Major Concentration in Medical Anthropology
The concentration in medical anthropology offers students the opportunity to tailor a scholarly exploration of medicine, health, and illness with a foundation in anthropology. Medical anthropology is a dynamic subfield of the discipline that offers important theoretical, critical, and comparative perspectives to the study of medical systems and healing practices in different cultures, and it provides ways to shape the work and practices of medical institutions and professionals. Medical anthropology pays attention not only to biomedicine and scientific knowledge but also to diverse ways of healing, managing pain, and defining wellbeing. It also pays close attention to the different local, national, and global forces that shape the health and wellbeing of various groups and their access to resources and knowledges. This special major will be of particular interest to students interested in graduate work in medical anthropology, the study of medicine, and those planning on pursuing training and work in diverse professions of the health field.
Major Concentration in Political Sociology
The concentration in Political Sociology offers students an opportunity to ground their inquiries into all things political- political economy, forms of political order and organization, regime formation and revolution, political action, parties and elections, policy, status, power-- in a sociological approach, that seeks to interrogate and understand social structures and insists that politics must be treated as fully implicated in every facet of the social order, from institutional arrangements to social relations. Political Sociology encompasses a wide variety of theoretical and methodological approaches with which sociologists attempt to describe and explain political phenomena. We cover a wide range of areas within the field, including race, class, migration, colonization, imperialism, public policy, urban politics, social movements, state-formation, revolutions, and cross-national social policy and policy outcomes.
