This Spring 2003 (II, 1) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge include student papers from coursework completed at SUNY-Oneonta. The creative efforts students display in advancing their sociological imaginations demonstrate the extent to which the best pedagogical strategies are those that rely on teaching their subject matter by encouraging students to draw upon the reality of their own lives in an applied way to learn various concepts and theories taught in class. Topics are: "Editor's Note: Social Theories, Student Realities," "Why I Smoke: Sociology of a Deadly Habit," "The Drinking Matrix: A Symbolic Self Interaction," "Theoretical Reflections on Peer Judgments," "It's Worth Living in the World," "My Image Struggles in Capitalist Society," ""It's Not My Fault" Overcoming Social Anxiety through Sociological Imagination," "Treading Water: Self-Reflections on Generalized Anxiety Disorder," "Sociology of Shyness: A Self Introduction," ""Let Me Introduce Myself" My Struggles with Shyness and Conformity," "Religion in an Individualistic Society," "A Precarious Balance: Views of a Working Mother Walking the Tightrope," "Links in the Chain: Untangling Dysfunctional Family Ties," and "Marx, Gurdjieff, and Mannheim: Contested Utopistics of Self and Society in a World-History Context." Contributors include: Emily Margulies, Neo Morpheus, M. Goltry, James McHugh, Anna Schlosser, Charles (pen name), Megan Murray, Colin Campbell, Jillian E. Sloan, Jennifer S. Dutcher, Ira Omid (pen name), 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.
Tamdgidi, Mohammad H.: - Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, a retired associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston, has also taught sociology at SUNY-Oneonta and SUNY-Binghamton. He holds doctoral and masters degrees in sociology in conjunction with a graduate certificate in Middle Eastern studies from Binghamton University (SUNY) and a B.A. in architecture from U.C. Berkeley. He is the founding editor of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics) which has served since 2002 to frame his research, teaching, and publishing initiatives. Tamdgidi specializes in the sociology of self-knowledge, human architecture, and utopystics-three overlapping theoretical, methodological and applied fields of inquiry he initiated in his doctoral studies in 2002 and has since pursued. His research, teaching, and publishing practices have been framed by an interest in understanding how personal self-knowledges of multiple selves and singular world-historical social structures constitute one another. This line of inquiry has itself been a result of his long-standing interest in understanding the contributions and the underlying causes of failure of the world's utopian, mystical, and scientific traditions in bringing about a just global society.
