Research Consultations: October 17th – November 2nd

First Draft Due: Monday, October 22nd

Second Draft Due: Monday, October 29th

Individual Conferences: Tuesday, October 30th and Wednesday, October 31st

Final Draft Due: Monday, November 5th

In a further continuation of your inquiry, this third assignment will ask you to think about the conventions of research writing.  Instead of writing a traditional “research paper,” you’ll be developing an annotated bibliography for your final project as well as a brief review of the sources you’ve found. (So when you hand in this assignment, you should have a two-part document. Both the Annotated Bibliography and the Literature Review are required.) This assignment will require you to find sources in academic peer-reviewed texts using the library databases. Using properly formatted MLA or APA documentation (depending upon your major field of study), you will create a list of at least five sources. Below each bibliographic entry, you will offer a paragraph with a brief summary of the source, an analysis of the methodology and/or rhetorical choices in the text, and an explanation of how the source will help you in your final project. In addition to this list, you will provide a short literature review that compares and contrasts the different approaches to your topic and that explains the importance of each author’s work. This is very different from the work we did in the Rhetorical Analysis. In that assignment, you analyzed the rhetorical choices made in mainstream discussions of your topic. Here, we are reviewing scholarly discussions of your topic while thinking about the appeals to logos you’ll need to make in your final project. While you may not find research that is directly related to your topic (after all, you should be addressing a very local issue), you should be able to find sources that approach larger conversations to which your topic is related. To help you with this, you will need to meet with Sara Purifoy in the library for a Research Consultation.

Annotated Bibliography tips:

• As stated above, your Annotated Bibliography should have AT LEAST five references.
• All references must be from peer-reviewed journals found in the library databases.
• You must schedule and attend a Research Consultation with Sara Purifoy in the library.
• It should be made up of separate entries for each reference.
• Each entry should consist of a citation in APA or MLA format and an annotation in paragraph form.
• The annotation paragraph should cover three things:
  • a brief summary of the source (What are the main ideas of the source?
    What is the main argument? What special features are exhibited in the source that might not be found in your other sources?)
  • a brief analysis of the source’s methodologies and rhetorical choices (How does the author discuss your topic? What angle does the author take? How does the author’s methodologies impact the meaning and efficacy of the text? What rhetorical strategies does the source exhibit?)
  • a brief but specific analysis of how the source might help you get closer towards answering your question (More than just “it gives me info about X”; BE SPECIFIC – What draws you to this source? How does it help you narrow down and focus your research question at this point? What part of your inquiry might this source be good for?

Literature Review tips:

• Think of this as a synthesis of the sources in your Annotated Bibliography
• Make connections amongst your sources in order to establish a clear pattern of scholarly communication about your topic
• Avoid repeating the summary you provide in your annotations; instead, use this space to make connections and show how the sources speak to one another
• Cite all sources using in-text citations in MLA or APA format.
• Make sure you are answering these questions:
  • As you look at these five (or more) sources, what can be said about the way scholars are talking about your topic? What patterns do you notice?
  • How does each author discuss your topic as opposed to the other authors in your bibliography? What are the similarities/differences?
  • How do the sources complement each other? (In other words, why is this group of sources, specifically, important? Why do they belong together in a collection like the one you’ve curated?)
  • What critiques do you have, as someone who cares about this topic? What could all these authors do differently in order to improve this scholarly conversation?

Looking for an example of an Annotated Bibliography? Here is one I worked on recently and here is an example from a student. Need some APA or MLA citation help? Take a look at this post on APA, and this one on MLA. (Links coming soon!) The Purdue OWL and the Writing Collaboratory on campus are also great resources for APA or MLA style.