Social Inequality
Addressing social inequality is at the heart of our research and teaching
Addressing social inequality is at the heart of our research and teaching.
As a UIC sociology graduate student
In our research and teaching, we analyze how social inequalities are structured and legislated, how they are supported by cultural representations and hegemonic ideologies, and how people navigate and push back against them in their everyday lives. As a UIC Sociology graduate student, you can focus on any of these six areas of specialization:
Gender & Sexuality
Sociology of Gender/Sexuality focuses broadly on social, cultural and historical processes relevant to gender and sexuality, such practices, the body, health; feminist and queer perspectives on gender and sexuality; gender and sexuality at the level of institutions, interactions, and identities; and how gender and sexuality articulate with other social categories and locations, such as race, ethnicity, class, and age.
Race & Ethnicity
Sociology of Race/Ethnicity examines the shifting dynamics of racial formation and racial inequality, including immigration and deportation, policing and incarceration, segregation, education, and identity formation within the United States and from a comparative and global perspective.
Organizations & the Economy
Sociology of Organizations & the Economy focuses on the historical and contemporary study of how groups of people come together to accomplish collective goals, the institutionalization of social forms, and how labor is organized and enacted as well as the individual and structural consequences of these processes.
Global & Transnational
Global & Transnational Sociology focuses broadly on global socioeconomic and political processes, the history of the modern world-system, shifts in global capitalism and interstate relations, the cultural dynamics of globalization, and patterns of global migration.
Political Sociology & Social Movements
Political Sociology & Social Movements focuses on political order and social change in the US and from global and transnational perspectives, including an analysis of the state, civil society, citizenship, democracy, revolution, and authoritarianism.
Children & Youth
Sociology of Children & Youth focuses broadly on the institutional (family, education, media, medicine & the state) dynamics that shape childhood experiences and inequalities in the US and how they have changed over time; it also explores how race, class, sexuality and gender shape experiences of childhood and youth.
Research Practicum
UIC Sociology’s Research Practicum is an important way we address social inequality through research. The practicum provides graduate students with hands-on research experience in a variety of methodologies.