Wiki Assignment #2 – Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography
Purpose: In order to help you get started on your paper, our second Wiki assignment will center on preliminary research.
Task: Read five scholarly sources (essays / articles / interviews / books / chapters) and compose an annotated bibliography. The bibliography should be posted in the class wiki, with one article per scholarly source.
Due: Friday, July 28 11:59 p.m.
Requirements for scholarly sources: The easiest way to ensure that a source is “scholarly†is that it be from a peer-reviewed journal or published by an academic press. This is not to say that articles and books from other locations are automatically unacceptable. You do, however, need to be more weary of the criticism from other sources. A movie review in Cosmo, for example, does not carry the same scholarly weight as one in The New York Times.
At least two of your sources must be print texts and you may not use Wikipedia. This is because Wikipedia enforces a strict neutral point-of-view policy. Therefore, it is unlikely that you will find any articles that actually make an argument, which pretty much renders Wikipedia useless for our purposes.
The MLA online bibliography, accessible via our library, is always a reliable tool for locating scholarly sources. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database may also be helpful. Again, you may not rely entirely on digital / online sources – at least two of your entries must be on print texts.
As with the first wiki assignment, you may not duplicate a source that another student has already used. If you want to “claim†certain sources for your own, I suggest you create articles for them right away.
If you do not already have a firm idea for your paper, your five sources needn’t all address the same text. In addition, feel free to use theoretical texts that may address particular themes of our course, but do not directly analyze the course texts. See below for examples.
Requirements for the annotations: Each annotation should be a minimum of 150 words and should give the reader an overview of the source. No reflection is required for this assignment.
Requirements for Wiki entries
- One article should be created per scholarly source.
- Article titles should be the source title.
- Sections should include bibliographic information, annotation, and links, if applicable.
- Each article should have categories: your name, the relevant text, secondary criticism / theory / etc.
This assignment is worth 10 points, i.e. 10 percent of your final grade.
Examples of theoretical texts that address themes of our course:
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction†by Walter Benjamin
“A Cyborg Manifesto†from Simians, Cyborgs, and Women by Donna Haraway
“What is Postdmodernism†from The Postmodern Condition by Jean Francois Lyotard
“Precession of Simulacra†from Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
“Method†from The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
Various chapters from Terminal Identity by Scott Bukatman
Various chapters from How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles
Various chapters from Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization by Alexander Galloway
Various chapters from Grammar of the Multitude by Paolo Virno
Various chapters from The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich
And many, many more…