This course will contrast popular images of gangs in the mass media with perspectives from social science.  It will consist of lectures Mondays and Wednesdays and discussion groups one additional day per week.

The text is the book authored by the instructor, People & Folks: Gangs, Crime , and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, available at the bookstore. Students are also required to purchase a collection of readings for the course, also available at the bookstore.

Students will do collective or individual projects in the discussion section, focusing on specific topics, like ìGang violence,î ìLatino Gangs,î ìFemale gangs,î  ìNews reporting on gangs,î or some such gang and/or media related topic. The projects will be presented to the entire class and will be graded on both substance (Did the presentation educate on gangs?) and technique (Was the presentation done in an interesting and creative way?). I encourage you to have fun in this project.  In lieu of participation in the research project, some students may be allowed to present 5 indepth ìcritique sheetsî of news articles which present a distorted, or particularly accurate picture of gangs. The students must use the knowledge gained in class to present a total of ten pages of critique of the 5 articles.

The 2nd week of class will be devoted to learning about library and world wide web resources on gangs.  The discussion sections will present opportuniies for students to discuss and deepen their understanding of the lectures and to do collective research and to present their information to the entire class.

There will be two exams (each worth 20% of your grade) and a final exercise (30%), plus a research presentation on gangs and/or the media (30%).  Attendance at lectures is not required, but those not attending class are unlikely to pass the exams, since lectures contain material not found in the texts.  Brief outlines of lecture notes will be published on the instructorís web site (www.uic.edu/~huk), but lectures contain more extensive and extemporaneous materials. We will use CourseInfo for conferencing and other course related matters. Access this program at http://courseinfo.uic.edu:88/. Log in with your netid and use your netid again as the password. Only students enrolled in this course have access to the site.  We will attempt at threaded discussion one week and allow you to do the discussion group through courseinfo, rather than coming to class.  Announcements will be posted on courseinf, as will an outline of lecture notes. But beware:   Exams are based on actual class lectures and discussions, not just what is on courseinfo. In other words, you have to come to class!

Attendance at discussion sections and participation in class will be rewarded with up to 5 points.  In other words, if you are close to an A or B (or C or D) we can push you up.  If you didnít attend discussion regularly or donít talk in class, donít complain if you are a half of point short of an A.  Some discussion sections are optional, particularly during the research phase of the class. The syllabus will be posted and updated on my web site. The www version of the syllabus will always be official.