Areas of Specialization
Criminology
Criminology is the study of ‘crime’ — including the study of harm, what gets treated as harm, what gets criminalized, and responses to ‘crime’ and harm. Our critical perspective on criminology delves into patterns of all these things by race, class, and gender, and asks how justice is and could be envisioned and achieved.
Critical Race & Ethnic Studies
The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies area within the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville offers a variety of courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare students for understanding the issues of race and ethnicity in the twenty-first century.
Environmental Sociology
Global warming. Depletion of the ozone layer. The export of First World waste to Third World nations. The razing of tropical forests for cattle grazing. The loss of biodiversity. The premature extinction of the human species. Each day in newspapers, magazines, radio and television news reports, and in various Internet sources, environmental issues are discussed, debated, and hotly contested.
Political Economy and globalization
Political economy generally explores the production, allocation, and consumption of goods and services, including the role the state plays in these processes. The sociological approach to the study of political economy draws upon distinctive theoretical traditions, employs distinctive methods of analysis, and addresses distinctive subject matter.