Applying Sociology to Fiction: Reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Sociologically

• In Event: 2322 - Activities and Techniques Poster Session

Abstract

Specific Teaching and Learning Challenge: Students often struggle to apply content they learn in upper level elective courses to wider social world.
Approach Used: This series of activities requires students to apply what they have learned in class to the lives of fictional characters, in order to understand the concepts more deeply and practice higher level learning skills. Specifically, this series of activities has students apply what they have learned in a Social Psychology class to understand the world of individuals on the autism spectrum as depicted in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Students are first introduced to the concept of the autism spectrum by a brief lecture on autism spectrum disorders and the connection to various topics covered in a social psychology class (the Self, Sensory Perception, Social Interaction, Language, and Emotion). Students then lead a discussion in class on one of the above aspects of self and social interaction that differs for those on the autism spectrum and neurotypicals, using selected chapters of the book as the basis of that discussion. Finally, students compile what they have learned through these discussions into a paper that connects topics from the course to the experiences of the charters in the book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
How the Presentation will be Useful: While the most obvious application of the presentation will be to courses on Social Psychology, it sets up a larger framework that can be adapted to using fiction or narrative nonfiction books on a number of different topics in any number of different upper level elective sociology courses. For instance, I do a similar discussion of the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in my Medical Sociology course.

Author

• Gregory Trainor Kordsmeier, Indiana University Southeast