Blog Posts 4 and 5: Secondary Source Annotations

Amended deadlines:

Cluster 1 (four scholarly sources) due Monday, May 9th

Cluster 2 (four scholarly sources) due Monday, May 16th

For your next two blog posts, you will select a cluster of four related scholarly sources on your topic. You are welcome to begin your posts with reflection on the research process so far: where you are finding sources, where you are having difficulties, how the project has changed through the research process, etc. However, you need to accomplish the following for two clusters of four sources each. First, just as you did in the “Mickey Mouse in Full Metal Jacket” activity, you should first identify the scholarly conversation happening between these four sources (i.e., the way that scholars collectively evaluate, discuss, agree, and disagree about a topic). Then, for each source, you should write a separate paragraph, identifying (1) the author (providing information concerning the identity or professional background of the author as well as remarks on the way the author’s field or disciplinary orientation functions as a lens through which the author examines or illustrates crucial issues), (2) the text’s thesis (the principal argument or thesis of the source, and potentially relevant subordinate claims), (3) types of evidence employed (the kinds of argument and evidence that are employed in the source, and any limitations that you perceive in the source), (4) the purpose of the text (including the intended audience for the source and the purpose behind its composition), and (5) an evaluation of the source’s relevance and usefulness for your particular project.

A bit more information on locating sources:

You should now have selected both a primary artifact and context and done some significant brainstorming about the disciplinary approach(es) you will take to your topic and the humanistic research questions you intend to ask of your artifact. Before you meet with Tamara next week to discuss your progress on the research project thus far, you will need to begin your secondary source research and annotation, that is, your descriptive evaluation of each of the major sources your find on your topic. While you may consult periodical or popular sources, you must consult and reference at least 8 scholarly sources in your final research paper in this section. Scholarly secondary sources are typically journal articles or books published by reputable publishing houses. The distinction between a journal and a magazine is that journals generally require anonymous submission of articles to be “blind” reviewed by a panel of experts in a given field; whereas magazines may agree to publish articles written by those who fund the magazine. In addition, journals are characterized by highly specialized distinctions that correspond to university disciplines. As you pursue your research question, you will begin to get a feeling for what characterizes the best journals in the sub-specialty of your research. For books, university publishers are generally reliable; however, there are many well-established publishing houses worldwide. You should consult your instructor to evaluate the scholarliness of non-university publishing houses. Each field has a reliable series of publishers, and you will learn to tell the difference between well-respected publishers and “vanity presses” that publish for a fee. It is the scholarly quality of the research, as well as the publisher, that determines whether or not a book is considered a scholarly secondary source.

In class, we reviewed methods of locating scholarly secondary sources. Peruse the UC Library page on Databases to get you started, which provides detailed information on how to conduct research in the UCI Library and links to the major databases.

Review methods of doing advanced searches, and remember that most systems default to “full text,” meaning that they will yield a variety of unrelated sources. Shift the settings to “title” or “key word,” and remember to re-set the parameters after each search. You can refine searches based on date and a variety of other settings. Feel free to read, quote, and cite articles in any language in which you are fluent. Refine the choice of search terms so that your searches yield between 20 and 50 results each. However, you should be prepared to skim a 100-title result at several points during your research, in order to get a sense of the work other scholars have done.

You should read all of your sources, and you should establish strong ethos as an expert in the range and depth of secondary research on your research paper topic. This kind of knowledge is only available through hands-on exploration of a wide variety of journal articles and books. This means that you should go to the library. Plan to skim books initially to decide whether or not they are useful. If your source is a journal article, look at the intro and final paragraphs to assess usefulness, and read topic sentences of paragraphs. If your source is a book, review introductory and concluding chapters and look at the book chapter index. You may find that only one or two chapters from a book source are relevant for your project.

Just as you should plan to keep a record of all library searches that you have carried out including search terms that you have used, you should also keep a record of all sources that you have reviewed. You may encounter sources that are interesting but only tangentially related to your topic. Save those references in case the direction of your research were to shift slightly.

As you work through your sources, plan to take notes with a view to writing your annotation. Note relevant information about the author, identify the main argument or thesis, evaluate kinds of arguments and evidence used, and take notes on the usefulness of the source for your project. Remember strategies for note taking in Humanities Core: identify key terms, stages of an argument, crucial examples, logical claims, flaws in logic, biases, and trajectories for future research. Although your secondary source annotation blog posts will require only a brief paragraph about each source, your final research paper will require extended analysis of the rhetorical styles of exemplary or paradigmatic secondary sources. For this reason, you should not leave the reading and evaluation of your sources until the last minute. If you take the time to annotate and analyze your scholarly secondary sources as you go, you will steadily build the foundation of your research paper, and you will give yourself a series of antitheses against which you can set an original thesis.

You should have at least the first cluster of secondary source annotations, as well as your artifact and disciplinary orientation/humanistic research question posts up on your website by the time you meet with Tamara one-on-one next week (scheduling on Monday, May 9th during section meeting).