ENGL
496: Bibliographic Project
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Purpose: The bibliographic project affords
you the opportunity to do the research required for your Senior Thesis, and to
do so with the support of classroom instruction, library workshops, and
feedback from me and your senior thesis advisor. As you engage in this
research, you will become familiar with the MLA Bibliography, the McConnell
Library electronic catalog and all the electronic resources available through
the library, and various search engines for Worldwide Web sources. You will
also master MLA documentation format in preparation for Senior Thesis. You will
work at rigorous critical analysis of your research as you annotate sources.
The bibliographic project consists of two installments, each one involving a working bibliography and annotations on possible sources for your thesis. The grades on these two installments will be averaged together as one grade, constituting 30% of the final grade.
Be sure you begin thinking about a topic for your project immediately. I have included a list of possible research essay topics in the description of that activity. See Senior Thesis for a complete description of the assignment and some possible topics.
Renaissance Reading Wheel, the First
Hypertext
For samples of excellent student
bibliographic projects, click on the following:
Becky
Frase’s Bibliographic Project #1 on Native American representations in
American films
Becky
Frase’s Bibliographic Project #2
Tina Vermillion’s Bibliographic Project #2 the
need for feminist theory in the secondary English curriculum
Tina
Vermillion’s Bibliographic Project #3 on same (beyond the requirements, but
articles Tina wanted to read)
Stephanie Saunders’ Bibliographic Project #2
on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Format--Each Bibliographic Project will
consist of:
1) 20-item, typed working bibliography
annotations on 10 of these sources (typed)
1) a working bibliography. A working bibliography is a preliminary list of any sources you think you should use to explore your subject, find a significant question about it, and answer that question. It should contain works that deal specifically with your subject to help you learn what has already been written about it as well as works from other areas (called collateral areas) that you must examine in order to understand your subject fully and answer your specific question about it.
Your working bibliography will include at least twenty items, typed in proper MLA format, including the author, title, and publication information for each source. Consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (available in the bookstore) for correct documentation format. Select the choices for your working bibliography after doing an MLA and electronic catalog search to determine what has been written on your topic. The MLA Bibliography is an index of all the scholarship available on literature, language, literary theory, film, and popular culture studies. You must use the MLA Bibliography for at least one of your projects. We will review the library's resources during our research workshops in the computer lab.
You must use at least three bibliographic tools to gather your bibliography. These may include a wide range of tools, including: the electronic card catalogue, World Cat, MLA Bibliography, JSTOR, Project Muse, Expanded Academic Index (Infotrac), ERIC, Lexis-Nexis, Dow Jones Interactive, Historical Abstracts, America: History and Life, any of the bibliographies on First Search, or the Worldwide Web, to name a few. You may not rely solely (or even primarily) on web sites for your research, though you may use data bases available on the internet, such as the MLA Bibliography, JStor, Project Muse, Infotrac Expanded Academic, and many others.
Your working bibliography should contain sources that you think you will need to consult in order to examine your research topic fully, including: secondary criticism on the literary texts you will examine, theory or philosophy (if pertinent to your study), and other collateral areas (such as: history, sociology, psychology, biography, literary biography, literary history, art history, etc.)
2) annotations on 10 sources.
Heading: For each source you annotate, type the complete bibliographic citation in proper MLA format at the top of the first page. Begin each subsequent annotation at the top of a separate piece of paper.
Analysis: For each source you annotate, analyze it fully as follows:
a) Nail down the author's thesis. Explain the author's main idea in about three sentences.
b) Analyze the author's use of evidence and argument. Explain what kinds of sources the author uses in arguing his or her thesis (historical, cultural, social, political, literary). Assess the effectiveness of the argument. Are you convinced? Why?
c) Determine (if you can) the theoretical perspective from which the author writes (e.g.: traditional historicist, new historicist, new critical analysis of the text and its formal qualities with little consideration for other contexts, reader-oriented analysis of how the text works upon the reader, Marxist, feminist, deconstructive, gay/lesbian, post-colonial, etc.)
d) Explain how the piece might be useful to you in your own scholarly essay. Explain how you might use in your own scholarly essay some of the author's ideas or the contextual information he or she uses (agreeing with them; disagreeing with them; using them to support your own ideas; using them as a spring board for your own ideas; using some of the historical, social, cultural, political information but for your own purposes). If the article does not seem useful to you in your own study, explain why. This will necessarily be speculative or "guess work" right now and subject to much change, but it will help you see how you might put your scholarly essay together later on.
e) Note any specific information, passages, quotations, etc. that you think you might want to quote or paraphrase in your paper. Be sure to use specific page numbers. If you write down direct quotations, be sure you put them in quotation marks, quote them exactly, and include the exact page numbers. If you paraphrase from your source, be sure you put it into your own words; do not use the author's words or this might create unintentional plagiarism. Use exact page numbers for paraphrased material.
Assessment: I will assess each installment of the bibliographic project on the following criteria: clarity of its analysis, its ability to "nail down" a thesis, its ability to define the author's use of evidence, its articulation of the author's theoretical approach, its evaluation of the effectiveness of the author's argument, its explanation of how the text might be useful in the scholarly essay, its proper use of MLA format, and its correctness and clarity of expression. Grammar, punctuation, and clarity will factor into the grade. No late projects accepted.
Baker's Home Page| 496 Description | 496 Syllabus | 496 Requirements | Course Descriptions and Syllabi