Sociologist Suzanne Shanahan, left, goes over a paper with undergraduate student Alexis Franzese Photo credit: Jim Wallace

Durham, N.C. - I believe the ability to question and explain that which is most taken for granted and seems least in need of explanation is the essence of sociology. My objective as a teacher, advisor and mentor is to help students both develop this "sociological imagination" and realize how empowering and, indeed, fun this activity can be. Above all, I seek to convince students that the sociological imagination is a way of life, not simply a way to graduate from Duke. This is a way of life that allows students to interact with the world and understand their place in it. This is a way of life that assumes that thoughtful and engaged individuals can change the world. And finally, this is way of life that because it enlarges one's sense of the possible allowing students to experience joy and not merely happiness.

Accordingly, I encourage the development of transferable analytical skills not idiosyncratic factual knowledge. Simply put, you can never be "wrong" in my classroom. My goal is for every student to understand both why they think the way they do and the logical implications of such thinking. If a students claims, " I am at Duke because I worked hard" I try to help her see that this is at once a statement about one's own life and an explanation for why people succeed in our society. One logical implication of this statement is that if you didn't get into Duke maybe it is because you didn't work hard enough. Students are often surprised to realize that such personal statements may, in the aggregate, have moral and political consequences. And while I organize my courses to exercise this sociological imagination, my hope is that it serves students far beyond the confines of the classroom ”in their conversations with friends and family, when they read the newspaper, when they vote in elections, when they watch T.V. and when they take other courses at Duke and in the Sociology Department.

This pedagogical approach has shaped each of the ten different courses I have developed and taught since coming to Duke including two interdisciplinary team taught courses (The North American Experiment and Comparative Approaches to Global Issues). It has also informed my development and implementation and of a new honors program in the sociology department, the approach I have taken in advising more than a dozen honors theses, and the way I have designed a community based research seminar on social movements.

I developed the sociology honors program (and have co-taught the honors seminar since 2002) because I was convinced that our best students were graduating without any real sense of what sociological research was, let alone how incisive an analytic tool it can offer or how personally empowering it could be. Our program seeks to help students realize that research is not something only their professors can do. Under my direction, in the past three years the sociology department has launched and institutionalized this new honors program that now provides a faculty mentored original research experience for 25 percent of our majors. We have transitioned from a department that would have 1-2 students graduating with distinction every couple of years to a department that has anywhere between 8-12 honors students annually. The structural centerpiece of this program is a year long seminar where students both learn the craft of sociological research and where they create an intellectual community of colleagues to support and aid their independent work. The final product is something not unlike a graduate level masters paper. Toward this end, we emphasize the often non-linear process of research: how to translate an abstract interest into a sociological question that you can actually answer with research, learning to situate a topic in an existing literature, identifying research methods that would actually answer this question, applying for institutional research board approval, etc. Indeed, we begin by introducing and modeling the sociological imagination. We then encourage students to employ this perspective to choose a research question. Invariably they chose topics that they care about ”topics that reflect their own life experience ”the digitalization of the music industry, race and educational aspirations, the immigrant experience. Thus, one student who had worked as a summer intern with Atlanta Social Services asked why "boarder babies' (healthy babies that do not leave the hospital after birth) became a social problem. We then help students to solve these real life puzzles by introducing research skills and methods. The development of these skills builds confidence. Taken together these skills and this new found self assurance allow students to resolve many of the problems that emerge in the course of their own research. For example, a student who used to call me every few days to "ask a question about her project" suddenly stopped calling to get answers. Instead she began calling to see what I thought about her answers to the problems she had encountered. I didn't need to tell this student what she had learned. It was obvious in the way that she interacted with me and others. We conclude the yearlong honors seminar with an annual research workshop where students, their graduate mentors and advisors, and the sociology department as a whole come together for a one-day conference. Students present their final work in thematic panels and faculty and graduate students serve as discussants. It is both an exhilarating intellectual experience and a celebration of the students' hard work.

I adopt a similar approach in my social movements course. This course class is aimed at honing the skills to create social change through both research and collective action. Course materials are selected to reflect the theoretical and practical tensions between agency and structure and between the desire for change and the ability to effectuate that change. Through a series of films (including among others Hotel Rwanda, Michael Collins, and Norma Rae) and readings (including among others Stonewall and Fugitive Days) students develop their own understanding of the role of individual and/or collective action in society. Students then work closely with university and community organizations to understand the dynamics of collective mobilization. Some students might, for example, work with state organizations to understand the legal implications of educational inequality in North Carolina. Other students might work with Durham community groups to prompt local employers (including Duke) to pay a living wage. Still other students might chose to address concerns closer to "home": how to create a sense of shared respect between students and residents of TrinityHeights, how best to assist the national legalization of marijuana movement or how to change university policy on window gardens. Whether helping change dorm rules or North Carolina law the students learn to employ a set of analytic skills they can bring to understand social problems in their own life and learn strategies to remediate them.

