HW

Assignment #9 due 3/29 and 3/30

For this assignment, produce an annotated bibliography of four sources that you found in preliminary research. For the purposes of this assignment, at least two of the sources need to be academic/scholarly.

For each source, produce a properly formatted bibliographic (i.e. works cited) entry, followed immediately by a 2-3 paragraph annotation (in other words the format should be: first bib entry  annotation  second bib entry  annotation, etc.).

Each annotation should first briefly summarize the central focus of the source, its scope, claims and approach. Then, each annotation should discuss how the source is relevant to your research project, and how you anticipate using the source in your own writing.

I don’t expect you to read each source in its entirety at this point in time. Skimming and selective reading will allow you to develop enough of a sense of the source to complete the above tasks. Further reading will clarify whether the source will ultimately be useful to your work.

Obviously it would be great if ever source we find during our research ended up being useful to us. This is rarely the case, however. Some sources fit very neatly within our research topic, others don’t. But even the sources that don’t really fit with our line of inquiry can be helpful to us by narrowing and clarifying our focus, and raising important questions that we may not have considered; often our focus and inquiry change as the research process unfolds, and we find that sources that initially seemed helpful no longer are.

The moral here, is not to get too attached to the research, it’s better to go find other sources that work, rather than trying to force sources to work in ways that they don’t. This is an important part of establishing our ethos as researchers, and of using research ethically.