Course Guide for Intro to Sociology

This Course Guide is in progress and will be updated as I have time.

Disclaimer: If you’re thinking about writing a course guide.  I totally overdid it on this one!  It doesn’t have to be nearly this extensive.

Course Guide for
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
(last updated 5/2012)

Developed by Gwen Sharp
Nevada State College

C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination

Intersection of biography and history as illustrated by:

• Year of birth and life success
• Kids’ exposure to technology
• Baby naming practices and media trends
• Other historical trends in baby names

“the capacity for astonishment is made lively again”

• The background of “Scotch” tape
• Applying the anthropological lens to “dark, mysterious Austria”

Karl Marx/Marxist analysis

• Marxist analysis of current economic crisis
• Invisibility of workers

Emile Durkheim

• The dangers of the ecological fallacy: measuring “sin” statistically

[Because the course guide has gotten to be so long, I’m putting the rest of it after the jump.]

Symbolic Interactionism

• Disguising the gift of money
• Power of images in the environmental movement
• The power of words
• Pre-Nazi uses of the swastika

Culture

Variation and the “Culture vs. Human Nature” Argument

• BBC trailer illustrates amazing cultural diversity across time/space
• Cultural variation in cognitive perception
• Cross-cultural similarities and differences in combat rations
• Cultural variation in visual communication: the color of postal systems
• Perceptions of Spam in the U.S. and Korea
• Cultural variation in the placebo effect
• Cultural differences in acceptable motives for panhandling

Symbols

• Hyperreality and the Statue of Liberty stamp

Language

• Mapping U.S. accents
• Gender and the social construction of sound: name endings
• Changes in language
  • Language and the changing meaning of symbols
  • Adapting Navajo language to new technologies
  • The changing meaning of “gay”
• Words and power
  • Apostrophes, technology, language standardization, and social change
  • Grammar and power
  • Defining “Standard English”
  • Thank the military for the fact that you can still speak English
  • George Carlin and the 7 words you can’t say
• Words, euphemisms, and power
  • The power of words
  • “Terrorism” vs. “militarism”
  • “Sexist” vs. “traditional” views
  • The Daily Show on euphemisms and re-branding war
  • Euphemism in tampon ads

Norms

• Doing Nothing: an experiment in norm breaking
• Variation in audience behavior on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
• The norms of playing (American) football

Culture Shock

• Late-night coffee in China

Socialization

• Babies mimicking conversational norms
• Toddler illustrating socialization into norms of religious worship
• Young girl perfectly recreates Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video
• The nature-vs-nurture debate: the brains of sociopaths

Gender Socialization

• Old Suzy Homemaker ad: girls can be the queen of their homes
• Teaching girls that housework is fun
• Anita Sarkeesian on gendered toy advertising
• Comparing Barbie and G.I. Joe
• Toys and job segregation: doctors vs. nurses and pilots vs. pilot assistants
• More examples of gendered toys
• School punishes 4-year-old boy for having shoulder-length hair
• The pink vs. blue divide made overwhelmingly visible
• Cartoon on Halloween costumes and socialization into sexiness
• Examples of boys’ and girls’ Halloween costumes
• Video on “girl culture”

Deviance and Crime

Social Construction of Deviance and Crime

• Socially constructing social problems
• Messy or sick? Framing “hoarding”
• Are clotheslines eyesores or eco-friendly?
• Framing alcohol consumption: morality and patriotism in pro- and anti-Prohibition campaigns
• Unintended consequences of Prohibition
• Prohibition-era prescriptions for medicinal uses of alcohol
• Drug policy: level of harm doesn’t indicate which substances will be banned
• Old medicinal products containing cocaine and opium
• Tobacco-themed candy
• George Carlin’s “7 Words You Can’t Say on Television” routine
• State laws regulating marriage between cousins
• Framing deviance: two kids go on joy rides; one’s a little cutie, the other’s a criminal
• Managing stigma with the “Men of Mortuaries” calendar

