12/13: Annotated Citation Page

During today’s puppetry presentations, the subject turned to annotated source lists. First a reminder: your annotated bibliographies are due by Friday in class.

For those of you who still have questions about what that document should look like, check out this example (you’ll need to be logged into your webmail to view it). Be warned this sample is from a paper submitted early in the new curriculum cycle, and it displays some useful mistakes.

Remember the requirements of a source critique. Just like in history class, you need to consider the origin, purpose, values, and limitations of your sources. In dramaturgical research, however, these familiar points have slightly different focus than you find in other subjects.

• Origin: who wrote this, and why should we take their word? What makes their assertions worthy of our attention?
• Purpose: Why did the author create this source? To teach? To examine a point of theory? Who was the intended audience? General readership? Students? Practitioners?
• Values: In what ways does this source help to answer your question? What aspects of the document itself make it especially useful to you?
• Limitations: What makes you question the validity or usefulness of the source? What did you have to be careful to keep in mind while referring to it?

Unfortunately, the example that I provide above does not address these four points in every case. Each of your sources needs a short paragraph that touches on all four of the items above. This does mean that you also have to research your sources—but then, if you included them in a major project, you’ve certainly done that already… right? Right?

So, what questions do you have? Post in the comments if you have a question about a specific source. You can email me, too, but I think the rest of the group would benefit if the discussion is out in the open.