Research Synthesis and Bibliography (5% of final grade)

Due

  • Friday, March 28 by the end of the day

Requirements

  • ~750 words (3 pages double-spaced), not including Works Cited or Bibliography.
  • MLA or Chicago citation style.
  • Turn in via Canvas; doc, docx, or pdf.
  • If you use AI writing or research tools for any part of the writing process, a statement about how you used these tools and why. See the “Course Info & Policies” page under “Academic Integrity and AI Writing Tools” for more information about what this statement should look like.

Please see the final research paper assignment page for a description of its requirements.

This assignment has two parts:

  1. A research synthesis;
  2. A bibliography.

Research Synthesis

For this portion of the assignment, you will select at least 3 secondary scholarly sources with which you think you will engage in your final research paper (you can select more, but 3 is the minimum). You will then answer the following questions about these sources:

  1. What ideas or concepts are shared across your sources? Discuss at least 1. Each of your sources might engage with this idea or concept differently, but the point here is to identify commonalities in their arguments.
  2. What ideas or concepts are not shared across your sources? Discuss 1 distinctive idea or concept in each of your sources and how it is distinctive.
  3. What blindspots or gaps exist across these sources? What pertinent or potentially important ideas or concepts are not addressed (or addressed adequately) by any of these sources?
  4. Given the critical/scholarly discussion on your topic, what will your contribution to this topic be? Based on the feedback I’ve given you on your proposal and your distillation of the critical conversation about this topic in this assignment, revise your central research question.

Bibliography

Your bibliography should include citations for each of the sources you discuss in your research synthesis. You should also include citations of at least 2 additional scholarly sources that are related to your topic and/or to the primary text(s) you are writing about and that you think you might cite in your final research paper.

These citations should be formatted according to MLA or Chicago style guidelines. At least three of these sources should have been published in the past ~15 years or so. If any of your sources include single-author academic books, please indicate for each book which specific chapter(s) you are citing or think you will cite in your paper. Please make sure to include links to each scholarly source (either to the record in the library catalog or to the journal article or book itself).

Conducting Research

You will need to be able to find and access scholarly sources about your topic and text(s) to complete this assignment. See the “Conducting Research” section of the Final Research Paper assignment page for resources.