Theories of Crime and Deviance

• 1902 guide to discerning moral character from physical appearance

The Criminal Justice System

• Maps of NYC murders illustrate demographic patterns of risk
• 1 in 31: overview of the U.S. prison population
• International comparison of imprisonment rates
• Are we imprisoning people for the right reasons?
• What crimes are we arresting people for?
• Harm-reduction approaches to regulating unwanted behavior
• Race and the criminal justice system
  • Stephen Fry on disparities in the U.S. prison system
  • Post-high school pathways of young men of color
  • The “youth control complex”: stigmatizing and criminalizing young men of color
  • African American boys discuss their distrust of the police
  • Racial bias in jury selection
  • Racial disparities in prison sentences
  • % of children with a parent in prison, by race
  • The death penalty and race of the victim
  • Map of African American felon disenfranchisement
• The realities of overcrowded California prisons
• Cutting resources for prison educational programs
• Fate of prisoners during Hurricane Katrina
• Private prisons, lobbying, and Arizona’s immigration law
• U.S. public support for the death penalty
• The impacts of a criminal record
  • Devah Pager discusses her study on race, a criminal record, and job prospects
  • Criminal background checks and the long-term effects of a criminal record
  • Where can sex offenders live?

Stratification/Social Class

Global Inequality

• Hans Rosling on global poverty, 1970-2005
• Is it still useful to describe nations as “developed” or “undeveloped”?
• International comparison of levels of inequality
• Comparison of intergenerational social mobility
• Images of where children sleep
• Demographic transitions and addressing poverty in Africa
• Representations of African poverty
• Depicting India: the “Slumdog shooting technique”
• Privilege and poverty in Vogue India

U.S. Economic Inequality

• Income and wealth inequality
  • Interactive graph of social class and mobility: where do you fall?
  • Changes in U.S. inequality and tax rates
  • Illustrations of income/wealth inequality
  • Interactive graph of historical income gains: who got all the income growth?
  • The great income divergence
  • Growth in finance workers’ compensation over time
• The long-term impacts of periods of unemployment
• Changes in labor union membership
• Measuring poverty
  • 2009 poverty demographics
  • Poverty line undercounts the poor
  • Economic survival vs. economic security
• The “precariat”: the new working class and economic vulnerability
• The working poor at Disneyland
• Map of rural poverty
• Map of food stamp use
• Race and class
  • Racial breakdown in U.S. income, 1967-2010
  • Race, education, and earnings
  • Growing racial wealth gap
  • Differences in Blacks’ and Whites’ downward mobility
  • Mary Patillo on the Black middle class
• The Great Recession
  • Overview of household experiences of the recession
  • Education and income
  • Black and White job losses
  • Length of unemployment
  • Unemployment by occupation
  • Map of the foreclosure crisis
  • Foreclosures and the problem of the duplex
• Measuring the U.S. homeless population

Capitalism, Socialism, and Public Discourse

• Video: Americans greatly underestimate level of U.S. inequality
  • Here’s what they assume the wealth distribution looks like
• U.S. beliefs about social mobility
• Elizabeth Warren: no one in a capitalist society gets rich entirely on their own
• Jon Stewart on “class warfare”
• Public perceptions of class conflict
• Gerald Allen Cohen on capitalism
• Hidden beneficiaries of government programs
• 1948 pro-capitalism cartoon
• Target’s anti-union video for employees
• What have unions ever done for us? Oh, right…
• Race, gender, and efforts to divide and conquer the labor movement
• Presenting poor parents as negligent, bad parents
• Trivializing homelessness: “hobo parties”
• Glamorizing homelessness on America’s Next Top Model
• Socialization into capitalism: The Landlord’s Game, the model for Monopoly
• Representing class
  • Toyota ad: people who drive old cars are  pathetic losers
  • The complacency of the middle class
  • Devaluing hospitality workers: they’re like snack food in a vending machine
  • Romanticizing the working class: Levi’s mocks “men in suits”
  • Masculinity and class in a Ford ad
  • Baltimore’s Honfest
  • Old money vs. new money in Smirnoff ads
  • Old money is old-fashioned
  • Homeless chic on the runway
  • Vintage ad associates Skoal with the aristocracy
  • Sesame Street “I Am Somebody” segment with Jesse Jackson: normalizing welfare recipients
  • Race, class, and skin color in the movie Precious
  • Representing Appalachia
  • A look into the world of private plane travel
  • “Above it all”: homeownership and class privilege
  • Rolex ad: “Class is forever”
  • Representing upper-class luxury in ads
  • Depicting class in 1960s Cadillac ads
  • Evoking class with literature in Breguet watch ad
  • Women as prizes for economically successful men

