Literature Review

Background: What is a Literature Review?

In academic settings, a literature review is a text that presents findings from research, including a comprehensive overview of a specific topic; background and contemporary context about a topic; and/or complex, divergent perspectives about a topic.

YOUR RHETORICAL SITUATION

Audience: your instructor, as well as scholars and other people engaged in conversations about your topic

Purpose: to present findings from you research

Genre: A Literature Review

Assignment directions

For this literature review assignment, you will write an academic text with 3 required sections. Each section must be at least 1 thorough, well-developed paragraph in length. The purposes of these paragraphs are to inform your reader about your inquiry process (section 1), to provide a comprehensive overview of what you have learned about your topic and why it should matter to you and your reader (section 2), and to analyze how the information and perspectives of your sources relate to each other (section 3).

Section 1: Research Process Narrative

First, describe your research process in detail by explaining your thought processes and actions before, during, and after your search.

Before:
- What was your initial research question?
- What was your initial curiosity or interest, and what was it about your background, perspective, or interests that led you to have that curiosity?
- What did you already know or think about your topic before beginning your search process?
During:
- Where did you look for sources?
- What were your search strategies?
- What obstacles did you overcome, and how?
- What have you learned about academic inquiry or researching strategically?
- How did specific class activities or discussions in class cause you to change, revise, or narrow your research question, OR how did the curiosities and questions of others (classmates or instructors) shape or change your own topic?
After:
- What was your final research question, and how does it meet the criteria for an effective research question based on the checklist in
- Links to an external site.
- our course text?

In addition to answers to these questions, you may add other ideas in order to show that you are thinking critically about academic inquiry and what you are learning about academic research.

Section 2: Topic Overview and Exigence

Second, explain or define the issue that you have been studying and prove or demonstrate that the issue matters. Imagine a skeptical reader and how you would engage or convince them to pay attention.

What false assumptions do many people have about this issue?
Why is this issue more complicated than someone might originally think?
Who is most affected by the issue, and how are they affected?
What places, people, and issues may be affected by your topic in unexpected ways?
What are some different positions or perspectives on this issue that you have uncovered?
What are some root causes of the issue?
What are some effects of the issue?
What has changed over time to make this issue more relevant now?
What are the unanswered questions related to this issue that need to be debated and explored?

You are encouraged to answer as many of these questions as you are able to at this stage in order to be well-prepared to write persuasively about your topic in project 3. Since you are writing for an academic audience, claims about your topic should be supported with evidence.

Section 3: Synthesis of Sources

Third, synthesize all of the sources that you have chosen to write about in your literature review. In other words, explain the ways that you see that they relate to each other. Below are some questions to guide you. Again, you do not need to answer all of them. But they may help you to think about how to organize your thoughts.

How do some of the sources that you have chosen represent different perspectives or positions on this issue?
How do some of the sources that you have chosen represent different types of knowledge, different types of studies, or different types of expertise, and why does this matter?
Where do some of your sources overlap or support each other? In what ways are your sources in agreement?
In what ways might some of your sources be in conflict or disagreement? (If the authors of your sources could speak to each other, on what points might they disagree?)
How do some of your sources present different aspects of the whole issue, or different “pieces of the puzzle?” How do they work together to provide you with a complete picture of the issue?
How do some of the sources that you have written about represent an ongoing conversation about your issue/problem? Or, looking at when they were written, how do some of your sources show how the conversation about this issue has changed over time?

Required: Your synthesis section must name and describe details about all of your chosen sources.