Developing a Sociological Imagination by Doing Sociology

The author addresses the development and implementation of a service-learning project for an undergraduate course in which students interview immigrant women, incorporate the interviewees’ experiences into an analytical paper, and present the findings at the end of the semester. Students are required to use C. Wright Mills’s concepts of history and biography by situating the stories told by the women within the larger sociohistorical contexts in which they live. The article proceeds in four sections. The first section provides an overview of service learning and its benefits. This is followed by a detailed description of the service-learning project. In the third section, the author draws from a postclass survey, course evaluations, and her observations to illustrate the ways in which the project enhances student learning and enables students to deepen their understanding of the sociological imagination. The article concludes with suggestions for how the project can be applied in other courses.