Impacts of Inequality

• PlaySpent challenges players to make it through a month as a low-income worker
• Social class and life expectancy
• Inequality and health
• Income and exposure to environmental toxins
• Education, income, and physical fitness
• Income and SAT scores
• The mental burden of a lower-class background
• Pittsburgh is “Most Livable City”…but for whom?
• Class and access to neighborhood playgrounds
• Class and conflicts over public transportation
  • Marginalizing bus riders
  • Conflicts over bus stop locations: keeping “intimidating” people out of downtown Columbus
• Regulating public space to exclude the homeless

Race/Ethnicity

• 2010 Census maps of U.S. racial/ethnic populations
• International comparison of race on Censuses
• Interactive maps of U.S. racial/ethnic distributions
• Changing demographics of U.S. electorate
• Happiness trends for African Americans and Whites

Social Construction of Race/Ethnicity

• Tim Wise on the invention of race
• Colonial-era constructions of apes, Whites, and Blacks
• Race and ethnicity in the U.S. Census, 1790-present
• Illustrating the social construction of race
• Black and White twins and the social construction of race
• Jennifer Lee on the social construction of race
• What does “Black” and “White” look like, anyway?: President Obama and his grandpa
• Optional ethnic identities
• Rates of interracial marriage
• Asymmetry in interracial marriage
• Asian Americans and interracial marriage
• Age and support for interracial dating
• Jennifer Lee on the increasingly complex U.S. racial/ethnic landscape
• Nazi racialization of the Jews
• Racializing pit bulls

Immigration/Assimilation

• English acquisition among immigrants to U.S.
• Interactive map of languages spoken in U.S.
• Ethnic enclaves, language, and Asian American unemployment
• Assimilation as a response to anti-German prejudice
• Poll: do immigrants work harder?

Stereotypes/Prejudice

• Children’s attitudes toward skin tone
• Kids on skin color and beauty
• 19th-century stereotypes of Irish Americans
• 19th-century stereotypes of African Americans
• Stereotyping Scots as cheap
• “Yellow peril” anti-Chinese imagery
• Race, perceptual biases, and the Police Officer’s Dilemma: Who would you shoot?
• Race, clothing, and bystanders’ perceptions of criminality
• “Looting” vs. “finding”: race and media descriptions of Hurricane Katrina
• Political affiliation and Whites’ perceptions of African Americans
• Jay Smooth on boundaries and appropriate interactions in a multicultural society
• Activity on stereotypes
• Effects of stereotype threat

Discrimination/Inequality

• Name-based racial discrimination in the labor market (also see anti-Muslim bias on French job market)
• Race/ethnicity and food production workers
• Life in World War II Japanese American internment camps
• Chris Rock on history: “White people have gotten less crazy”
• Maps of 2010 Census data on residential segregation
• 1934 Philadelphia redlining map
• Race and proximity to toxic release facilities
• Tim Wise on guilt vs. responsibility
• Color-blind racism
  • The problem with a “color-blind” approach to politics
  • “Color-blind” dress codes and discrimination
  • Dr. Laura illustrates rhetorical strategies of color-blind racism
  • CNN pundit: Obama winning means there’s no more racism in the U.S.
• Who intervenes when they see discrimination?

Cultural Representations

• Representing the “primitive” Native American
• Parody of Native cultural appropriation in marketing
• Native American sports mascots
• Being an African American graphic novel writer
• Hennessey Youngman on expectations of Black artists
• Demonizing Arabs and Muslims in comedy
• Representations of light vs. dark skin
  • Light skin as neutral
  • What counts as “nude” or “flesh” colored?
  • Lotion for “normal to darker” skin
  • Race in inFAMOUS2 video game
  • Dove ad
  • Aishwarya Rai Bachchan lightened on cover of Elle
  • Race, class, and skin color in the movie Precious
  • Racism in identity theft advertising
• Selling Asian feminine passivity: Cathay Airlines ad (also see the post about the Classy Asian Ladies dating site)
• Undifferentiated groups of Asians as props
• Advertising with the Eskimo
• Lack of African Americans on Friends
• Hypersexualization of Latino boys
• Conflating African American women with animals

Sex/Gender

Note: Mary-Nell Trautner has done an excellent job putting together a very thorough course guide for gender. I highly suggest you check out her guide when you’re putting together your gender section; I drew on her course guide when I was putting this suggestion together. Also, see my section on gender socialization above.

