Your posts are “NOT SUMMARIES OF THE READINGS”. Instead, you should focus on one concept (or perhaps two interrelated concepts) or ideas expressed in the reading materials for this week (see this week’s module section “Important Concepts/Ideas” for some potential concepts/ideas, although you are not restricted to writing only about these concepts/ideas). Which concept/idea did you find most intriguing or powerful? The gist of the assignment is for you to engage—in an analytically sound way—with the theories (the explanations) we cover in the course. Your initial post should be 300-500 words. Finally, be sure to cite properly (using ASA style) throughout, including providing a list of references (1 entry in your reference list is fine if you’re focusing on 1 theorist).Remember, this is a social theory course. You should be engaging with the theories/concepts form a theorist, not their biography. Although you may cite some information about their biography to the extent that their biography is relevant for their theories/concepts, you should not make the theorist’s biography the focus of your post. To be sure, some of the people will read are heroic and impressive individuals, but you must engage with their ideas, not summarize their biographies.
Also, you should be careful to cite properly all sources you use. You can find information on citing at the Purdue Owl’s website dedicated to ASA citation style (Links to an external site.) (this is required reading in the Harriet Martineau module); pay special attention to their information on “in-text citations” and “reference page” formatting. You don’t have to have a separate reference page–simply put “References” at the bottom of your posts, and then list the materials that you’ve cited there. Note that all of the readings in our Lemert text and all of the original theorist readings within the L&N text are formatted in accordance with the “Chapter in an Edited Volume” item on the Purdue Owl “reference-page formatting” page. This means that you cite the author of the specific reading and NOT Lemert or L&N, who are the editors of the text. Note, too, that you cite the year of publication for our course texts, not the original publication date by the original author. Thus, an in-text citation for a Lemert reading is: (Authorlastname 2016) and (Authorname 1998) for an L&N reading. And the format for a reference page entry for each of the texts are:
Authorlastname, authorfirstname authmiddleinitial. 2016. “Reading Title.” Pp. xx-xx in Social Theory:
The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings, 6th Ed., edited by C. Lemert. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Authorlastname, authorfirstname authmiddleinitial. 1998. “Reading Title.” Pp. xx-xx in The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830-1930, edited by Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
0 comments