Native American Shamanism:
Description:
ASSIGNMENT TWO ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY GUIDELINES:
Your major class research project for this semester is an annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is a comprehensive bibliography of the range of research on a subject, with brief descriptive annotations (i.e., summaries) of select readings. A researcher who consults an annotated bibliography should be able to define the central research interests and variety of interpretations and theoretical perspectives within a relatively well-defined body of scholarship. A strong bibliography will identify the predominant interpretations on a particular research subject, outline critiques of the dominant perspective, suggest directions for current research, and provide bibliographic citation for subsequent researchers. An annotated bibliography is not really a unique interpretive work, in the sense that it does not need to say something no other scholar has said; instead, it should familiarize researchers with the full range of scholarship on a well-defined topic. From your perspective think of it as an opportunity to read and summarize the scholarly literature on a subject that fascinates you.
The topic that you focus on can be anything within anthropology (people and their cultures through time and space), that has produced a relatively large body of literature. In general, you want a broad topic, rather than a highly specific one. But at the same time, you also do not want to choose too broadly.
You will be expected to use campus resources as much as possible but you are also encouraged to find resources off campus as well. It will not be possible to write the paper by spending a few evenings on Google, even though Google Scholar is an outstanding online resource; your work with electronic resources will need to go beyond simple search engines. The region has strong academic libraries that you can use either in person or via interlibrary loan.
The completed bibliography is due to me on or before December 9. Email me if you have any questions.
What makes a good annotated bibliography?
A strong bibliography has a well-defined subject that is neither too broadly defined nor too narrowly defined. Find a topic that includes a reasonably rich scholarship with a fair number of publications.
An interesting topic matters a lot. Don’t choose a topic just because it has a long scholarly record, choose it because the research itself is interesting to you. If the subject bores you then find something else.
The literature should include a fair amount of recent scholarship. Weak bibliographies are often filled with sources more than 20 or 30 years old; a few of those classic resources are great, but there should be a rich and active scholarship right now.
A wide range of resources is always most powerful. Include peer-reviewed journals and scholarly monographs that represent a broad range of anthropological scholarship and interdisciplinary work. For instance, don’t take everything from American Anthropologist, even though it is one of the discipline’s most important resources. If appropriate, include popular texts or web pages, but use them judiciously. Do not make articles from Time, Yahoo, or some stranger’s blog the heart of your study or you will not earn a strong grade. One of the points of the project is to display your resourcefulness conducting research, and a broad range of resources shows that you can use multiple library and online resources.
Thorough annotations are always better than sketchy annotations. A thorough annotation outlines the research questions as the author defines them (probably in the abstract if it’s a journal article, and likely in the introduction in a text-length study), clearly indicates the research method and data, and indicates the author’s conclusions. The annotation should always say how this source fits within the broader scholarship on your topic. See the passage on annotations below for more detail on how to write an annotation.
Follow grammar and style guidelines scrupulously (the details are included below). Spelling errors, sloppy grammar, and incomplete bibliographic citations will penalize the study. I can only grade the product, not the process of working hard on a bibliography, and if the product does not reflect all your hard work you will not receive the grade you deserve.
Non-negotiable realities:
I will grade this paper strictly for its length, content, adherence to style guidelines, diversity of resources and spelling and grammar. The style guidelines outline how to prepare the final text. The annotation guidelines provide directions for how to gather a sufficient quantity of resources and prepare the annotations. Please review these guidelines closely and adhere to them during the production of your bibliography. I am happy to read partial drafts and answer any questions you have during the preparation of the bibliography.
Organization:
Include a brief summary of your topic at the outset of the paper. This should be at least one full page that briefly introduces the research subject, notes major interpretive foci within that work, outlines the state of research in the subject today, and focuses on how this research is part of contemporary anthropology. You will be expected to make a clear statement in this opening topic summary of precisely how your subject can be appropriately considered an anthropological topic: bibliography introductions that do not place your paper within anthropology will be significantly penalized, but at the same time I have a reasonably broadly defined sense of what constitutes anthropological scholarship, so talk to me if you’re having some problems clearly conceptualizing how your interests can be construed as anthropological. The summary should be followed by bibliographic entries for every resource identified during your research. Every pertinent resource should be included. You do not need to include a concluding section to the paper after the annotations.
Annotations:
Annotations are capsule summaries that usually are about a paragraph or two paragraphs in length. You should annotate a wide range of sources, particularly scholarly books and refereed journals, but also dissertations, unpublished literature (e.g., contract archaeology reports), conference papers, popular texts, and websites, among other sources. Annotations do not need to be either critical or laudatory in tone; instead, they should aim to provide a clear and clinical description that would provide a subsequent researcher enough information to determine if that source is relevant to their own work. Good annotations minimally must include:
A full bibliographic citation, preferably using the American Anthropologist referencing system and style guidelines that follow or other reputable referencing systems and style guidelines. It must be possible for me to locate the source using your reference. You do not need to supply library data information, such as a Library of Congress catalog number or the specific collection in which you found this item. Any web site references must have a complete URL address and be accessible at the time your paper is completed. References to listservs (i.e., email bulletin boards that post messages on a particular topic to subscribing members) should provide the URL to the group archives and specify date(s) of communication(s) that you cite.
Purpose of the study: For each annotated resource, what was the research question? Why was this question being examined? Most scholarly researchers will pose their subject as a hypothesis or outline it in an abstract, but a few will force you to wade through the text to piece it together yourself. Non-academic writers often do not have a research question per se; instead, they have some subject focus that you should note with as much specificity as possible.
Methodology: How was the research conducted? Exactly what was the data used to examine the question identified above? If your subject was say, body art and the author was angling his or her text to a popular audience, the writer’s “methodology” might be visits to tattoo shops, discussions with folks with body adornment, illustrations of stylistic examples, descriptive based on an unspecified number of visits to parlors and consumers, and so on. Some popular texts, websites, and so on simply will not have a methodology beyond their own reflective musings, but academic literature always will.
Results: What did they find out? What in this interpretation, if anything, changed previous thinking on the topic? If the researchers stated hypotheses, were these borne out? So the researchers specify directions for future research on the subject? How useful was this reference?
When appropriate, you should note when articles are highly specialized or jargon-laden, identify authors who position their paper and research in relation to other researchers, note the general writing style of the piece, and comment on particularly unpersuasive or cogent interpretations. However, think of them more as summaries than as opinionated reviews. Good annotations can be anywhere from a paragraph to a page or so in length.
You will be expected to have AT LEAST 12 fully annotated resources, in addition to unannotated bibliographic references. Good papers will have a considerable volume of citations including some sources that are unannotated, others that are noted in one or two sentences—if a source is not particularly relevant or truly worthless, this can be said in a sentence or two to dismiss the study and indicate why it is not relevant (e.g., outdated, an un-refereed website with suspicious facts)–, and a few citations that are on related topics. Note references that you were unable to locate but have included because they sound relevant. The more references your paper has, the better—this is a project in which overkill is encouraged, so include a reference for everything that is relevant to the topic.
You can include no more than three internet resources. An “internet resource” means a web page, NOT a journal article accessed through a web archive (e.g. JSTOR). You may not use more than four of any one type of source. Length of the completed paper should be at the very barest minimum 3 pages; more likely you will need at least five to eight pages.
There are several solid introductions to annotated bibliographies online that you can review. Some of these guides may use different style guides and you are welcome to use one besides those of American Anthropologist. Just choose one guideline and consistently stick with it. Remember that you will have to have at least 12 fully annotated resources, meaning at least a paragraph and perhaps as much as a page for each.