Masters Blog
Welcome to the Sociology MA, Class of 2018!
We look forward to meeting all of you at orientation. In the meantime, we recommend that you start reading and writing so that you are in tip-top shape for academic work by the time you arrive. This post includes reading recommendations and an assignment that will take you through the first steps of developing a thesis topic.
Reading Recommendations
This article, by Hannah Wohl, who will be teaching Sociological Theory and the Methods Workshop in the Fall, and Gary Alan Fine, who teaches at Northwestern, offers some important insights about graduate education:
Reading Rites: Teaching Textwork in Graduate Education
We recommend that you devote some time to perusing current sociology journal publications online, though the library portal, http://library.columbia.edu. The articles and book reviews in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and the Annual Review of Sociology will give you a sense of the discipline. Contemporary Sociology, the book review journal of the American Sociological Association, will point the way to books you might be interested in reading. If you are interested in social movements, you might explore Social Movement Studies or Mobilization. If you are more inclined toward work in cultural sociology, you might read through some issues of Poetics. Social Forces, Ethnography, and Economy & Society are just three among many other journals you can access. We also recommend reading the work Columbia faculty to familiarize yourself with the research approaches and topics you will encounter while you are here. The more you exercise your focus and reading abilities before you arrive at the department, the easier will be your transition to academic work. The articles and books that seem most interesting to you will give you a sense of the kind of work you may want to pursue while at Columbia. Start a reference archive with summaries and your thoughts on these readings; this will help you to develop a literature review halfway through the Fall semester.
Assignment:
Please take the next few weeks to do the following:
1. Acquire and read the first three chapters of Kristin Luker's Salsa Dancing in the Social Sciences, which will be the required text for the Thesis Seminar with Prof. Milstein.
2. Start a research notebook! This should be a real notebook, not a file in your computer.
3. Write in your notebook every day, preferably at the same time. Try to build up to filling three pages a day. Think about and write down observations based on your experiences and readings. This process should lead naturally to the development of research questions. In the first weeks of the fall semester you will need to narrow down your research interests into a succinct, answerable research question. But for now, think broadly about the kinds of social issues and problems that intrigue you. What are you interested in studying? Or as Kristin Luker asks in Salsa Dancing, “What kinds of questions do you find interesting enough to get you out of bed in the morning with energy and excitement?”
4. In your research notebook, do the exercises at the end of Salsa Dancing, Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
5. Prepare a brief document with the following: 1) A description of your broad research interests; and 2) A list of possible research questions. At this point, don’t limit yourself – this is the time to think broadly and creatively about what you are interested in. Please send a copy of this document to Denise Milstein ([email protected]) by August 28th, and bring a hard copy to our orientation as well.