Learning Transformations

This Spring 2011 (IX, 2) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, entitled "Learning Transformations: Sociological Imaginations from First Year Seminars and Beyond," includes nine UMass Boston undergraduate student papers: seven from two sections of the first year seminar, Soc. 110G: "Insiders/Outsiders," one from the course "Youth and Society" (Soc. 201), and another from the course "Elements of Sociological Theory" (Soc. 341), all taken during the 2010-2011 academic year at UMass Boston. The authors cultivate their sociological imaginations of the link between their personal troubles and broader public issues by exploring topics such as: difficulties with writing; struggles with overachievement; adolescent depression; pessimism; obsession with body self-image; pornography and love; drunken driving; feminine identity formation; and coping with personal traumas amid parental, sibling, and societal dysfunctions. The editor points to the significance of publishing undergraduate scholarships of learning and their sociological self-studies, highlighting the extent to which the origins of the present journal entitled "human architecture" can itself be traced to his own "student selves" and early undergraduate education in architecture at U.C. Berkeley, and specifically to a seminar he took with his undergraduate teacher and advisor, the late "professor of design" and renowned painter, Jesse Reichek. Contributors include: Thanh D. Pham, Iris M. Rivas, Melissa Mejia, Ryan J. Canillas, Michaela Volpe, Rose Bautista, Jennifer Cervantes, Ann Barnes, Melanie Maxham, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal's Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR's homepage.