Current instructor

Mustafa Emirbayer

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.07/5 from 44 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

SOC 181
Quality 4/5Difficulty 2/5
Not every reading was the greatest, but super knowledgeable guy who does a great job of making this class interactive and engaging.
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C&ESOC/SOC 475
Quality 3/5Difficulty 2/5
Prof. Emirbayer was boring, but this is also a classical sociological theory class so I'm not sure what else people were expecting. Definitely knew his stuff, wasn't the most engaging lecturer but I did learn things, grade is just attendance and weekly reading quizzes. Lectures were semi-discussion based which helped me stay awake.
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SOC 134
Quality 2/5Difficulty 4/5
Emirbayer was more a scholar than a professor. Lectures were very dry, tests were nit-picky, and it seemed as though he'd rather enjoy doing research than teaching. Textbook was alright as it presented material talked about in class; though at times, some of the arguments presented were a bit of a stretch.
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C&ESOC/SOC 475
Quality 1/5Difficulty 1/5
Very awful professor, one of the worst class I have taken in Madison. This class for students who second language is English is very unkind. You can hardly catch the step of class even though you work very hard. He's lecture is also boring, basically reading book and no other interesting staff. Seems he is not paying attention on teaching.
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C&ESOC/SOC 475
Quality 4/5Difficulty 1/5
Very good professor. As far as classic sociology goes, he knows his stuff and does a really good job with the class. The class is structured in a very unusual way, but I love it, and I think most people would. He's the best professor from whom to take Soc 475 in my opinion.
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SOC234 · course not matched
Quality 2/5Difficulty 3/5
Terrible. He is like listening to static on the radio. Lectures were straight out of the book and were very boring and his dry, monotone voice made them worse.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Mustafa Emirbayer

An honors introductory seminar providing an introduction to the paradigms, methods, and substance of sociology.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

Mustafa Emirbayer is described as super knowledgeable and effective at making the class interactive and engaging. However, one reviewer noted that not every reading was the greatest.

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2022–Spring 2026
SOC 990

Thesis

1–12 credits

SOC 990 is a thesis course involving mentored research for Master's or doctoral dissertations.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

No recorded grade history

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026SOC 181Honors Introductory Seminar-the Sociological Enterprise
Fall 2026SOC 990Thesis
Fall 2026SOC 999Reading and Research in Sociology

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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