Annotated Bibliography

The next assignment in our research project is the annotated bibliography.  We discussed how this is a good way to keep track of the research you are doing and to share the work you have done with other researchers.  For our next class, please bring one of the resources you have found so that we can draft part of the annotated bibliography in class.  These will not be the only resources you use, but they will help you get started with the project.  Be sure to have read the resources before class, and post links to any non-print materials so that you can quickly access them in class if need be.

As we get to work in class, we will consider information from some online sources that define what an annotated bibliography is, explain how to write the annotations, and provide examples of those annotations.  Here are a few links to sites on annotated bibliographies that we will look at together:

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University

The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Cornell University Library

When you write an annotated bibliography, you not only write an annotation, but you also write the citation according to, in this course, the MLA guidelines.  Use Easybib.com to compose your bibliographic entries.

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Explication

In your explication of the poem written about the painting you have already examined, you want to think about what the poem says, as well as how it says it.  You will certainly think about the painting in this essay, since the poem refers to it, but the painting is not your main focus here–the poem is.  Think about how it looks on the page, how it sounds read aloud, and how it reflects on the painting.  Look for repetition, rhythm, rhyme, other uses of sound, metaphoric language, poetic forms that would not work in prose, syntax and punctuation, stanza and line breaks, mood or tone, in addition to thinking about the content of the poem.

There are many resources that can help you write your explication.  The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has some helpful information about writing about poetry.

Here is a checklist for drafting an explication, borrowed from Literature for Composition, edited by Barnet, Burto, and Cain:

Overall Considerations

• Does the poem imply a story of some sort, for instance the speaker’s account of a love affair, or of a response to nature?  If so, what is its beginning, middle, and end?
• If you detect a story in the speaker’s mind, a change of mood–for instance a shift from bitterness that a love affair has ended to hope for its renewal–is this change communicated in part by the connotations of certain words?  By syntax?  By metrical shifts [changes in the meter or rhythm of the poem]?
• Do the details all cohere into a meaningful whole?  If so, your explication will largely be an argument on behalf of this thesis.

Detailed Considerations

• If the poem has a title other than the first line, what are the implications of the title?
• Are there clusters or patterns of imagery, for instance religious images, economic images, or images drawn from nature?  If so, how do they contribute to the meaning of the poem?
• Is irony (understatement or overstatement) used?  To what effect?
• How do the connotations of certain words (for instance, dad rather than father) help to establish the meaning?
• What are the implications of the syntax–for instance, of notably simple or notably complex sentences?  What do such sentences tell us about the speaker?
• Do metrical variations occur, and if so, what is their significance?
• Do rhyming words have some meaningful connection, as in the cliches moon and June, dove and love?
• What are the implications of the poem’s appearance on the page–for example, of an indented line, or the stanzaic pattern?  (For instance, if the poem consists of two stanzas of four lines each, does the second stanza offer a reversal of the first?)

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Short Story Review

1121-5436 Short Story review

here is the document we drafted in class.  Feel free to reply with additional entries to add to the information in the document.

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Thesis statements

Thesis Statements:

• Main idea of your essay
• Your argument, opinion, position
• Not a fact, a question, or a generalization
• Lays the groundwork for your essay:  a roadmap to the rest of the essay
• Specific:  to the assigned texts; to the scope/length of the essay; to the assignment questions
• Supportable with evidence from the texts
• Last sentence (or two) of your introduction
• The so what of your essay

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Drama Essay Assignment

Now that we have finished reading Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles and Jerilyn Fisher’s article “Women Righting Wrongs”  Morality and Justice in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916),” we are ready to write about it.  If  you have any questions about the Drama Essay Assignment, please feel free to use the blog as a forum for questions and concerns.

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Syllabus

The course syllabus is a contract that will guide us through the semester,  so you should make sure to keep a copy of it handy.  If you need to print another or to look at it online, download the syllabus here.

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