Sociology, PhD

Location(s): Main Campus

The graduate program in sociology fosters scholars who grapple with real-world crises and social injustice. This public sociology sensibility of our program reaches back nearly fifty years, when we became a nexus in a global network of scholars who devised world-systems analysis. World-systems analysis seeks to understand the origins of capitalism and its relationship to global inequality. Faculty and former students of the program have advanced our understanding of capitalism on many fronts including its intimate relationship with slavery and punitive or carceral states, its enduring legacies of racial inequality and looming ecological crisis, as well as its continuous role in re-shaping labor and migration.

Our faculty and students both critically engage with world-systems analysis and draw inspiration from other lineages which make similar epistemological critiques of the social sciences, but which focus more on the social dynamics of race, gender and sexuality. These lineages include post- and decolonial theory, intersectional feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, and world-ecology. Promising scholars who come to the graduate program will have an opportunity to pursue political economy and historical studies of capitalism, critical labor and migration studies, critical carceral and surveillance studies, historical sociology and critical studies in power and the politics of resistance and forms of self-organization and autonomy.

Our program is also distinct from most sociology programs in its global breadth, historical bent, and transdisciplinarity. While most sociology departments focus on the US, our faculty expertise covers nearly every region of the world. Many faculty study transnational processes such as migration and translocal diasporic worlds as well as global systems such as capitalism as world-ecology. Our program attracts faculty and students from around the world. Our department offers graduate students a uniquely transdisciplinary learning environment. Our faculty include historians, geographers, anthropologists and political scientists along with sociologists. This reflects our department’s history as a place where scholars critiqued social scientific inquiry as having been artificially cordoned off from historical research. Today, our department draws together faculty with a shared appreciation for historical research as well as ethnographers from across the disciplines.

Students considering the program should carefully note the department’s thematic strengths, faculty breadth and research interests, and course and program requirements.

Admission Requirements

Applicants are expected to have a superior academic record and an informed interest in pursuing advanced studies in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University. The program is as demanding intellectually as it is flexible structurally, and adequate preparation is indispensable. Nonetheless, prior work in a department of sociology is not essential. Admissions are based on a variety of criteria. Students must submit appropriate samples of their writing that they consider indicative of their scholarly promise. Students are also asked to submit a carefully framed statement that addresses why they specifically want to come to Binghamton and spell out the directions they anticipate developing in their work while here. In addition, letters of recommendation, transcripts and appropriate standardized test scores (TOEFL/IELTS/PTE Academic) are required. Experience suggests, however, that while test scores are helpful, the writing samples, along with the statement and letters of recommendation, are better indicators of potential for success in the program.

Students who are not citizens or permanent residents of the United States must also submit proof of English proficiency (such as TOEFL, IELTS or PTE Academic scores). International students who have received a college or university degree from an institution in the United States, United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or some Canadian provinces are not required to submit TOEFL, IELTS or PTE Academic scores. Additionally, all international students must provide immigration forms guaranteeing financial support.

Admission information, including electronic forms, can be found online. A personal interview is not required, although the department encourages and can help coordinate campus visits. The department only admits applicants for the doctoral degree. Applicants should feel free to send questions by email to the director of graduate studies or any member of the faculty specializing in research areas in which the applicant may also have an interest. For further information, see the faculty listings on the department’s website.

Completed applications are due Jan. 1 for consideration for departmental funding.

Program Requirements

The department offers coursework, supervised independent study and research guidance with the aim of facilitating the intellectual formation of scholars. Although the tripartite organization of the degree into course requirements, acquisition and demonstration of expertise in fields, and the dissertation, is similar to other PhD programs, each is structured in a unique way.

Course Requirements

Each student’s program is worked out in consultation with the director of graduate studies and one or more faculty advisors in light of the student’s preparation and interests. Ordinarily, a first-year program consists of six courses, including four of the five core courses offered by the department. During the second year, the student completes remaining course requirements by taking advanced seminars and a course on writing for publication and has the possibility of taking an independent study course (SOC 697) arranged by agreement with a selected faculty advisor. The PhD degree requires completion of 12 courses if entering with a BA or nine courses if entering with an Department approved MA. After completing 42 units of graded coursework, students who enter with a BA may petition for the award of an en route Masters of Arts Degree.

