The Department Today
Tufts University began a new chapter in its academic history recently when the former Sociology and Anthropology Department became two separate departments: Department of Sociology and Department of Anthropology. Permission to separate granted recently by the Tufts Board of Trustees quietly ended a thirty-five year joint departmental arrangement. 

Presently, the two new departments – Anthropology and Sociology – remain in the same physical space in Eaton Hall, and for the time being share administrative personnel. We congratulate each other on many years together, remember with gratitude the fine scholars who helped to establish us over the past three decades, and look forward to an exciting future here at Tufts.
 

A Bit Of History
In 1970, the existing Tufts Department of Sociology hired an Anthropologist to teach a course. Over the next thirty years more anthropologists were added. Eventually as their numbers increased, anthropologists created and offered their own major in Anthropology, and began to manage a separate budget within the joint Sociology/Anthropology arrangement. In 2004 sociologists and anthropologists began talks that would eventually allow them to operate as separate autonomous departments.

Beginnings: 1915
The first Sociology courses offered at Tufts:
Introduction to Sociology; Social Problems; Sociology Seminar

Growth: New Courses
1921 – Community Organizations
1925 – Race Problems; Racial Immigration; Elements of Sociology
1943 – Sociology-the Study of Man
1945 – Cultural Anthropology and Field Work; Social Theory

The 1950s: A 'golden age' in social sciences at Tufts
1950 – Research Methods
1953 – Culture and Personality; Alcoholism; Apprenticeship in Sociological Research
1955 – Mass Communication
1956 – Cultures of North America, and of Oceania
1959 – Comparative Social Structure

In 1959 Assistant Professor Mary J. Cramer became the first woman professor in the department.

The 1960s: Work in Industrial (a Research Methods course made first mention of IBM data-processing equipment)
Physical Anthropology and Archaeology were taught as a separate course for the first time (1961)
New Courses in Sociology in the 1960s:
Culture and Social Systems
Juvenile Delinquency
Social Stratification
Contemporary Social Change
Contemporary Social Theory
Sociology of Law (1964)
Medicine and Population (1966)

In 1963 Assistant Professor Sylvia Sherwood became the 2nd woman professor of five Sociology Faculty.

Rapid Expansion: In 1967 the faculty grew from five to thirteen - 7 full-time instructors and six lecturers.
New Courses:
Complex Organizations
Occupations and Professions
Urban Sociology appeared
Social Organization
Deviance and Social Control
Independent Study
Racial and Ethnic Minorities (absent since 1933) returned
Crime and Delinquency
Bureaucracy and Modern Society
Class, Status and Social Mobility
Sociology of Education
Statistical Methods
Study abroad was initiated in Italy

The 1970s- Courses Focus on Social Movements
The Radical Orientation in Sociology
Sociology of Conflict and Collective Behavior
US Women
Contemporary Social Issues
Participant Observation and Field Research
Critical Sociology
Sociology of Sport
Social Policy
The Sociology of Mental Health.
An internship and colloquium in Urban Social and Environmental Policy later grew into a separate graduate program

Importance of Sociology to Tufts' interdisciplinary offerings
Community Health
Communications and Media Studies
Peace and Justice Studies
American Studies
Asian Studies
Women's Studies
Urban and Environmental Policy
International Relations

Sociological methods and perspectives remain essential to all of these as they make sense of life in the contemporary society.

Student Information

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Final Application Deadline for the 2007 corps: February 18, 2007
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