Welcome to the Yale Sociology Department

Sociology – the systematic study of social life and social transformation – is flourishing at Yale. In 1875, Yale professor William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) offered the first American course titled “Sociology.” Today’s department spans a wide array of areas and specialties, balanced with an emphasis on the core concepts, theory and methods of the discipline. Much is new since Sumner’s day, but the Yale department still offers an overarching vision of the field, its future, and its relationship to knowledge of our changing world.