About Us
From left to right: Valerie Chepp, Lester Andrist, and Paul Dean
The Sociological Cinema is edited and published by Valerie Chepp, Paul Dean, and Lester Andrist, a team of three public sociologists. As graduate student colleagues and close friends in the Sociology Department at the University of Maryland, we launched this site in September 2010 as a way to facilitate using popular culture and video to teach and learn about sociology.
The idea of The Sociological Cinema came to us over the course of several conversations in which we repeatedly found ourselves discussing our use of video clips in the classroom. While teaching we found that videos were highly effective at illustrating course concepts and theories, supplementing analyses found in course texts, and keeping students more engaged. At the same time, we were each teaching new prep courses and had many other competing demands, so we commiserated over the time-consuming nature of finding useful video clips to show our students. Then, suddenly, the idea hit us—“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a website for sociology instructors that tagged video clips by sociological themes so instructors could easily search and find clips appropriate for various lecture topics?” Since then, we have committed ourselves to creating precisely that kind of resource and locating it here on The Sociological Cinema.
Awards and Honors
Authors Chris Caldeira and Joan Ferrante wrote a web review of The Sociological Cinema in Teaching Sociology (vol 40, p.191).
March 2012 |
Following MERLOT's review of The Sociological Cinema, they awarded us the 2012 Classics Award for Sociology. The editorial board acknowledged us for making an "exceptionally valuable contribution...to advancing teaching and learning within the discipline."
February 2012 |
In December we had the honor of being Norton Sociology's featured sociologists of the month!
December 2011 |
India based newspaper The Sunday Guardian featured a review of The Sociological Cinema in its "Young & Restless" section.
June 2012 |
Contact Us
We'd love to hear from you! Please let us know what you think of our site, how it might be improved, or report any website issues to this address:
thesociologicalcinema <at> gmail.com
A Note of Thanks
We would like to thank the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland for providing the financial support and guidance necessary for getting this project off the ground. We would also like to thank the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Maryland for their continued support of our website and our own teaching. However, note that the views expressed on this site are solely those of site contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institutions affiliated with the University of Maryland.
