Tony Grist
Fall at Wake Forest University means many things, but in my life for the past decade it has meant teaching my “Sociology of Guns” seminar. This semester I will be teaching the course for the 10th consecutive academic year, dating back to the fall of 2015.
I am likely to take a temporary or permanent hiatus from the course after this year, so if you are or have ever been interested in the class, please take advantage of these materials.
[1] A PDF of the syllabus for this semester. I am focusing the course this semester on engaging and updating James Wright’s “Ten Essential Observations on Guns in America.” What has changed and what has not changed in the nearly 30 years since this essay was published? This is a major question my students and I will try to answer.
When I posted my syllabus for Fall 2015, I observed:
When I first began studying and blogging about guns in 2012, I wrote: “Jumping into the gun culture as a complete novice is like jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim.”
Putting this syllabus together made me realize that I am still wading around in the shallow end of the pool. There is far more that could be covered, from far more angles, than can be covered in 150 minutes a week for 15 weeks. So, some hard choices had to be made.
Nine years later, I can swim in the deep end of the gun studies pool, but it remains true that choices have to be made as to what to include and what to exclude given time constraints.
[2] A page containing links to dozens of posts from the first 9 years of the course, which I will continue to update over the course of this semester.
[3] A brief description of the course and my approach published in The Conversation’s Uncommon Courses series. That piece centered the student field trip to the gun range, which is certainly the most remarked-on — and the most important — aspect of the class.
Our gun range field trip took place this past Tuesday on the first day of class. Stay tuned for blog posts and “Light Over Heat” videos on that experience in the coming weeks.
If you would like to financially support my student field trip to the gun range, or my efforts to educate people and enrich conversations about guns, please visit my Buy Me a Coffee patron page.
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