Annotated Bibliographies
An annotated bibliography
summarizes the salient points of a secondary resource in a
critical fashion. Keep your audience in mind, who want to know
what the article/book chapter is about, what kind of methodology
it uses, and whether it is worth reading. Put the full citation
of the article, book, or book chapter first, and then answer the
following questions, in about 5 to 10 sentences:
1) What is the author's
argument?
2) How does the author
support this argument? What kinds of evidence does she use?
3) What does the author
hope to accomplish by writing this piece? What kinds of biases
might the author have?
4) Who is the author's
audience? To what kind of scholarly debate is she contributing?
5) In what ways is this
piece relevant for your own research question? You should
carefully distinguish (in each and every sentence) which ideas
can be attributed to one of these three authors, and which ideas
are the product of your own thinking.
You must cite every time
you report an author's ideas, not only by citing page numbers,
but also by indicating through words and phrasing ("According
to Smith's book Literature . . . "; "The author of this
article argues . . . ") that you are reporting second-hand
information. Failure to do so will result in a point being
taken off every sentence that does not properly cite and
attribute the source of ideas (a core tenet of academic
writing).
Example of an annotated entry:
Schiller, Ben. “Learning Their Letters: Critical Literacy,
Epistolary Culture, and Slavery in the Antebellum South.” Southern
Quarterly 45.3 (2008): 11-20. Print.
According to Ben Schiller, the letters that slaves wrote to their
masters in the antebellum South represented “public transcripts of
domination” that were also influenced by the slaves’ own
perspectives, which often conflicted with the views of their
masters (15). Schiller argues that the epistolary culture of
slaves who were required to be literate and compose letters to
their masters reveals more about slavery and literacy than the
“conventional sources and traditional narratives of resistance”
(25). To support his argument, the author employs a series of
letters that slaves wrote to their owners, whether to offer their
owners support (Schiller 15), request hiring privileges (Schiller
17), or criticize them for turning their backs on the slaves
during religious sermons (Schiller 22). Through his analysis of
these letters, Schiller achieves his objective, which is to prove
that the slaves’ epistles “are representative of the ways in which
many enslaved black writers produced texts that disturbed the
terms of their bondage, even as they worked within an epistolary
culture that maintained and emphasized the imbalanced power
dynamic of the master/slave relationship” (15). He also
demonstrates how the epistolary form diverges from the “
literacy-as-resistance paradigm” (Schiller 13) because the slaves
still had to use a courteous tone when writing to their masters
(Schiller 23).
Since Schiller has a master’s degree in nationalism, he may be too
focused on trying to establish a single national identity of
literate slaves that is not representative of all letters slaves
composed to their masters. Moreover, as a former reporter,
Schiller could be adding his own slant to these strategically
selected letters and analyzing them differently than how the slave
writers intended for them to be read by their masters. Based on
the journal that published this article, it seems Schiller’s
intended audience is scholars who value art and history. From the
nature of the article, readers may also infer that Schiller is
writing to convince scholars to read slaves’ letters more
critically. Schiller acknowledges that scholars often view slaves’
letters as forms of resistance (13), but encourages readers to
understand how the letters balance “persuasive tactics” (Schiller
18) with “the bonds of deference and devotion that supposedly
governed master/slave relations” (Schiller 16). Schiller’ s
article can influence my research because he discusses literacy as
a source of existential freedom (12) and survival (21), which is
comparable to the function of literacy in Parable of the Sower. In
addition, Schiller distinguishes between critical literacy, or the
ability to enact change through reading and writing, and practical
literacy, the simple ability to read and write (14). In Parable,
Lauren’s critical literacy differentiates her from the other
Earthseed community members, who want Lauren to teach them to read
and write. Schiller explains how many of the privileged slaves
used their ability to read and write to educate other slaves (20),
which is precisely what Lauren does in Parable.