Ida B Wells Engl 120 Cuymaca College Monsters Cu
A basic component of academic research is the Annotated Bibliography, which is a list of all of the sources you have found during your research so far, and that you may use in whatever project you are working on. My goal for this assignment is to gather all the sources you are using for your Project 3.
Specifics
The Annotated Bibliography is a list of the sources you have found so far to support your understanding of the topic. For our purposes, this is going to focus on outside sources that support your understanding of the monsters you have chosen. These sources will be the support to back up your claims about your monsters. You need to have a least one outside source per monster. Often times, you will have more, depending on how much credible research you are able to find.
The list is in alphabetical order as it would be on your Works Cited page, and includes a full citation for each source as it would appear on your Works Cited page. However, in addition, an Annotated Bibliography includes an annotation for each source, which is basically a summary of the source and some commentary on why the source is useful to your project. Include an annotation for each source you have collected so far.
OWL at Purdue is a great resource to check out for more information and guidance on how to create an Annotated Bibliography: Annotated (Links to an external site.)Bibliographies // Purdue Writing Lab (Links to an external site.)
The purpose of the Annotated Bibliography is to motivate you to evaluate your research sources, and to begin thinking about how they might fit together in your paper. In addition, this assignment asks you to put together your Works Cited page citations now, so that you’re not scrambling to do them at the last minute.
This assignment also helps give me a clearer sense of where you are headed with your Research Essay so that I can better advise you and help you generate ideas. It also allows me to identify any problems with your controversy or sources early on.
Finally, once you have created an academic summary for your source, you now have written a portion of your essay. The first time you mention a source, remember you have to provide context for your reader, who might know nothing about the source you are referring to; thus, the first time you use a source in your research paper, you must provide your academic summary for it as a paired down version of academic summary.
PRO-TIP: For your essays, you only need to provide the answer to Question 4 from the Minimum Requirements for this assignment. Your summary of the source will provide the context for your audience. As for the commentary, Question 5 from the Minimum Requirements will often be part of your analysis in your essay. Think of this assignment as helping you craft the building blocks of your final project.
Minimum Requirements
This assignment must fulfill the following requirements:
- Include at least four sources. (This does not include Cohen’s “Monster Culture.”)
- Remember these four sources can include any of the videos or readings we have covered in this unit, but I am expected that you do participate in some outside research to find sources that fit your monsters.
- These four sources must be a mix of peer-reviewed and popular sources. At least three out of all the sources for your essay must be a peer-reviewed source.
- If you have questions about if a source is peer-reviewed, here is handy handout to help you: PeerReviewed.pdf.
- Include a full Works Cited page citation, formatted in MLA format, for each source. To figure out how to do this, use the instructions on OWL at Purdue’s site.
- Include a clear summary of each research source: Explain what it is about so that I can get a sense of the article, text, video, source you are using. Here you will want to clearly state the main argument or point and explain some of the topics and supporting reasons focused on in the text.
- Include commentary on why the source is useful and what kind of evidence it adds to your project. Does it add a particular perspective or type of evidence? Explain why you are including it.
- At the end of your list of sources, explain what you think your argument is about your monsters and include your working thesis; this might have changed from the last time you’ve submitted one. Then, explain the connections you are beginning to see between your sources and how you are currently imagining they will be used together in your paper. This should be at least a paragraph or two long, maybe even three.
- Each annotation should be around 150-300 words long.
Sample Entry from an Annotated Bibliography
Here is an example of a single entry from an Annotated Bibliography. Your will have a list of at least 5 of these, plus the 2-3 paragraphs of explanation of your plan for the essay. As you can see, first comes the Works Cited page citation information for the source. Directly below the citation is an annotation of the sources—a brief summary plus how it’s useful.
McNamee, Tom. “Ida B Wells – Big and Bad.” Chicago Sun Times. 7 Dec. 1986. Web. 8 Jan. 2009.
McNamee explains the poor living conditions of the Ida B. Wells housing project and makes the implicit argument that several factors contribute to the problems experienced by the area. He uses several different sources of information to support his argument. He describes the area and the buildings’ condition; interviews residents and experts on the history of Chicago public housing; describes how the lay-out and design of the buildings affect the community; and explains how gang violence, vandalism, crime and a culture of poverty all contribute to the area’s problems. McNamee’s overall purpose seems to be to inform readers of the terrible living conditions experienced by residents and to identify the major factors contributing to the situation. This source provides a general overview of the problems in the Ida B Wells, some background on the area, as well as essential statistics about the project and the people living there. It will be useful both for that kind of factual information as well as for McNamee’s explanations of where these problems have come from.