Literature Review

Week 9: Literature Review (updated 19.03.2025)

Due:  Friday, April 11 

Once you have your proposal accepted, you should begin reading secondary sources to find out about the current state of the field. This requires a thoughtful engagement with other approaches to your particular form. Thus, the literature review.  A literature review shows how your particular research interacts with other critical approaches to the same topic. How is your categorization similar or different to current academic research? What is unique to your approach to the space, genre, or other category? You should have already begun this process informally as you collected your secondary sources, but this literature review is a clear and lucid explanation of what it is you are doing in relation to other writers who are also engaging your particular topic, method, or genre.  

A literature review is itself a strange activity: you are imagining a conversation with many experts in the field (the books and articles you read) and synthesizing this information into a coherent narrative that a reader can follow. Literature reviews are not just summaries! They are summaries in relation to your project. The categories we are working on in this class are very broadly defined as "sociology," "urban studies," "linguistics," “media studies,”  “literature,” and  “short,” though we may add or subtract fields depending on the topic (aphorism, material, translation, gender, etc.). If you find you have too many or too few fields to adequately address, come see me for help.  If you find no one writing on your particular topic, combination of topics, or your particular method, then you have a problem of definitions and categorization. 

Assignment:

Choose at least 4 academic works to evaluate that are based on your short form and method. You should write a two-page review (No more than two!) that clearly states the ways editors, writers, academics, or artists have attempted to engage or define your particular form. You can use part of your proposal to frame the texts and your own categories in relation to both positive and negative evaluations of the works you choose. Be aware of your contrasting method of categorization, its benefits, as well as limitations. This review should conclude by offer a reason for your own approach: what is missing in the literature that your project completes? Which methods are you borrowing, copying, or rejecting? 

Format: 

Two pages, Double Spaced, TNR font (not including bibliography of secondary sources), 12 pt. font

Briefly: introduce your problem and "texts", then review how others approach these works (categories and methods), and conclude by offering your own particular method. It sounds easy, but it takes nuance and rhetorical style to read others well and write about them clearly.