This winter, 25 students have been learning about a subject that often feels as unpredictable as the New Hampshire winter weather: love. In SOCY 62, “Love, Romance, Intimacy and Dating,” sociology professor Kathryn Lively is teaching students to navigate the intricate terrain of human connection from a different perspective.
Lively said she created the course in winter 2009 to challenge students to think beyond conventional views on love and “illustrate how society is set up in certain ways that make finding love actually very difficult.”
“I wanted students to interpret issues of romance, dating, love and sex through a more sociological lens to have a greater appreciation for the forces that shape their individual choices and outcomes,” she said.
According to Alejandra Carrasco Alayo ’25 — a student taking the course this term — this engagement with “sociological perspectives about love” is often pessimistic, but nonetheless valuable.
“The deconstruction of love is something that’s hurtful,” she said. “This discourages a lot of people [from following] love. More people are very interested in understanding how we fall in love and why hookup culture happens.”
According to Lively, one of the central themes of the class is how societal expectations shape our understanding of romantic experiences.
“The class … acknowledges that the meaning people make around a particular social construct makes all the difference to their experience of it,” Lively said. “And so, whenever there is such a thing as love, … we cannot separate our experience of it from the meaning we give it.”
The course features a mix of discussions, lectures and projects to provide students with both theoretical perspectives and real-world applications for class concepts, Lively added.
“The course … starts with students’ early understandings around concepts … like relationships and virginity, and how that gets incorporated into sex education in the United States and around the world,” she said. “Then, we talk about ‘situationships’ and dating on campus, which is something students are engaged with at Dartmouth.”
Lively added that the course also explores specific topics such as intimacy, relationship structures and hookup culture, exposing students to “other forms of relationships that they might not [be familiar] with.”
According to another student in the course, Rika Masuda Singh ’28, love is no easy topic to cover — it’s “deeply personal, yet universally complex.” However, she finds that the course allows her to engage with ideas that, because of her upbringing, were previously taboo.
“I grew up in a place that didn’t have a lot of open discourse about topics that were so deeply personal and complex,” she said. “I myself am multicultural and multiracial, and so the meanings of intimacy and romance and love all had different connotations. … I just wanted to be able to explore that.”
Masuda Singh said that one of her favorite parts of the class is the “richness of class discussion,” as students often bring their own experiences with love to the table to inform their contributions.
“Especially as a freshman, … I was unaware of what to brace myself for, but discussions — especially those with upperclassmen — offered me more guidance than I expected,” she said.
Carrasco Alayo said that the class discussions allow the course to “create space for voices that are often left unheard,” especially when it comes to intimacy. According to her, one of the most interesting class discussions focused on “virginity and how it was viewed.”
“The diversity of students from different cultures and sexual identities made the discussion even more profound,” she said.
Students are also asked to conduct a “life history” interview to choose someone on campus and record their romantic history and beliefs. The students’ completed projects will come together at the end of the term to form a collective archive, which they will use to write an empirical research paper about a topic of their choice. According to Carrasco Alayo, the interviews in the archive were “really thoughtful, but at the same time challenging.”
“Professor Lively encourages us to look around and not just [interview] our best friends, but other people who might have really interesting perspectives,” she said. “[Love] isn’t something that a lot of people open up about, but I’m very glad I found a person that was active and engaged.”
The course’s material can provide valuable insight, especially for students who experience relationship troubles while enrolled in the class — for example, according to Lively, “students who experience significant breakups.”
“Students say that these classes give them great understanding for their own situations,” Lively said. “Even though they don’t always share details, their experiences add to the class.”
Beyond these personal experiences, Lively said that the class also explores models of love that the students likely do not have exposure to.
“We’ve looked at BDSM communities and analyzed the norms that exist in them compared to those on campus,” she said. “With the class, I always looked at polyamory as an example of love that differs from typical marriage structure.”
By exploring matters of love that are often left undiscussed — especially within an academic setting — the course offers students the opportunity to look introspectively at themselves and each other. Lively said she hopes that by the end of the course, students will be able to interpret these issues “through a more sociological lens.”
“My key learning outcome is for students to … have gained a deeper sociological understanding of what it means to experience love and intimacy, as well as the knowledge to make more intentional choices in their own lives,” she said.
