Teaching

Dr. Epstein's favorite classes to teach are courses on the Sociology of Culture and Cultural Sociology, as well as courses on the Social Construction of Identity. Since she teaches graduate students, she employs a seminar approach which entails students reading various studies and theoretical issues and then having class discussions on the material. This past semester Dr. Epstein taught a graduate course on the Sociology of Culture, and the description of this course is as follows:

The theme of culture and empirical work on culture has
grown in the last 20 years. Such topics as cultural practices and
processes, symbolic and classificatory systems, repertoires of action, of
contention, and webs of significance, and cultural structures are topics
comprising the “cultural turn.” in sociology. We shall read the work of scholars
who have conceptualized these topics, sought research sites and methodologies
for exploring them in such arenas as music, art, fashion, communications,
celebrity culture, sexuality, conceptions of gender distinction and
politics. For example, we shall read DiMaggio and Diana Crane on the
institutionalization of cultural categories, Zerubavel on cognitive
sociology, Alexander on myths and narratives, Mary Douglas and (Alexander) on the sacred and profane, Bourdieu on cultural capital, Brubecker on groups and ethnicities, Geertz on thick description and a webs of significance, Schwartz and Wagner-Pacifici on contested meanings of memorials, Lamont on symbolic
boundaries and status, Friedland on religious ideology and kinship, and Kunda on
corporate cultures. (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Sociology/pages/courses.html)

Other than this information, there is not much that can be found in regards to specific courses that she teaches or has taught in the past.

Information from:

Cynthia Fuchs Epstein (e-mail)

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Sociology/pages/courses.html