Social Construction of Gender and Gender Difference

• The social construction of sperm
• Exaggerating research findings of gender differences in infants
• Male breast reduction surgery
• Constructing and policing masculinity
  • Changing images of masculinity
  • Satirizing men’s hygiene products
  • C.J. Pascoe on homophobia as gender policing
  • Yankees fans mock Red Sox fans with homophobic song
  • Brut’s “Slap Me” game
• Gendered reactions to male and female nudity
• Beauty routines

Gender Inequality (also see the section below on the family)

• Status and well-being of U.S. women
• Portraying men as idiots reinforces patriarchy
• Overview of gender stereotypes
• In the workplace:
  • Women in high-tech jobs during World War II
  • Trends in married women’s paid labor-force participation
  • Women in Fortune 500 companies
  • Wal-Mart class action suit
  • Gap in science and tech jobs
  • Lifetime earnings gap
  • Mothers’ and fathers’ earnings
  • Wage gap by occupation
  • Pay gap by industry
  • Job stereotyping by U.S. government
  • International comparison of wage gap
  • Gender differences in work commutes
• International comparison of women in government
• International comparison of women and economic opportunity
• Differences in high school sports participation

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence

• CDCP report on sexual assault and intimate-partner violence
• Victim-blaming and domestic violence
• Normalizing sex with drunk women
• Girls don’t really mean it when they say “no”
• Brutalized women as entertainment
• Marketing security systems with female vulnerability

Cultural Representations

• Male as neutral
• Anita Sarkeesian on The Bechdel Test
• Resistance to objectifying ads
• International comparison of news coverage of women

The Family

Family Structure

• Trends in marital status, 1960-2010
• Andrew Cherlin on the declining dominance of marriage
• Regional differences in marriage rates
• Cohabitation trends in L.A.
• Divorce trends
• Data on stepfamilies
• Has the recession slowed the U.S. fertility rate?
• % of women not having children
• Age and childbearing: the graying of American moms
• Changes in ideal family size
• Children living with grandparents
• Trends in support for same-sex marriage
• Global recognition of same-sex marriage, as of 2010
• Individual rights vs. social/community frames supporting same-sex marriage

Family Leave Policies

• First-time mothers’ access to work leave
• International comparison of work-leave policies

Social Construction of the Family

• Idealizing the normative family
  • Visualizing the normative heterosexual lifecourse (and another example here)
  • Everyday heteronormativity
  • Stigmatizing single people, or compulsory coupling
  • Gender roles and the wedding planning industry
  • Socializing girls to identify with brides
  • Motherhood as women’s most “sacred birthright“
  • Fashion photo spreads present reversed gender roles as dangerous
  • Prioritizing men’s work lives, erasing women’s (and wives as auxiliary employees)
  • Cartoon about the “traditional” marriage
• Normalizing and medicalizing gendered marriage
• 1962 marriage textbook
• Representations of love and romance
• What are diamond engagement ring ads selling?
• The cultural politics of mothers’ choices
• Flyer tells women working at home allows them to be a “good mom”
• The Plunge website presents marriage as a regrettable state for men
• Are men really miserable when they’re married?
• Cultural representations of parenting
  • Mars Needs Moms presents dads as useless
  • Parenting roles in Life as We Know It
  • The rise of the “MILF”
• Changing constructions of childhood and parenting
  • Collegiate “practice babies” in Home Economics departments
  • Orphan trains in the 1800s
  • Child labor in early 1900s
  • The appeal of fake vintage images of sexist family life
  • Vintage ad normalizes angry, punishing father and comforting mother (more examples here)
  • Vintage Marlboro ads: cigarettes make women better mothers
  • 1967 ad: Ritalin gives moms extra pep!
  • Supervision, play, and expectations of intensive parenting
  • Zima “Mom My Ride” ad presents life of a modern mom
  • What are moms and dads like?
  • The social construction of the mothering instinct
  • Hyper-consumerism, the princess culture for girls, and modern parenting
  • Baby Couture magazine
  • Ad presents the highly structured modern version of childhood
• Rates of breastfeeding by race and education
• Map and charts of breastfeeding in U.S.

