The purpose of this assignment is to practice academic research and gather sources for your Literature Research Essay.
Length
Your annotated bibliography needs a minimum of 8 MLA-formatted source citations with annotations. Each annotation should be 120-150 words.
Types of Sources Required
To help focus your topic idea, this assignment requires sources that could work for various critical approaches. Find at least one source for each of the categories below:
Biographical Information about the Author A source with information about the author’s life, such as an encyclopedia article
Historical Relevance This can be a source relevant to the time period the story is set or when it was written.
A Social Issue relevant to the story or poem This source needs to focus on any social issue (such as class, race, gender, ageism, or cultural identity).
A work of literary criticism This is a source written by a literary scholar that evaluates or interprets a literary work. The library databases are the best place to find literary criticism.
Feel free to include more than one source that fits any of the above categories, especially if you already decided on a topic idea for your literature research essay.
Source Details
Sources must be valid for college level writing. Journal articles from the library databases should be included.
Additional sources can be any type (website, documentary, personal interview, etc.) as long as they are relevant and credible. Do NOT use Wikipedia, Ask.com, About.com, Sparknotes.com, etc.
Annotations
Below each source citation, you will write an annotation. Include a seven to ten sentence summary of the work (in third person, referring to the work in the present tense), a one sentence critique of the work (in third person, referring to the work in the present tense), and a one to two sentence evaluation of the work’s usefulness to your research (in first person) here as one paragraph. The paragraph should have a first line indent, but the citations should have a hanging indent.
See the module for more resources about annotated bibliographies.
Notes
It’s a good idea to read the Literature Research Essay instructions before beginning this assignment!
Notice not all of the sources have to specifically focus on the literature itself. Rather, some focus on relevant themes or topics.
Make sure your work is in MLA format and your sources follow MLA guidelines. List the sources in alphabetical order and use hanging indents.
Be sure to vary your sentence beginnings for the annotations.
Notice this assignment requires a minimum of 8 sources, but the literature research paper only requires 4. You don’t have to use all the sources from your annotated bibliography in the research essay!
