Here are some useful tools for students (and others).  Click the links to explore or download (as the case may be):

Assignment Guides

You can find instructions on the various Assignments pages.  The ones here are similar, but supplementary.  They are also downloadable as PDFs.  A few (such as the guide for writing outlines and the outline samples) are not found elsewhere on this website.

• Instructions for Writing Reading Summaries
  • Sample Summaries:
    • Summary of E.J. Hobsbawm ‘Age of Revolution’, ch 1-4, by J. Ennis
    • Summary of G.R. Boyer ‘Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto’, by J. Spickard
    • Summary #3  (to be posted)
    • Summary #4  (to be posted)
    • Summary #5  (to be posted)
• On Using Outlines to Understand Social Theory
  • Sample Outlines:
    • Marx & Engels: Communist Manifesto “Part I: Bourgoise & Proletarians”
    • Marx: “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Right”
    • Marx: “On the Fetishism of Commodities”
    • Weber: “Zwischenbetrachtung”
    • Giddens: “Classical Social Theory and the Origins of Modern Sociology”
• Instructions for the First Paper
• Instructions for the Second Paper  (to be posted)
• Rules for Writing (a guide for Jim Spickard’s classes) 183kb PDF file

Grading Rubrics

These are guides that indicate what level of work receives what kind of grade.  I shall add links as I write them.

• Grading Rubric for Reading Summaries  (to be posted)
• Grading Rubrics for the Two Papers
  • Rubric for a draft paper  (to be posted)
  • Rubric for writing partner comments  (to be posted)
  • Rubric for a final paper  (to be posted)
  • Grading Rubric for Group Presentations  (to be posted)
• Grading Matrices (the guides I use to indicate how well you’ve done on each of element of these assignments)
  • Paper #1 Grading Matrix  
  • Paper #2 Grading Matrix

Informational Handouts

• A Social Theory Timeline
• A Partial Genealogy of Social Theorists
• a collection of theses (on the model of  Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach)
  • Eleven Theses on Sociology
  • Theses on Marx
  • Theses on Durkheim
  • Theses on Weber
  • Theses on Du Bois
• A Diagrammatic Portrayal of Durkheim’s Idea of the Relationship between Modernity and the Four Forms of Suicide

Links to Outside Resources

• You can find a collection of useful links, documents, and what-have-you related to classical social theory at the Social Theory Pages.  Some of the links have expired, but many work.  Explore!
• “Get the MarxCard” Ten slides (in PDF) based on the twitter feed #marxcard, which stretches back at least to 2012.
• David Harvey: “The Crises of Capitalism”  RSA Animates, 2010
• Russell Faeges: “Why did the Weberian Cross the Road” (from the American Sociological Association Newsletter, c. 2004).