American Myths: Culture and Why We Believe

Catalog description

A grade of ‘C’ or better in SOC 101 or SOC 102 Myths are the connective tissue that binds societies together. We often spend our days—and in some cases our entire lives— unaware that these stories we use to guide our lives are fictions that could have been told differently. Cultural sociology embraces the meanings embedded in these myths as a fundamental cause of human behavior and views their interpretation as a primary means to understanding the social world. In this class, we explore the this peculiar field of social science as it has played out over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries and examine the cultural structures that lead us voluntarily to think, feel, and act in certain ways but not others, often without ever knowing why. Semester(s) Offered: Offered as needed