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Professor Abbott has taught a wide variety of courses. In the Chicago Social
Science Core, he has taught in four sequences: "Classics of Social and Political Thought," "Wealth, Power,
and Virtue," "Power, Identity, and Resistance," and "Democracy and Social Science." At the mixed (undergraduate
and graduate) level, he has taught "Work and Occupations," "Urban Social
Processes," and "Social Change." At the purely graduate level, Abbott has taught "Sociological Inquiry,"
"Formal Methods for Narrative Analysis," "Time and Social Structure," and a
dissertation proposal-writing seminar. He has also taught both graduate and undergraduate theory, as well as an annual practicum on library research methods, in recent years at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He also often teaches a
graduate seminar of major readings in the winter quarter, covering topics that
change each year. Topics so far include "The Chicago School," "Action and
Meaning," "Emotions," "Power," "Difference," and "Normative Reasoning in Sociology." Abbott is known for experimental pedagogy, which in recent years has included a tutorial framework for Core teaching and oral examinations for courses like undergraduate theory.
Since 2009, Abbott has led a group of "random readers" on Friday afternoons, exploring the riches of the university's library on a more or less random basis. Readers choose books at random from an agreed-upon sector of the LC classification, read together silently for an hour, and then present their readings to the group.
Abbott won the university's graduate teaching award in 2005, and the university's undergraduate teaching award (the Quantrell award) in 2017.
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