Community and Urban Sociology

The CUSS Excellence in Teaching Award Committee, consisting of Albert Fu, Judith Halasz, Colleen Wynn, and Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana, has selected Azat Zana Gündoğan as the section’s 2024 winner. He is currently an Associate Teaching Professor in the University Honors Program and holds Affiliate Faculty status in the Sociology Department at Florida State University. In his role, he has built up a diverse portfolio of urban-oriented courses and has been involved in co-curricular activities in the honors program. Student letters noted his, “innovative teaching methods, passion for the topic, and uniquely interdisciplinary focus.” Another letter highlighted Dr. Gündoğan’s helping the student “appreciate the learning process itself.” Albert Fu reached out to him to discuss his teaching. Thanks to Azat for participating in our interview series!

Was there anything or anyone that shaped your current teaching style (it can be from any stage of your academic career)? 

I would say my teaching style has been shaped by two main influences. On the scholarly side, the spatial turn in social sciences and my training in critical urban studies have shaped my research. If I could mention an a-ha moment however, it would be the moment I read Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space. It spoke to so many of my academic interests—sociology, political science, political economy, Middle East studies, Kurdish studies, urbanism, urban planning, architecture—you name it. Lefebvre’s idea of social space, along with the critical urban studies and new urbanism scholarship built on his work really helped me see how these fields intersect. I can say that social production of space became the connecting tissue of my various research and teaching interests. That realization became the foundation for my research on how peripheral cities form on the outskirts of Istanbul. I did my Ph.D. at Binghamton Sociology, where the world-systems perspective was central. While it is not as pronounced today as it once was, its legacy remains strong, particularly in urban studies. It is still very pertinent in discussions about global and world cities, post-colonial approaches, and planetary urbanization. These debates have had a huge impact on how I design my courses and approach teaching. For one thing, the global focus of my classes owes a lot to these ideas and discussions.

Against this scholarly background, my teaching truly found its distinct style when I joined Florida State University’s Honors Program in 2018. By the time I was hired, I already had a wide range of teaching experiences. I had worked at large research universities, selective liberal arts colleges, and universities in the United States and Turkey, where I had the opportunity to teach students from diverse, and sometimes underprivileged, backgrounds. These experiences not only humbled me but also made me adaptable to a variety of institutional and pedagogical settings. The Honors Program at FSU, however, has been a real turning point. The program has given me the freedom to design courses that reflect both my research interests and my teaching philosophy. It has allowed me to experiment with and create courses I have always dreamed of teaching—like Utopias/Dystopias and Everyday Life: State/Space/Power. These are courses that I had not been able to develop easily in traditional disciplinary departments. The program’s inherently interdisciplinary curriculum aligns perfectly with my scholarship and makes it an ideal space for me to innovate and explore. What makes the Honors Program even more special is the select group of students I get to work with. These are highly motivated students with an extraordinary curiosity, a deep engagement with the material, and a genuine drive to learn. Teaching in this environment has been incredibly rewarding and it continues to shape my approach to higher education in meaningful ways. For instance, majority of our students are STEM majors. After taking my courses, some of my students have got interested in sociology and urban studies and declared these fields as their second major or minor.

How do you approach teaching community and urban sociology? Is there anything that guides your pedagogy?

Although my courses have an interdisciplinary perspective and they also reflect my background in political science, at heart I am a sociologist. It may sound like a cliché among fellow sociologists, but C. Wright Mills’ concept of the sociological imagination or Randall Collins’ notion of sociological eye continue to inform my teaching. I always aim my courses to eventually provide my students with a critical, lifelong skill that enables them to contextualize their personal experiences within broader social structures. Teaching urban sociology is a good catalyst to that. I prioritize the spatial dimensions of social experience, and urban spaces and places, urban life and culture(s) provide a useful interface between macro systems and trends and micro experiences and everyday life. I use real-world case studies, current events, and community engagement to make the learning experience dynamic and relevant.

Are there any courses or subjects you particularly enjoy teaching or are personally meaningful?

I have a large teaching portfolio, but I particularly enjoy teaching my Global Urbanization and Utopias/Dystopias: An Homage to ‘Social Dreaming’ courses. Global Urbanization is like my backyard, where I feel most comfortable as an urbanist. It explores the emergence and transformation of cities and urban forms, situating urban diversity, culture, and social inequalities within this context. The course also enables me to help students grasp the concept of the production of social space—specifically, cities and urban spaces—and to overcome the tendency to regard urban space as merely the backdrop of social life. Once this concept “clicks” for them, which is a real delight to observe, they begin to see the uniqueness of cities as both a formative agent of social life and an object of scientific inquiry.

My other favorite course is Utopias/Dystopias, where I challenge students while also creating a space for them to mentally and discursively “let go” of what they think they know and believe and give themselves permission to imagine a radically different life from what we live here and now. It is a course that reclaims utopianism as more than just a mental exercise, fictional escapism or an already lost battle for perfectionism — it becomes a frame of thought. I find personal meaning in teaching about utopian and dystopian imaginaries, where students critically examine modern ideologies, forms of government, and themes such as humanism, state formation, environmentalism, governance, urban planning, and gentrification.

Could you share a teaching moment that is especially memorable for you?

It was not a single moment but rather a semester-long experience of online teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown. As you may recall, we were all on Zoom—students and teachers alike—feeling tired and frustrated, and our interaction had been reduced to seeing heads or even only names on a screen. To make matters more challenging, if not ironic, I was teaching Utopias/Dystopias. The course seemed to lose much of its “what if” quality and speculative appeal, given that a global pandemic—a familiar trope in dystopian scenarios—was unfolding in real life.

I established a rule that students should keep their cameras on unless it was genuinely impossible, and I worked hard to make our class discussions as interactive as possible. It was incredibly satisfying to hear many students say that this class became their favorite, thanks to the meaningful interactions it offered during such an isolating time. I felt truly proud of both my students and myself for what we achieved together under those circumstances.