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HCD 533 Community in American Society
4 hours (seminar)
Spring Semesters
Course objectives
This seminar examines how major structural changes in the United States during the 20 th century, particularly in the past fifty years, have affected the ways in which people conceptualize and develop community. We will use academic journal articles along with classic and contemporary ethnographies to investigate how social changes such as, urbanization, economic restructuring, the concentration of poverty in inner cities, changes in the educational system, and demographic shifts in family structure have influenced how people go about creating, losing, or maintaining community.
Assigned texts and other readings
Linkon, Sherry Lee and John Russo. 2003. Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown. University Press of Kansas.
Duncan, Cynthia M. 1999. World’s Apart: Why Poverty Persists in Rural America. Yale University Press.
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2002. American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto by Harvard University Press.
Small, Maurio. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio
University of Chicago Press.
Pattillo-McCoy, Mary. 1999. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. University of Chicago Press
Smith, Robert Courtney. 2005. Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. University of California Press
Foner, Nancy. 2005. Wounded City: The Social Impact of 9/11. Russell Sage Foundation Press.
additional readings on Library Electronic Reserves
Topics
- Social Change in the 20 th Century U.S.
- Methods for Studying Community and Change
- Urbanization and Suburbanization
- Impact of Economic Restructuring on Community and Family Life
- Social Change and Rural Poverty
- Poverty Concentration in Inner City Neighborhoods
- Race Relations
- Immigration, Transnationalism and Community
- Whither American Communities?
- Social Capital and Community Well-Being
- Social Capital and Community
Graded activities
- discussion leadership
- research proposal and presentation