Welcome

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.

News

May 26, 2023
Citation from the jury: “This historically rich, theoretically informed book offers a new history of the making of the modern Middle East in the period 1911 to 1934, from...
May 22, 2023
The James Andrew Haas Prize is a awarded each year to that senior whose breadth of intellectual achievement, strength of character, and fundamental humanity shall be adjudged...
May 5, 2023
Rourke O’Brien has been awarded the 2023 Lex Hixon ’63 Prize, given annually by Yale College for teaching excellence in the social sciences. It comes with a stipend and...
April 28, 2023
We are pleased to welcome Ramina Sotoudeh. She will be joining us as an Assistant Professor of Sociology with a secondary appointment in Statistics & Data Science, on...
April 28, 2023
It is our pleasure to announce that Philip V. McHarris has been awarded 21st Century Dissertation Prize.   Philip McHarris’ dissertation, High Rise: Poverty, Policing, and...