• Robbie McClintock, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 2nd floor, Gottesman Library
    Thursdays 4:00 to 6:00 pm and by appointment
    
• Frank Moretti, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 603 Lewisohn Hall, by appointment
    (Call Teresa Gonzales, 212 854 1962, or email her teresa@columbia.edu)

Meeting 1  •  September 2 — The challenge of communication theory and social thought

Our initial meeting has two introductory objectives: first, to introduce the agenda of readings we will seek to understand week by week throught the fall and spring semesters, and second, to begin to become acquainted with one another, for we will be pursuing our interpretive agenda in interaction each other. The following two essays can help clarify the interpretative challenge we face in this course of readings. Both discuss the purpose and value of social theory in the contemporary world. We aim to participate in the work of social theory as peers, selectively appropriating, as best we can, the achievements of significant predecessors in that effort.

• Delanty, Gerard. "The Foundations of Social Theory" The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Bryan S. Turner, ed. (Blackwell Publishing, 2009). Blackwell Reference Online.
• Burawoy, Michael. "2004 ASA Presidential Address: For Public Sociology." American Sociological Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Feb., 2005), pp. 4-28. JSTOR.

     In our opening class, I made some remarks about the importance of getting a good grip on the online resources that you now have, partly through the Internet-at-large and partly through your access to Columbia's online subscriptions.  The intellectual effects of these developments are likely to be very significant as your academic/professional careers develop.

     Conventional opinion holds that a regime of ever-narrowing specialization holds sway, but the effect of online academic resources will start drawing scholars in the opposite direction.  Until recently, specialists had privileged access to the resources of their fields.  That has ceased to be the case.  The cross-disciplinary retrieval of sources, primary and secondary, has become both powerful and efficient.  Those who build up the requisite skills and habits will be at an advantage.

     In developing the syllabus for MSTU5606, we have tried to make maximum use of online resources, and to make the use of them as convenient as possible.  That makes what we need for immediate purposes easily available.  It does not build our skills at acquiring further resources.  From time to time, you should explore the collections available to you through the "E-Resources" drop-down menu on the header for the Columbia University Libraries.  The Columbia libraries are continually subscribing to new materials, with the result that you cannot really relay on any one of the many different finding aids.  But recurrent explorations eventually make good maps.