Sociology and Anthropology

Activities and Student Reflections

Students have numerous opportunities to participate in activities outside of the classroom, such as in the student-organized Sociology Society, the International Sociology Honor Society (Alpha Kappa Delta), and in regional sociological and anthropological conferences.

SASSAFRAS
Sociological Anthropological Sisterhood: Scholar Activists for Reshaping Attitudes at Spelman

Sociology & Anthropology Student Reflections

Senior Internships

Majors are encouraged to enroll for an internship during their senior year, during the semester they are not writing their sociology thesis. The internship provides opportunities to work with a department or agency and apply sociological knowledge to real-life situations. Each student who enrolls for the internship is expected to work fifteen (15) hours a week in the agency where she is placed and to complete assigned reports and a research project for the sociology department. Upon successful completion of the internship, the student will earn four (4) hours credit. For more details on the internship, see the department chairman.

Off-Campus Study

Sociology and Anthropology majors are strongly encouraged to explore as many experiences as possible that will prove to be academically challenging and fulfilling. As Sociology and Anthropology majors study different cultures and communities in the classroom, the opportunity to fully immense oneself in a different culture through the study abroad or domestic exchange programs should become a consideration. Sociology and Anthropology majors can study at institutions in England, France, Spain, Japan, the Dominican Republic, the West Indies, Zimbabwe, and Senegal among other countries. Students interested in remaining in the United States but are interested in study in a different social and cultural environment are encouraged to consider domestic exchange as an option. Students interested in the domestic exchange option can study at a number of institutions including Babson, Bryn Mawr, California at San Diego, Claremont, McKenna, Connecticut, Dartmouth, Douglas, Grinnell, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, and others.

SASSAFRAS
Sociological Anthropological Sisterhood: Scholar Activists for Reshaping Attitudes at Spelman

Mission

A collective whose spheres of action and insight include ourselves as scholar-activists, our campuses and our communities, both, local and global, SASSAFRAS aims to be a dynamic force of empowerment and transformation in these three spheres, as opposed to channels of empty rhetoric and upholders of token progress.

Purpose

A collective whose spheres of action and insight include ourselves as scholar-activists, our campuses and our communities, both, local and global, SASSARAS aims to be a dynamic force of empowerment.

We recognize the long history of people who have treaded a path through the wilderness of injustice before us.  We also recognize that the time and place in which we live is like no other.  We recognize our “privilege” to be situated in an academic institution that, though it is officially for women of African descent, has in many ways allied itself with the power elite in this country. 

SASSFRAS aims to be an ally with the working poor, women, children, and other disenfranchised groups by both educating ourselves on the plight of our kindred, and by working with them to transform the current conditions of our lives. 

Our methods include internal and external practices such as, the Art of Questioning: critically analyzing patterns of thought and behavior that we recognize in ourselves and in society, and the Transformation of Theory into Action: creatively applying our insights into our own lives and presenting them as alternatives to the larger community through rallies, mobilizations, forums and speakOuts.  In addition, an essential component of what we do is to network in solidarity with other groups and individuals, instead of to work separate in isolation.

We do not aim to build bridges, but rather to burn them down and learn how to fly across abysses that have separated the struggles of all people—to be truly one in our collective struggles to inhabit our lives with purpose and creativity.

When asked whether we are striving to be “cute or courageous?”---to live “comfortably or courageously?”---we hollA COURAGEOUS! The time is now.