Welcome to the
Department of Sociology at Brandeis University
The Brandeis Department of Sociology is a distinguished small department that has nurtured a distinctive culture and has produced nearly two hundred Ph.Ds. since the founding of the graduate program in the early 1960s (see selected listing for each substantive area). Its faculty and graduates over the years have done innovative, often pathbreaking work in the discipline, and their engaged scholarship has influenced the formation of significant movements and policies for democratic change. Its founding traditions of European theorizing and "Chicago School" field studies have been continually enriched with feminist and other critical theoretical approaches, as well as through comparative institutional analyses in a globalizing world. While the department offers a range of methods, including historical, quantitative and comparative, the program has specialized in qualitative analysis. In addition to theory and methods, the department currently focuses especially on three substantive areas: Gender and Feminist Studies, Sociology of Health and Illness, and Politics and Social Change.
The department participates in several graduate joint degree programs. These include recently developed joint Ph.D. programs in Sociology and Social Policy with the nationally known Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis, and in Sociology and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. We also have a joint MA program with Women's and Gender Studies. On the undergraduate level, the department participates in numerous interdisciplinary programs including Women's and Gender Studies; Health: Science, Society and Policy; International and Global Studies; Peace Studies; Legal Studies; and Latin American Studies.
Currently our community has 11 faculty members, approximately 12-16 graduate students in residence (first three years of graduate school), another 25-30 or so who are post-residence, and about 175 undergraduate concentrators. The department is located in its own building on the Brandeis campus, Pearlman Hall. We encourage students and faculty alike to combine rigorous intellectual analysis with collaborative learning and social engagement in the context of building a culture based on mutual respect and shared public work within and beyond the walls of the department and the university.
Brandeis is approximately 20 minutes by car and commuter rail from Cambridge, and participates in the Boston-area graduate consortium of universities. This provides students with access to courses in other sociology departments, ongoing activities at a variety of research institutes with which our faculty are affiliated, as well as teaching, research and consulting opportunities beyond those funded by the department. Our advanced graduate students have regularly taught at Harvard, Tufts, Northeastern, Boston College, and the myriad of other smaller liberal arts colleges in the Boston metropolitan area.
The deadline date for graduate admissions is January 15. We invite all interested individuals to browse our website to find out more about our programs, faculty, and courses. If you have specific inquiries about the graduate program beyond what you find here, please e-mail our graduate secretary, Elaine Brooks (brooks@brandeis.edu), or call her at (781) 736-2631.