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Disasters are fundamentally social events. This course will investigate how culture, inequality, social structure shape how people face disasters, how they respond and the ways in which they recover or fail to do so. How disasters lead to rapid social change will also be explored. Students will learn the foundations of sociology of disaster theory, will examine a number of case studies and will apply theory to the in-depth study of one event. Writing enhanced. Prerequisite: SOC131.

Course Objectives: By the end of the course, students should be able to: •	examine natural, technological and human-initiated disasters from a sociological perspective; •	understand conflict models and theories of social vulnerability; •	apply these theories to case studies of disasters; •	think critically about how social dynamics shape the ways people and communities prepare for, face and recover from disasters.

Required Texts:

Erikson, Kai. 1994. A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Fothergill, Alice. 2004. Heads Above Water: Gender, Class, and Family in the Grand Forks Flood. Albany: State University of New York Press. Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai T. Erikson. 2009. Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Additional required readings will be available electronically.

Course Requirements and Grading Criteria:

Readings: This course is organized around a set of readings that will be used to guide lectures and class discussions. The readings will also be used as a basis for the examinations and projects. Students are expected to complete all readings prior to the class period for which they are assigned. Not all reading topics will be discussed in the lectures, but you are still responsible for all of the material covered in the required readings. College courses are intense and it is imperative that you stay on schedule with the readings.