Doktorandkursen Key Texts in Sociology, Social Anthropology and Education ger 7,5 higher education credits

Kursen ges på engelska eller svenska.

The course is offered by the Department of Sociology at Lund University as an introductory course, but it can basically fit into any stage. The instruction language is English or Swedish (if all participants speak Swedish).

General course description

Which texts can best stimulate PhD Students in sociology, social anthropology and education? In which works do we find the essence or the fundamental thought styles of the respective disciplines?

This course aims at presenting, discussing and problematizing the foundations for the scientific approaches that characterize the department’s three disciplines. The participants read a selection of key texts that can be said to represent excellent ways of “doing” social science. By engaging in comparisons with texts belonging to the two other disciplines, the participants are encouraged to define both common grounds and specific identities.

The course will be based on mandatory readings (a short list) as well as on readings chosen by the participants according to their interests (taken from a long list). The lists have been compiled by suggestions from researchers at the department.

Course goals

On completion of the course, the PhD student shall be able to:

– present a selection of key texts in sociology, social anthropology and education,

– identify, assess and compare a selection of theoretical perspectives, methodologies and typical fields across the three disciplines at issue,

– extract one or more recurrent forms of analysis from the text presented, and apply them to a research topic,

– engage in informed and advanced debates on what a “key text” is or should be.

Course implementation

The course combines lectures, interview seminars with professors and participants’ presentations. Each participant writes an academic essay revolving around the mandatory texts and other freely chosen texts from the long list. The mandatory texts vary for each semester, depending on the teachers.

Assessment

Participants are expected to attend all lectures and seminars and to contribute to these. Participants must write and submit an essay (4000–5000 words), as well as present and discuss the (tentative) topic of their essay during the course.

Admission requirements

Applicants must be PhD Students. Applicants who belong to the PhD program at the Department of Sociology at Lund University have priority.