From the syllabus:
A literature review is due Monday, February 25
Wednesday, March 12. This will count 15% of the final grade. Each member of the class will select a
specific topic in the philosophy of mind, and will prepare a review of the literature on that
topic to be posted to the TLEARN site for the class. The review will include an annotated bibliography including both book and journal sources. (Journals
with full-text online access are fine but don't limit yourself to those. Web
sites may be listed also, but won't substitute for book chapters or journal
articles.) It will also include a concise (say 4-5 pages) summary of some of the main
interpretive debates and positions discussed in the literature. Topics will be chosen from a list I will distribute.
(If you want to do something not on the list, you must clear the topic with me
beforehand.) Each class
member must select a different topic. I'll provide more details about this soon.
Additional Information:
The literature review is to consists of two parts.
1. An annotated bibliography, consisting of a minimum of eight items. At least
five of the items must be articles from refereed, scholarly journals. (The other
three may be book chapters.) This is to be a selective bibliography: the idea is not that these will be the only eight pieces you have looked at, but rather that they will have been selected from a larger body of material because of their usefulness.
Each entry should be accompanied by a paragraph including a description of the
main theses of the article or chapter. The paragraph may also include notes on
such additional matters as how technical or difficult the article is, how it
relates to your other entries, and how persuasive you found it.
2. The second part of the project is an overview of the literature you have selected. This is not to be an argumentative essay in which you defend a view of your own, but neither is it to be a simple cut-and-paste job. Rather, the idea is to distill from the readings an overview of the main contested issues relevant to your topic; the main positions taken by scholars on these issues; and some of the main considerations offered in defense of these positions.
More colloquially, the idea is to determine the state of intellectual play on
your issue: who the main players are, what positions they are defending, and
what their strategies for defending these views are. You could think of it as
describing the intellectual lay of the land around your topic.
Last update:
February 4, 2008. |