ASSIGNMENT 2: ACADEMIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Survey in 1500 words a selection of academic literature related to a topic

of your choosing. This should be directly related to the topic you would like
to choose for your final essay. The following guidance should help you.

Overview. A literature review is meant to show your familiarity with the academic
field surrounding a given topic. It is also meant to be a critical evaluation of the main
conversations in that field overall—the main questions that are asked; common
preoccupations, biases, strengths. You should also raise the issue of what things
tend to be missing from the literature: what don’t people seem to be asking? In
writing this, you should probably read and incorporate around eight to ten
representative sources. As a helpful hint: in the ‘More Resources’ folder on Moodle,
there is a ‘Review Articles’ subfolder. Refer to the article(s) in there as a template for
what a literature review can look like.

Introduction. This should introduce the topic and give a general overview of what is
to come. You may wish to write it after your conclusion. See below.

Summary of arguments. Give a series of very short (three to four sentences)

descriptions of the most essential arguments of each work: what would appear on
the back cover of the book, for instance.

Strengths and Weaknesses. In each paragraph, along with the summaries of the
works, you may wish to compare strengths and weaknesses. You can group together
works in paragraphs according to several principles. For instance, all your works in
one paragraph might have similar strengths and similar shortcomings; and at the
end of the paragraph, you can highlight this. Or, you may group together one work
with another that addresses or even critiques any shortcomings that you identify in
the first.

Compare strengths across the works. What are the merits of the arguments overall
in the field? What do these works help you understand as a whole? How do some
works satisfy you more than others, and why?

Compare weaknesses across the works. Are there any persistent patterns you can
identify that all the works seem to fall into, but that leave you dissatisfied? Here is a
place for you to suggest a future research agenda designed to address these
patterns, and intervene with your own work. And that’s exactly what you will be
doing, in your final essay!

Conclusion. This should sum up all the above, and pull a common thread out of it.
This common thread should be the same as in your introduction.