Unpaid Labor: Housework, Childcare, and Carework

• International comparison of gender and unpaid labor
• Gender gap in housework
• Interactive time-use graph
• Gender gap in leisure time
• Vintage Jello ad presents housework as exhausting and mind-numbing
• Normalizing housework and childcare as women’s responsibility
  • Sarah Haskins: cleaning products as women’s special friends
  • Public signs, stick figures, and images of parenting
  • Cleaning as mother-daughter bonding
  • Women find laundry so exciting!
  • If only: 1950s image of what housework would look like in 2000
  • Sarah Haskins: the “useless man” as a useful stereotype for men
  • Men are too stupid to cook even pre-packaged items
  • KFC gives moms a night off
  • Products liberate women from housework
  • Ads turn women’s empowerment into simple consumption options
  • Gendered parenting in ads
  • “My Child” doll socializes girls into mothering self-sacrifice
  • Preemie Cabbage Patch Kid doll teaches girls domestic martyrdom
• Race/ethnicity in ads for housecleaning services

Politics

• The difference between a democracy and a constitutional democracy
• Howard Zinn on the American Empire
• Historical global diffusion of various political-economic systems
• The problem with the phrase “third world”
• Banal nationalism: integrating patriotism into our everyday lives
• Geopolitics in first-person-shooter video games

Voting/Political Participation/Party Identification

• “George Orwell Animal Mall”: The middle class and political complacency (cartoon)
• Which nations have had female heads of state?
• Voting rights
  • 1915 political ad against giving women the right to vote in Massachusetts
  • Vintage postcards supported women’s suffrage
  • New efforts to restrict voting
• Historical trends in voting rates
• The changing racial/ethnic makeup of the electorate
• Video shows presidential voting patterns from 1920 to 2008
• How much do we care about presidential elections?
• Public confidence in various institutions: we really don’t like Congress
• Former members of Congress who now work as lobbyists
• Will Americans sign a petition to ban H2O?
• Elections/Campaigns
  • Eisenhower for President: one of the first TV political commercials
  • The Citizens United decision and outside spending on campaigns
  • Political contributions by corporations
  • Race and political campaigns: the infamous Willie Horton ad
  • Using racial resentment in political ads: Jesse Helms’s anti-affirmative action commercial
  • Playing on racialized fears in recent campaign ads
  • How cell phones skew polls
• Party identification affects how we interpret reality, whether we think the President could influence gas prices, and whether we attribute warmer weather to global warming
• Sarah Haskins on how politicians try to appeal to women (humor)
• Political affiliation and TV preferences
• Income and 2008 presidential voting patterns
• Characteristics associated with authoritarianism
• Explaining the rise of the Senate fillibuster
• Public opinion about major issues
  • The death penalty
  • Fewer Americans own guns, but more people support owning them
  • Abortion

Public Policy

• Taxes/budget
  • Various taxes as a percent of U.S. GDP
  • Historical comparison of top income tax brackets
  • What does a median income earner’s tax bill pay for?
  • Changes in federal spending, 1962-2011
  • Federal tax payments and allotments per state: who gives and who receives?
  • Americans think we spend much more on foreign aid than we actually do
  • All we really want to cut spending on is foreign aid
  • People in Denmark seem pretty happy about paying taxes
• Many beneficiaries of federal programs don’t see themselves as recipients
• Who benefits most from the mortgage interest deduction tax policy?
• Should the government pay poor people not to have children?
• Public policy and unintended consequences
  • The challenges of managing the wild horse population the American West
  • The unintended consequences of Prohibition

Activism/Protest/Social Movements

• Why do Latinos protest more than other groups?
• Framing/media coverage/discourse
  • George Lakoff on the power of metaphors
  • The power of images in the environmental movement
  • The 1968 Olympics and the “Angry Black Athlete”
  • The power, and danger, of graphs and charts in political discourse
  • Another example of the power of graphics in politics
  • Police actions increased media coverage of Occupy Wall Street movement
  • Occupy Wall Street and media coverage of the economy
  • Framing the image of campus security pepper-spraying UC-Davis students
  • Reframing the abortion debate as a racial issue
  • PETA tries to reframe fish as “sea kittens”
  • Tone of coverage of McCain and Obama
  • Sexism among political pundits
  • Portraying “radical groups” in campaign materials
  • Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity: Meta-discourses of politics
• The problems with “ethical consumption”
• What does it mean when unions hire non-union labor to picket?
• Problematic activist strategies
  • Opposing immigration with a pro-environment message
  • Sexualizing women for the environment and for animal rights
  • PETA encourages vegetarianism by mocking fat people
  • The problems with American Apparel ads
  • Appropriating Native American identities to make pro-environment arguments

