PAPER TOPIC #3: Annotated Bibliography + Proposal Prompt
The first step in this project involves a proposal plus an annotated bibliography of at least six sources concerning your topic. This is a reminder that you will be researching the topic you wrote about in Paper 2. The purpose of the research is to add scholarly voices to the conversation you initially started.
In about a page, the proposal details A). the text or texts you choose to analyze and why, B).what other scholars seem to be saying about the text (in a couple of sentences, since you do this in the annotated bibliography), C) the argument you plan to make about the text in the final paper, detailing the school of literary criticism you will use, and C). possible evidence from the literary text or film you will use to support your argument. Think of this as a short, cogent, and to the point preview of what you hope to say about the text(s). The annotated bibliography involves finding out what established scholars have said about your topic; the goal of this is 1). To see what arguments are out there already to see that you do not repeat something already said and 2). Helping you think through the text and coming to an idea of your topic itself, which will in turn allow you to engage with the opinions of other scholars. You should search the library databases, especially Academic Search Complete and the MLA Database on Bluefield’s library resources, JSTOR (you can sign up for a free account where you can download 100 articles per month),Google Scholar, or my library archive, to find these sources. The databases most likely to help you will include searching all the available databases on EBSCOhost. I would also recommend that you visit me during my office hours if you need help finding sources. To annotate a source, you must first A). cite the source correctly in MLA citation (see the Purdue OWL website and/or my cheat sheet) and following the citation, both A). summarize the author’s argument and B). discuss the source’s usefulness to your project and how it helped to shape your thinking. Each annotation will likely include about 6-7 sentences. I will provide an example below in this document. DO NOT rely on MLA citation generators; they will usually cause you to err, causing a horrific tragedy to your grade.
You will need to annotate at least six sources. Of the six, four of them should be journal articles or book chapters. The other two can come from Googled websites, Youtube videos, or whatever might be helpful to you
