"Professor Warner was a phenomenal instructor who made discussions very engaging and was always making sure everyone felt comfortable and heard. She was also extremely helpful and always willing to discuss anything during office hours."
- Student review of Sociology of Gender
Sociology of Gender: "TAKE THIS COURSE!!! Prof. Warner is great and makes the content so approachable and relatable. Honestly, this class should be required for all sociology, gender studies, and public policy students. It goes into theories of gender while also discussing how gender inequality manifests and is perpetrated systemically today. So important and relevant to everyone. The papers and research project are also fun ways to investigate your own question and see how gender and systems exist around you. This was my favorite course this quarter, and I really wish Stanford offered more gender/sexuality courses like it!"
Justice in Biotechnologies: “Dr. Warner's commitment and care for her students truly showed itself at every turn throughout this entire quarter, and I think this helped make her a phenomenal section lead. Not only did she very quickly respond to any of my emails, but she also took time in those emails to connect me with other resources/interesting articles that pertained to concepts we had covered in class or that I had expressed an interest in. I've never had a professor recommend additional reading material about topics we were both passionate about, and being able to connect with Dr. Warner in this way was extremely helpful...."
Crime and Punishment in America: “She was very informative and knowledgeable. She was very helpful to come to for instructional advice and how to better construct my writings and ideas; Office hours were amazing. She was very good at identifying and instructing students on how students can better improve their writings/thoughts.”
COLLEGE 101: “This course was life-changing. It has opened my eyes on why we have education, and why it is needed. It was one of my favorite classes this quarter because of how intimate and inclusive it was.”
COLLEGE 102: “This class is all about the instructor. I definitely think taking it with Meghan Warner was great. She is very organized and got a lot out of class activities.”
Upper division and graduate level
Winter 2024
I designed the course and taught it myself as a sixth year PhD student. I am happy to share my syllabus on request.
Sociologists study taken-for-granted social categories and systems – like gender – to understand how they shape our lives. In this course, we will learn sociological approaches to understanding and studying gender. We will critically examine how gender structures society and reproduces inequality. To do this, we will use a multi-level approach, examining gender at the individual, interactional, and structural level. We will apply this framework to multiple areas of social life, including the self, the family, school, and work. This introductory course is designed to cover a range of topics in the sociology of gender, providing a baseline for further study. You will actively participate in class, bringing your own experiences while building your sociological imagination. Through a combination of lectures, in-class discussions, and papers, students will strengthen their academic analysis and writing skills.
Introductory lower division
Spring 2025
Advances in genomics, artificial intelligence and neurotechnologies are expected to transform biomedicine. Genomics has been applied to prenatal testing in order to screen for genetic disorders, improve cancer treatment, and diagnose rare disorders. Artificial intelligence has been applied to improving areas of healthcare such as diagnostic tests and developing potential medical treatments. Neurotechnologies have generated hopes of providing improved prosthetics or treatment for people with neurological and mental health disorders. However, as these biotechnologies are developed and implemented, they raise important questions regarding justice and equity. Who benefits from these advances in science and technology, and who is excluded? Is research and development in these areas proceeding in ways that are inclusive of diverse perspectives and populations? In this course, students will examine justice in genomics, artificial intelligence, and neurotechnology from a global perspective. We will discuss how the medical knowledge that builds and is generated by these biotechnologies reflects and may contribute to global inequities in healthcare outcomes. Students will explore these biotechnologies in a global context, applying ethical frameworks to assess justice challenges, and examining models for their equitable and just development and use.
Introductory lower division
Winter 2025
Citizenship is not just what passport you hold or where you were born. Citizenship, in the broader sense we focus on in this course, means participation in a large self-governing community, and this class takes as its subject matter all the ideas, practices, and systems that make that self-governance possible. While the class focuses predominantly on citizenship in a liberal democratic state, we also discuss other forms of self-governing communities, including cultural groups, activist movements, and universities. All these cases raise important, contested questions: Who is (or ought to be) included in citizenship? Who gets to decide? How can practices of citizenship respond to changing technological and economic conditions? How have people excluded from citizenship fought for, and sometimes won, inclusion? These debates have a long history, featuring in some of the earliest recorded philosophy and literature but also animating current political debates in the United States and elsewhere. Texts for the class include literary fiction, speeches, poetry, and journalistic accounts of current events, and one of the primary goals of the class is to learn through discussion and group work how to approach these different genres and media. Citizenship needs to be redefined and reinvigorated for each new era, and citizenship today is under stress from technological advances, political polarization, economic inequality, and other challenges. This class starts from the premise that students already are, and will continue to be, citizens of various communities throughout their lives, but the class itself also offers a chance to directly engage in the skills of citizenship: productive discussion across lines of political and personal difference; analysis of new and challenging ideas; and collaborative problem-solving.
Introductory lower division
Fall 2024
You’re about to embark on an amazing journey: a college education. But what is the purpose of this journey? Why go to college?
Some argue that the purpose of college is to train you for a career. Others claim that college is no longer necessary — that you can launch the next big startup and change the world without a degree. Peter Thiel offers students like you $100,000 to “skip or stop out of college” because “knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” Why read Plato if you’re a STEM major, after all? Why think about primate health if you’re in the arts?
In the face of such critiques, this class makes a case for an expansive education that trains your mind to engage with a variety of subjects and skills. The philosophy behind this model has traditionally been called “liberal education” (from the Latin word for freedom, libertas). Together we will explore the history, practice, and rationales for a liberal education by putting canonical texts in conversation with more recent works. We will consider the relevance of liberal education to all areas of study, from STEM to the arts, and its relations to future careers. And we will examine the central place that the idea of “the good life” has historically enjoyed in theories of liberal education. You will be prompted to examine your own life, to question how and why you make decisions, and to argue for your views while respecting those of others. Maybe you will conclude that a liberal education is no longer relevant in the twenty-first century, but we hope that you will do so armed with a thorough understanding of what it has been and what it can be.
In the end, college is not only about what you will do in life, but also about what kind of person you will be. So: what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life will you live? Join us as we explore what others have said about these questions and prepare to answer them for yourself.
I have served as a teaching assistant for the following courses:
Classics of Modern Social Theory – Upper division and graduate level
Sociology Department
Spring 2020
Crime and Punishment in America – Upper division and graduate level
Sociology Department
Winter 2020
Lecturer: “Crime and Punishment: Responses to Sexual Violence”
Sport, Competition, and Society – Lower division
Sociology Department
Spring 2019
Sociological Methodology I: Introduction – PhD level
Sociology Department
Fall 2018