War/Military

• The state’s monopoly on violence (cartoon)
• Cost of military spending
• International comparison of military spending
• % of U.S. troops stationed overseas
• Daily life at Kandahar air base
• Media coverage of waterboarding: is it torture?
• The history of nuclear bomb testing
• Medal of Honor: Presenting World War II as an all-White war
• Recruiting female Marines
• Propaganda/patriotism
  • Vintage film portrays  World War II Japanese-American interment camps positively
  • Gendering homefront war support
  • Encouraging personal sacrifice as part of the war effort

Religion

• Map of U.S. religious affiliations
• Income and education differences among U.S. religious groups
• Religious belief by income
• College students’ religiosity, by race
• Geographic variation in reported importance of religion
• Demographics of non-believers
• Global distribution of Muslim population

Religious Belief and Community

• Religion and imagined communities
• Christianity/The Protestant Reformation
  • Pagan roots of Christianity
  • The Evangelical habitus
  • The Protestant Revolution and Christmas gift-giving
  • Evangelical Christian men and perceptions of women’s bodies and modesty

Conflicts over the Role of Religion in Public Life

• Americans’ perceptions of various religious groups and atheists
• Demonizing atheists as “godless Americans”
• Map of requests to remove books from libraries
• Do crosses on public land inherently represent Christianity?
• Religion, the state, and birth control policy in the Philippines
• Anti-Muslim prejudice/discrimination
  • Anti-Muslim protest in Orange County
  • Evidence of anti-Muslim bias on French job market
  • Putting the “Ground Zero Mosque” in perspective
  • Website deconstructs stereotypes of Muslim clothing/appearance (and an example of Muslim women’s fashion)
  • Malaysian Muslim women discuss hijab

Health and Medicine

• Global death rates from pregnancy/childbirth or unsafe abortions
• Changes in U.S. food supply, 1970-2008
• Federal agricultural subsidies vs. nutritional recommendations
• Hans Rosling’s international comparison of wealth and life expectancy

The Social Construction of Health and Disease

• 1936 ad: smoke for your health
• Defining diseases are “psychiatric” vs. “neurological”
• 1973 Playgirl endorses “female circumcision”
• Social construction of social problems: actual hazards vs. public concern
• Product helps fatten up children

Medicalization

• Evolution of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
• Medicalizing messiness: the case of hoarders
• Medicalizing sexuality
• Anorexia: medicalizing self-starvation
• Increasing rates of births by Caesarean sections
• Vitamin beer and vitamin soda
• Do you have hypotrichosis?
• Map of global prevalence of male circumcision
• Historical look at popularity of male circumcision
• Is deafness a medical problem?
• There’s a pill for that!

Health, Disease, and Stigma

• Sensationalizing psychiatric prescription use
• Personifying danger: women as vectors of sexually-transmitted infections
• Stigmatizing obesity
  • The fit fat fight: refusing to acknowledge fat people can be healthy
  • 1967 British PSA on childhood obesity
  • Environmentalism promoted with anti-obesity metaphors
  • Does being “overweight” actually lead to earlier death?

Health and Inequality (also see the section on Impacts of Inequality in the Stratification/Social Class section above)

• Race and pre-term births
• Race and low-birth-weight babies
• Race and initiation of treatment for breast cancer
• Race and kidney failure
• Race, class, and childhood asthma rates
• Race and life expectancy of those with Down syndrome
• Care vacuums: where are nursing homes located?
• Gender and life expectancy
• Boys receive less sex education than girls
• Different approaches to teen sexuality: Dutch and U.S. teen pregnancy and STI rates
• Global map of exposure to fine particulate matter pollution

Health Care Access and Reform

• International comparison of health care spending and life expectancy
• Map of rising costs of health care and number of uninsured
• Woman dropped from health insurance after being raped
• Woman offered health insurance only if she gets herself sterilized
• The U.S. health care reform debate
  • Poll: who will benefit from health care reform?
  • Poll: Americans were really confused by what health care reform included
  • Age, income, and support for government spending to provide greater access to health care
  • Tim Wise on race and the health care reform debate
  • Pharmaceutical company lobbying

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