Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Cook

J.D. Seminar 742 | 3 credit hours

This course explores the structure and origins of social stratification and inequality, both within and outside the United States. We will begin with a general introduction to the subject matter, laying a rough conceptual and empirical foundation for the more detailed material to follow. We will then supplement this general overview with a history of social stratification, its origins and evolution, exploring how stratification systems have changed with various socio-economic organizations of society. Having grappled with the historical and theoretical material, students will then be prepared to embark upon a more detailed analysis of the American system of stratification: an examination of the upper class, the corporate class, the middle and working classes, as well as America’s poor. We will pay particular attention to the ways gender and race affect and are affected by systems of social stratification.