In other courses as well I use concrete questions and puzzles to communicate my pedagogical approach. For instance, in my Introduction to Sociology course students analyze a variety of case studies that illustrates that all human phenomena ”from the tragic to the trivial ”can be understood sociologically. The Zapatista uprising, poverty in the United States, fashion trends and the appeal of Kate Spade bags, and the fascination with Michael Jackson or the lure of reality T.V. are just some of the subjects we have analyzed. I do not employ a textbook to outline basic sociological concepts instead I have students read a set of New Yorker articles. These articles illustrate how sociological concepts help explain every day experiences and problems. Students, for example, do not memorize a definition of social networks and paraphrase its importance in a short answer exam. Instead they develop an understanding of how social networks affect the investment banking opportunities afforded students at elite universities by analyzing data on student job placement. Similarly, in my Comparative and Historical Methods course, I do not ask students to read any of the many articles written on sociological method, rather they read a dozen books that employ these techniques and learn to identify and critique them by seeing them in action. Thus, path dependency is not simply an abstract and airy theory, but the underlying argument in James Mahoney's award winning Legacies of Liberalism. Finally, in my module in Comparative Approaches to Global Issues, students learn about regional identity construction by analyzing the introduction of the Euro and then working in groups to apply a parallel logic and literally design a potential North American currency. In every case students learn to identify the logic upon which social relations rest and develop the ability to employ that logic to solve concrete problems.

In each of my courses I support this method with five specific practices. First, all course materials (lectures, hand-outs, readings, discussion, films, assignments) are designed to connect the lived experience of students to contemporary social problems and phenomena that may be beyond their own experience. My lecture on social stratification, for example, is based in part on an income and lifestyle survey of Duke students that I conduct each term. One assignment in my Introduction to Sociology course asks students to apply what they have learned about Civil Rights organizations in designing a social movement that would address a problem on Duke's campus. Second, all my classes ”even those that have more than 125 students--require substantial student participation in discussion. Participation accounts for fifty percent of the final grade in most of my courses and in my Introduction to Sociology thoughtful participation is a necessary condition for passing the course. So often students "get it" ”that is, realize what they know ”when the have the opportunity to talk in discussion. Third, for every class I provide a lecture outline that contains all essential information. In fact, I often even discourage students from taking notes. Students understand arguments when they can follow their logic and I have found that this is impossible when they are madly copying down information. Fourth, students do not read textbooks instead they read both scholarly and popular articles. Students often read classic works in sociology in conjunction with carefully selected articles in the popular press (mostly New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly). They come to understand and talk about sexual identity by contrasting Berger's Invitation to Sociology to a profile of transexualism in The New Yorker, "The Body Lies." I want students to recognize the way functional theory shapes the way we understand (social) life whether they see it in sociological work on stratification, in the Wall Street Journal's analysis of inequality or in a made for TV movie on children on welfare. And fifth, I require students to write extensively. In most of my courses students write weekly essays in which they apply sociological perspectives to real life questions. Even in my largest class, Introduction to Sociology, students write a series of essays. And because I want students to understand and apply sociological theory in everyday life I give only essay exams. Since memorization and guessing have little or no place in my pedagogy I always give students exam questions before they sit the exam. I have also found that students really learn the relevant perspectives when they are given the opportunity to craft exam questions that test this knowledge. The quality of student essays and exams provide some measure of my success as a teacher. However, I know I have done a good job when a former student drops by my office and provides an impromptu sociological analysis of why people dressed the way they did at the Academy Awards.

I want this work of imagination to be both worthwhile and exciting to students. Students are sometimes reluctant to think for themselves. They would prefer to be told the right answer. Creating an environment where students learn for themselves is not always easy and I admit I resort to a variety of often contrived and indeed hokey means to rouse enthusiasm for this difficult work. I do give prizes for the most thoughtful essay or the most exciting group project. Yes, I am known for the fact I provide snacks in most every class ”brownies and tootsie pops mostly. Yes, I have brought my dog to class. And yes, I do begin each lecture in my Introduction to Sociology course with theme music to complement the lecture (e.g. a Rage Against the Machine song on revolution and the Zapatistas when we discuss the uprising in Chiapas.) I do these things to demonstrate to students that sociological thinking is not some arcane activity pursued only by their professors but is instead a sensibility that informs both how you describe your spring break adventure to your grandmother and why you take a particular position on Iraq. I demonstrate my own commitment and enthusiasm by regularly leading sections for TAs, organizing thematic email discussion groups, offering weekly make-up sections for traveling athletes, reading and commenting on all paper drafts, grading three-quarter's of all student work myself, and conducting evening and weekend workshops (complete with snacks) prior to every paper assignment and before the final exam.

It is my hope that together this approach and these practices will help students realize what C. Wright Mills has called "The Promise" of the sociological imagination.