The Annotated Biblibliography
A major component of your work for this course is the annotated bibliography, in which you generate a question related to the course that you want to pursue further and compile an annotated list of sources that helped you formulate the question and that represent varying answers to it and approaches to answering it. Depending on how focused your interests are, the work you do for this project can feed directly into your oral presentation and your seminar paper--or you may instead wish to use this project to explore a topic unrelated to your other projects in the course. It's up to you to make this project useful to you, and not just a class exercise. To that end, I am giving you great freedom in choosing your topic--you may pursue any question that relates to this course in a meaningful way.
This assignment is different from a typical annotated bibliography, in which you are usually asked to find out about a given topic by summarizing several works on that topic. In this kind of bibliography, by contrast, your annotations should be more than summaries of a given work; rather, they should analyze how the writer of that work answered the question that is the focus of your bibliography. What evidence did the writer draw on to support his or her answer to the question? What authorities or theories does the writer draw on in formulating his or her answer? How plausible do you find the argument in support of the answer? Each annotation, then, should be a concise analysis of a given writer's approach to answering your central question.
Here's one plan for working through this project, which is due at the end of the semester when you hand in the final draft of your seminar paper:
Step One: Generating and Ranking Questions
Look over your reading responses and the texts we've read thus far and think about your interests and priorities, your reasons for taking the course, and your goals for after the course. Generate a list of questions that matter most to you now, and begin ranking them by thinking about which are the most interesting, pressing, and suitable for researching. In your fourth reading response, append a ranked list of questions that you are considering for further exploration. Read others' questions, and feel free to use the listserv to compare notes or exchange ideas. It might be useful to keep a separate "research journal" in which you record your progress on the project and the changes that it undergoes as you proceed.
Step Two: Formulating and Revising the Question
Once you've narrowed your options down to two or three questions, do a preliminary search on the world-wide web and in the library to get a sense of how many other people have been asking similar questions. Be sure to contact me for advice at this stage. And when you're in the library, you might start in the reserves before moving on to other kinds of sources, or you might start by consulting a reference librarian. Keep a record of what essays or chapters helped you the most in choosing the one question you want to pursue, or that led you to change reformulate the question you originally started pursuing. The final annotated bibliography will have a section in which you discuss the sources that most influenced you as you were formulating your question.
Step Three: Researching Approaches/Writing Annotations
At this stage in the game, you have to be both creative and organized--creative in that answers to your question can be found in many different fields, and organized in that you will have to devote some time to the mechanics of finding out about work being done in those fields and getting your hands on the work itself. Again, this is a time to be consulting with me and with reference librarians closely. Remember that interlibrary loan generally takes 1-2 weeks, and sometimes longer, so if your question is not related to the works on reserve in the library and is in fields in which the library's holdings are weak, you are going to have to plan ahead and devote some time and effort to tracking down relevant materials. Remember, also, that an annotation in this project is not simply a summary of the work being annotated but is in addition a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of its approach to answering your question and a discussion of how and to what ends you would consider making use of it in your writing or teaching.
Step Four: Producing the Final Document
The final document of the annotated bibliography should consist of four sections: an opening statement of the research problem or question, in which you trace the development of your central question, give the rationale for focusing on it, and provide an annotated bibliography of the works that most directly influenced your formulation of it; the annotated bibliography proper, in which you provide an organized list of works that answer the research question and/or represent different approaches to answering it, along with your analytical annotations; a concluding statement, in which you describe the major tendencies and gaps in the scholarship devoted to your research question as a prelude to a discussion of your own preferred approach to answering the question; and an appendix, in which you list the works that turned out to be "dead ends" or became less relevant as your project evolved.
This final document will probably fall between seven and fifteen single-spaced pages, depending on how focused your research question is, how concise you are able to make your writing, and how much time you have to devote to tracking down materials. It does not seem possible to do a good job on this project in less than five pages, although the proof is in the pudding. By the same token, there's no point in turning this project into an epic quest. Think of it as providing the basis for what could turn into a publishable article or a teaching unit--not a thesis or dissertation or entire course. (Although for an article I've just finished, my own bibliography--unannotated--ran to eight single-spaced pages, there is no need for you to be as wide-ranging or compulsive as I was!) Better to be concise and focused with excellent annotations than encyclopedic and diffuse with sketchy annotations.
If you do want to learn how to design web pages in this course, you might consider composing/designing your annotated bibliography to take advantage of the possibilities of the world-wide web. A web-based annotated bibliography has several advantages that a print-based document simply can not replicate: the ability to link to other pages, so that your readers can compare your annotation to the original source; the ability to experiment with structure and try out a more elaborate, multi-layered, and flexible organization of the bibliography; an easily searchable and accessible resource for others.
Even if you do not pursue this option, I would like, with your permission of course, to put your bibliographies on the course web pages permanently, in a link off your name in the people page.
Criteria of Evaluation
Your final document will be evaluated on the basis of several criteria:
What the work you do on this project should result in is a mapping, charting, or surveying of a critical terrain. You should guide your readers through the major landmarks, point out pitfalls, and suggest alternate routes. You should, in other words, demonstrate your familiarity with the critical terrain, and consider the best combination of methods (aerial view, walking tour, geologic history and tectonic shifts, close-up examination) to make your readers familiar with it.
Finally...
Remember that this is your project, and you should do what you want with it (within the parameters of the assignment, of course). Just about any of the requirements are open to negotiation, revision, and fine-tuning, so don't be shy about emailing me personally, coming to my office hours, or scheduling an appointment with me to discuss any aspect of this assignment further.
EN 510: Major Writers, Spring 1999
Created: 2/16/99, 12:14 pm
Last modified: 4/17/99, 12:48 pm