving lose. The world is, instead, an ever more tightly interconnected set of hierarchies. It forms a historical system that produces its own racialized and gendered inequalities, economic injustices, power differentials, new cultural, religious and aesthetic forms of expression, conflicts, resistance and change. The recognition that a powerful global process is driving the gentrification of poor neighborhoods, shaping the financial crisis in Europe, or farmers’ suicide in India, mass displacement of indigenous communities, or transnational uprisings opened tremendous possibilities for sociological investigation. Our aim is to build competence, create bridges through scholarly engagements with other disciplines and global centers across the World, and make creative contributions in this burgeoning field. Our faculty and students engage these questions through their interest in: Race, localities and racializations, Gender, sexualities and sexisms, Geopolitics, nationalisms, imperialisms, Alternatives to capitalism, Environmental crisis and preservation World and global histories, Global-local memories and politics of historiography, Migration and transnationalism, Scale, space and place, Representations and repressions, Internationalisms and solidarities, Oppression and resistance, War, militarism and peace –

Health is typically thought to be the domain of the allied medical fields, but the health of populations are deeply sociocultural phenomena. The sociological study of health, population, and biomedicine enables analyses of the critical role that social factors play in the health of individuals, groups, and the larger society. Our department’s program in health, population and biomedicine provides students with the theoretical and methodological tools to think beyond biology in order to answer some of the thorniest questions in medicine and public health. Our program proudly continues a long tradition of excellence in medical sociology at Rutgers University. In the late 1970s, David Mechanic established the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH), which continues to serve as an important interdisciplinary home for research on the social and cultural determinants of health. Research in population and the life course originated here during the 1960s. Matilda White Riley, Anne Foner, and others developed the age stratification model, which continues to be one of the major paradigms in this area. Our award-winning faculty today conduct research on a broad set of subjects across the sociology of medicine, population health, and biomedicine including demographic research on suicide rates in the United States (Phillips), children’s health assessments (Bzostek), pain and stigma (Kempner), race and biomedicine (Bliss, Lee), Black American health (Mouzon), community contexts and health (Lei), environmental health (MacKendrick), gendered effects on biomarkers (Springer), and the sociology of drugs (Kempner). We offer rigorous graduate training and mentoring in medical sociology, population studies as well as the politics of knowledge. Our most recent graduates have secured positions as tenure-track assistant professors, postdoctoral fellows, or research scientists at prestigious institutions including the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, Columbia School of Public Health, Weill Cornell Medicine, National Center for Health Statistics, Brown University, University of Maryland-Baltimore, University of Delaware, Princeton University, RAND Corporation, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University. At the undergraduate level, we offer a variety of courses on social dimensions of health and medicine. Our minor in Health and Society provides students with an excellent opportunity to study questions of physical and mental health, health behaviors and practices, and health care institutions, through a social and cultural lens, and across national and global contexts.

Rutgers Sociology has a cluster of scholars who conduct research on organizations, social networks, and the key characteristics of the contemporary workplace. From cradle to grave, day in and day out, complex formal organizations—businesses, schools, government departments, law firms, hospitals, non-profits, NGOs, media organizations, religious groups, universities—profoundly shape our lives. They dictate the kind of work that is available and the nature of that work. They exert a powerful impact on the distribution of resources and authority in society. They create roles and relations among their members, and they deeply influence individuals’ subjective experience of the world. Sociologists have identified important properties and tendencies existing in formal organizations, many of which apply regardless of the specific tasks organizations set out to do. Furthermore, organizations—for-profits and non-profits alike—interact with each other, and as a result, they often come to look and behave similarly. The formal and informal networks that operate within and between organizations are among the factors playing a decisive part in bringing about their convergence. But networks—relationships among people, families, groups, events, objects, and more—exist ubiquitously throughout the social world, often independently of formal organizational structures, driven by their own distinctive logics and dynamic processes. Social network analysis is an especially vibrant intellectual field today, devoted to theorizing how social relations and, more broadly, social structure, generate crucial outcomes such as identity formation, unequal resource distributions, occupational and geographic mobility, technological innovation, information diffusion, cultural transformations, and social protest. As a research cluster, we support and encourage both formal organizational and social-network theoretical frameworks, and in adopting them, we deploy a variety of methods, including qualitative, experimental, comparative-historical, computational, and structuralist techniques, signifying our commitment to a holistic approach to the topic of social organization. Core faculty members in this cluster are particularly interested in: mobility, precarity, and social inequalities in the workplace (Mai, Chaudhary, Shepherd); organizations' capacities to foster immigrant integration, collective action, and transnational development (Chaudhary, Brooks); political and economic elites (McLean, Davidson); adolescent networks (Shepherd); civil society and the environment (Brechin, Mai); the intersection of social networks and culture (McLean, Shepherd, Davidson); and organizations’ capacity to create and manage risk and disaster (Brechin, Falzon). Students interested in this cluster can also benefit from an engagement with other expert faculty in the Rutgers Business School, the Department of Human Ecology, the School of Communication and Information, the School of Social Work, the School of Management and Labor Relations, and the Bloustein School of Public Policy.