Open Educational Resources

 

Date of this Version

3-2021

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The syllabus attached below was prepared (on a manual typewriter!) at the invitation of the Chair of the Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for a proposed fourweek mini-course to be taught during January 1982. Whereas I was then a sociology teaching assistant and as such was invited to submit a proposal, it subsequently developed that tenured faculty members exerted their right (under departmental by-laws) for priority consideration for all teaching appointments (and subsequent payment) and, thus, my proposed course was not only “bumped” but also languished unfunded and untaught. Having recently encountered the syllabus among my papers, I still think — forty years later — that the course was a good idea. If updating the proposed syllabus for students today, I would focus more strongly on games as socially-constructed, institutionalized patterns and make the following additions to the assigned readings: ...

This syllabus is offered for the record as an exemplar of an immersive approach for quickly introducing students new to the social sciences to relatively sophisticated concepts with which they can be expected to have at least a modicum of personal experience in the everyday world.

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