PoliticalSociology

I imagine all applicants got that email. At least I did, and I don't really have an interest in studying education. Good luck!

This happened to me too. I emailed the graduate admissions emails, and it all got resolved. But I also got the impression that this is very common, and it's not something graduate committees will worry much if any about.

The first place to look is the latest research done by faculty working in those areas at departments you're interested in. The second place would be going to sociology journals (e.g. American Sociological Review) and searching for keywords of interest, ideally looking at recent issues (say, 2012 onwards). Hopefully those will get you to a point where you can start to understand the body of literature on a particular sociological topic, such as by seeing common citations between different papers, or seeing papers on the topic with a ton of citations.