Annotated Bibliography & Literature Review

You can find a downloadable pdf version of this prompt here: Annotated Bib & Lit Review Prompt PDF

The Assignment

For this major assignment, you’ll be crafting an annotated bibliography (7-8 sources) and literature review (1000-1200 words) that
will feed into and inform your final research project for the class. This is both to help you become familiar with these genres
and to help you narrow down your own research pursuits for the final project.

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The Annotated Bibliography

As part of your research process for the final project in this class, you will be creating an Annotated Bibliography to help organize and understand your sources. You should create annotations for at least 7-8 research sources.

• Each annotation should include:
  • a brief summary of the source (where you found it, who the author is, what kind of source it is, what its main argument/purpose is, etc.)
  • how the source is relevant to your research (how is it useful for your specific research focus? what connections can you make?)
  • how you think the source might fit into your conversation overall (how does it relate to other sources you have found? how might you use it specifically?).

Each of your annotations should run about a paragraph (200-250 words roughly).

For additional information about the Annotated Bibliography, see Purdue OWL’s detailed and accessible explanation here.

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The Literature Review

For the “literature review,” which can be thought of as a synthesis/reflection of your research, in approximately 1000 words, you will be putting all of your sources in conversation with one another—ideally, with a specific focus in mind.

• This means you can (but don’t have to):
  • summarize common elements or issues that you see in your sources
  • write about interesting questions or themes in your sources that stand out to you
  • analyze any notable approaches your sources take in discussing your topic
  • consider the genre of the sources and how that affects the information included in your sources
  • examine what kind of evidence and/or assumptions your sources rely on to make their claims
  • describe the tone that characterizes current conversations in your sources about your topic

Note: The focus of your discussion here should be the sources themselves… putting them in conversation with one another, explaining their context and how they support, contradict, or complicate one another. That is, this is not where you make a new argument, but rather focus on the arguments that others are making.

For more information about the Literature Review, visit UNC – Chapel Hill’s extensive and helpful breakdown of the genre here.