Capstone home.

Literature review

In the syllabus, we’ve called this a “literature review,” but I suspect that many of your sources will not be “literature” in the strictest sense: they may be presentations, videos, exhibitions, etc. Gray and Malins (14) prefer “contextual review” instead and I like that!

Gray and Malins (35) define the contextual review as “a ‘bridge’ between the identification of the research problem – the ‘what?’ – and researching that problem through the methodology – the ‘how?’” that prompts the following questions:

• Why is your research needed and what evidence is there to support this? (Rationale.)
• Who else in the field has addressed significant aspects of your research question? (Competitors, contributors, co-operators.)
• When (and possibly where) was the research carried out? (Currency, cultural context.)
• How has the research been carried out, and what are the implications of this for your methodology and specific methods?
• What aspects remain unexplored or require further work? (‘Gaps’ in knowledge, new ground.)

Why do a review?

Part of what you should be aiming for in a capstone project is specificity. It’s good to have a large overall issue that you’re trying to address, but the more specific your project, the better. From a practical standpoint, the most useful thing the contextual review helps you do is winnow down the scope of your project. If you know what other people have tried, then you can either try something else or build on their methodologies.

The review also helps you determine if your project is even interesting to begin with. (You should probably try to make an interesting project.)

Reviews have false starts

You’re likely to gather many more sources in your initial review than will end up being useful to you. In your research paper’s “Related work” section, you may only end up citing three or four things! But that doesn’t mean that you’ll only need to find three or four things. For every reference that you end up using in your paper, you’ll need to go through (I dunno) ten or so references that end up being less relevant or not as useful. Become attuned to the idea that you will throw out some of this work.

But this work isn’t necessarily wasted! You may end up using the references you find in the future when continuing work on your project, or working on a different project entirely.

Reading scholarly writing

Not everything in your contextual review will be scholarly writing, but some of it might be. I like reading scholarly writing, but it can be scary and time-consuming. Here are some tips for engaging with it in the most pain-free way possible:

• Understand the kind of writing you’re reading: research or humanities?, position paper, literature review, monographs, essays, etc. What are the goals of the author? Who is their audience?
• Allison’s basic tips:
  • Skimming is always okay. Don’t be afraid to move on to the next paper or chapter if you don’t find something of interest.
  • Read the abstract and make a quick summary for yourself of what the paper is about. What did the authors do and how did they do it? What are they arguing for and what are they arguing against?
  • Have a goal in mind. Why are you reading this paper? If you’re trying to figure out what people are doing, the abstract might be all you need to read! If you want to know how they’re doing it, look at the methodology. Etc.
  • Evaluate the research.
  • Skip to the bibliography. Do their sources look familiar? Pick out the things that look interesting and add them to your list.
  • Take notes and keep records. Add everything to your citation tracker, even if you decided the paper wasn’t useful to you. (You never know when something will turn out to be important later!) Make use of folders and tags to keep things straight. Print papers out if it’s useful for you.
• How to read an academic paper; How to read an academic paper; How to read an engineering research paper
• From Lydia: Shannon Mattern on Reading Effectively; How to Cite Like a Badass Tech Feminist Scholar of Color

Annotated bibliography

In this class, your contextual review should result in an annotated bibliography. (Note: The “contextual review” process is ongoing! You shouldn’t stop looking for references after you’re done with this assignment.) The annotated bibliography is a list of things that you found, cited in appropriate bibliographic format, along with a paragraph or two that summarizes the source and reflects on its importance for your own project.

The purpose of the annotated bibliography is to help you direct your research… and to show to the instructor that you’ve been doing the reading. The annotated bibliography can also serve as a starting point for the “Related work” section of your research paper.

Helpful resources:

• Annotated bibliographies from the Purdue Online Writing Lab, with samples
• Annotated bibliography from the UW-Madison Writing Center, which lists several styles and rhetorical techniques that you can use
• From Lydia: Shannon Mattern on Abstracts + Annotated Bibliographies; Shannon Mattern on Literature Review/Mediagraphy

Works cited!

Gray, Carole, and Julian Malins. Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design. Ashgate, 2004.