Political Theory @ Michigan
University of MichiganPolitical Science

Resources at the University of Michigan

Departments and Centers

In addition to specific Michigan faculty with interests relevant to political theorists, there are entire departments, programs, centers and institutes whose missions touch on political theory. The following lists some of them:

Library Resources

Graduate LibraryThe University of Michigan library system offers vast resources for students and researchers. The U-M libraries hold more than six million volumes. In addition to a generally comprehensive collection — from old to obscure to most recent books and journals — the university has special collections of particular interest to some theorists. For example, the William L. Clements Library houses a large collection of primary source materials on American history prior to the mid-twentieth century, including important sources on the American Revolution, African-American history and the Civil War. The university library also houses the rare Labadie Collection on materials relating to social protest and social activism. (The collection is named after a prominent Detroit anarchist, Joseph Labadie, who in 1911 donated his personal library to the university.)

Law LibraryElectronic resources at the university libraries are also excellent. The university has electronic subscriptions to a very large number of journals; that number includes almost all electronically available journals of interest to political theorist. The same is true of many other electronic resources such as, for example, the Past Masters digital archives. In addition, the university’s own digital collections offer valuable resources to theorists. For example, the Humanities Text Initiative and the Making of America collection provide valuable primary sources, the former many in the original languages. As a sign of the university's commitment to information technology resources for scholars, it is also worth mentioning that JSTOR, the popular repository of scholarly journals, is based in Ann Arbor. (And so is one of JSTOR's commercial counterparts, Proquest.)


General Resouces in Political Theory

Organizations

Foundations of Political Theory, a section of the American Political Science Association, runs a website which offers the best general-use source of information in political theory, http://www.political-theory.org. The site lists information on journals, jobs, conferences and news of the discipline.

The annual meeting of the Western Political Association, usually held somewhere on the west coast in March, is a popular venue for theorists, including many graduate students, to present their work. The Midwest Political Association, which holds its annual meeting generally in Chicago in April, is also an increasingly popular among theorists.

Journals

The following list comes, for the most part, from the Foundations of Political Thought website, which deserves credit for compiling it.

The American Political Science Review
Constellations
Contemporary Political Theory
Critical Review
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
Ethics
European Journal of Political Theory
European Journal of Social Theory
History of Political Economy
History of Political Thought
The Independent Review
Journal of Applied Philosophy
Journal of Political Philosophy
Journal of Politics
Journal of Social Philosophy
The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
Philosophical Books
Philosophy and Public Affairs
Philosophy in Review
Political Studies
Political Theory (Sage site) or Political Theory (editor's site)
Ratio Juris
Review of Politics
Representations
Signs
Social Philosophy and Policy
Social Research
Social Theory and Practice
Theory & Event
Utilitas

Some of these journals are archived on JSTOR and Project Muse, to which many universities have subscriptions.

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Updated 11/7/01