A second group of special, advanced topics courses are also regularly offered. When students become course complete, they are required to register for and attend a writing practicum which supports them in completing their advanced studies.

Core Courses

The Core Courses include the following:

Advanced Studies

In advanced studies, students concentrate their work in developing a paper of publishable quality, demonstrating a high level of competence in an area of inquiry and in developing a dissertation-research project. The actual program of studies is jointly worked out by the student and a study committee chosen by the student.

Students will demonstrate their competence in the craft of writing scholarship for publication by formulating, researching, writing, presenting and revising a paper that they could develop into a publishable paper during their second year of the program. The aim of the second-year paper is to help students begin the process of writing for publication early on in graduate school. The paper should formulate a compelling rationale for the project, be it an empirical puzzle or theoretical debate, elaborate a well-reasoned argument and support it with in-depth or systematically gathered evidence. To develop a publishable paper, students will form a study committee of two sociology faculty members, one as chair. Students will identify their chair by the end of the second semester and formulate a proposal for the paper by the start of the third semester. To support them in completing this paper, students will take a course on writing for publication during their second year. The aim of the course will be to orient students to the peer review process, familiarize students with a variety of forms that published scholarship can take and support students in completing the initial draft of the research paper. Students submit the paper to their committee for final evaluation by the end of the fourth semester.

Students will demonstrate their competence in a field or area of intellectual inquiry (whether established or newly defined by the student) by successful completion and defense of an area paper or a critical literature review by the end of their fifth semester. The area paper or critical literature review typically comprises 1) a critical review of the literature (debates, theories, research methods and practices, and matters of generally accepted fact, along with a mapping of the origins, trajectories and inter-relations among these diverse approaches, as relating to a particular theoretical area of inquiry; 2) an indication of one’s own understanding and theoretical approach to the debates in this field; and 3) how one would move forward in his/her own later research and teaching as relating to this field. This area should be discussed and developed in close consultation with one’s committee chair, with whom students often take an independent study in their last semester of coursework, and with at least one other committee member. Students must form their committee of two faculty members and a reader by the end of their fourth semester. Demonstration of competence in an area is based on the successful oral defense of the area paper or critical literature review, presentation of syllabi, research papers and other supporting material, and an indication of how one’s future research and teaching activities will be informed by one’s work in this area. See the Graduate Handbook for further discussion of the area paper.

Dissertation and PhD

After successfully passing the second-year paper and the examination of their area of inquiry, students form a PhD dissertation committee, to be comprised of at least three persons, including a chair and at least two other members, one of which must be from among the department faculty. The chair of the dissertation committee must be a regular tenured or tenure-track member of the Department of Sociology. In certain circumstances, a member of the committee may be non-tenure track (e.g., international adjunct, visiting professor), with permission of the director of graduate studies and the Graduate School. Within six months of demonstrating their competency in an area of inquiry, typically by the end of the sixth semester, the student must submit a dissertation prospectus (proposal) which must then be approved by members of the dissertation committee. The filing of the approved prospectus confirms official admission to PhD candidacy and ABD (all-but-dissertation) status.

The department recommends that the University grant the PhD in sociology when the student has fulfilled the University residence and doctoral research requirements; passed an oral examination (“the defense”) administered by the University on the topic of the dissertation; and deposited with the University a copy of the dissertation approved by the examining committee.

Additional Information About the Program

Funding

A small number of department assistantships are awarded each year to entering students. Awards are highly competitive. In arriving at a decision on admission and funding, the department pays primary attention to an applicant’s scholarly promise as indicated by submitted written work, the statement of purpose and past academic record as indicated in transcripts and letters of recommendation. Normally, a student that meets the benchmarks for making good progress in the program remains eligible for funding for any additional years of funding indicated in their initial offer of admissions or for departmental support in securing funding from elsewhere in the University. The department has a limited number of additional teaching assistantships available for more advanced students. Those students who have met the benchmarks for normal progress in the program will be eligible to apply for such assistantships. Graduate assistant/teaching assistant awards come with a benefits package. For further information, contact the Office of Human Resources.

For more information on the Sociology PhD program, please refer to the Sociology Department website. To apply to the Sociology PhD program, please visit the University Admissions website.