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Everything I Learned About Stereotypes I Learned on Facebook
Has your Facebook feed been overrun with witty & cute kittens? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explores how Internet memes can teach us about stereotypes. Internet memes are all over my...
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What Exactly Makes Merida “Brave”?
Why do people get married? Love, right? Maybe not. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how there are many reasons for marriage as illustrated in the film, Brave. Pixar finally released a film...
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Home Ownership is For Everyone
Stainless steel appliances. Granite counter tops. “Man-caves.” What’s not to love? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how fake or not, house hunting shows illustrate persistent class, race,...
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Environmentally Friendly Socialization
As sociologists we often encourage students to see the familiar as strange. That is, to look at boring, mundane, and unremarkable in your daily life with new eyes. Nothing is more unremarkable than...
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Make Eye Contact & Room for Someone Creepy
You are probably going to have to sit next to someone creepy if you travel on public transit long enough. All of us,however, try to avoid this by giving off unspoken cues to potential seatmates so they...
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Holiday or Work? Thanksgiving and Social Class
Is Thanksgiving a four-day weekend for everyone? What does social class have to do with how Thanksgiving is experienced? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explores how not only is Thanksgiving day...
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Sampling Pinterest
The criticisms of Pinterest can teach us about the importance of sampling. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explores how random sampling and convenience sampling contribute to our understanding of...
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Stratification on the Dance Floor: Prom Night in America
Prom may be a right of passage, but it is also a place where stratification is observed. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how stratification related to race and sexual identity are...
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Advertisers Needed A Hero “So God Made a Farmer”
In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains a few of the ways in which the American farmer is socially constructed using the recent Dodge Ram commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. She explores...
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How to be Social Even When You’re Alone
Do you do things like sleep or jog or read alone? Did you know that even when you do these things by or with yourself you are engaged in human social behavior? In this post, Sarah Nell explains the...
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How Adorable! Cultural Appropriation in the Scrapbook Industry
“I always wanted to decorate my memories with stereotypical imagery of a culture that is not my own from a country I’ve never visited.” Now I can. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath discusses recent...
View ArticleWhite Supremacy: Not Just Neo Nazis
White supremacy is often mischaracterized as only a person or group of people (e.g. Neo Nazis & the KKK), but thinking of white supremacy in this way hides too many people who are affected by it....
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On the Menu: Fried Cicadas, Hummus, and Guacamole
Bugs. They’re what’s for dinner? The foods we eat are a product of our culture and as our world becomes more interconnected we have seen the delicacies of one culture spill over into another. In this...
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Men & Clothes Age, but Women Stay Forever Young
In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explores how aging is portrayed in a fashion magazine to explore the norms of aging in popular culture. I picked up a copy of the August issue of Vogue at the...
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Dirty Women: The Gendering of Mud Runs
With event names like “Dirty Girl” and “Pretty Muddy,” women-only mud runs have quickly become a hot trend. The LoziLu Women’s Mud Run boasts themed obstacles in the course such as “Bad Hair Day,” “Tan...
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Why do People Pose Next to Dead Animals?
One way to “think like a sociologist” is to look at the unremarkable “normal” things of everyday life as if you’ve never seen them before. Put another way, sociology often asks you to look at the...
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“I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas…”
Does it snow where you live on Christmas? The likelihood of a white Christmas is not high, yet the pull of a white Christmas remains strong in our culture. In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains...
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Using Status Symbols & Cultural Capital to Show that You Belong
If you want to move up the social ladder and become wealthier, all you need is more money, right? Well, more money is a great place to start, but to rise in social class you will probably need to...
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Southerners Just Don’t Know How to Handle Snow!
On the Walking Dead zombies brought the apocalypse to Atlanta. Last week, a measly two inches of snow seemed to bring Atlanta to the verge of total collapse. In this post, Midwestern-native Stephanie...
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“Your Map is Racist” Here’s How
Can maps be racist? Aren’t maps just a reflection of reality? In this piece Nathan Palmer will show us how maps are actually a social construction and how they can lead us to think that anglo nations...
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