WAYS 102 - Women Writing the Future

TAKE NOTES FOR THIS CLASS.  A quote from Dr. Funston from previous semesters: "Like, write things down, dude!"

{hint - yes, there will be a quiz}

Your Assignment:

Three papers requiring outside research over the course of the semester, one each on the three main texts of the class:

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree
• Dawn by Octavia Butler

Papers will be evaluated using the rubrics provided in the syllabus.

So, breaking this down logically:

• You have to write papers for this class
• Part of the rubric for the grading is evidence ("Works cited")
• Therefore, you need to know what counts as evidence and how to find acceptable external evidence when needed
• Oh, and, you will also be better able to write an effective paper if you know more about the topic.

Step 1: Topic Analysis

Topic analysis in general involves:

• Choosing a topic appropriate for the class/assignment (this is a skill, by the way)
• Coming up with a "reasonable" research question
• Creating an an initial list of possible search terms (NOT SENTENCES) that represent your interest
• Recognizing that this is just a starting point and that your interest AND SEARCH TERMS will evolve as you begin to look for sources

Step 2: Choose a database

Decide whether you need a:

• General Database that covers lots of disciplines.
  • The quick search box on the library home page
  • Academic Search Complete
• Or a focused database that narrows in to the sources for just that discipline
  • On the library home page, click on "choose databases by subject and type"
  • Choose the subject and type of sources you want and see what databases are suggested.

for this class, you will use both.

Step 3: Search the database effectively

• Use the four main search techniques
  • AND - to connect different ideas 
    • fiction and women
  • ( OR ) - to contain synonyms in a group to be searched together 
    • (fiction or novels or stories) and (women or gender)
  • quotation marks - to keep words together that express a single idea
    • (fiction or novels or stories) and (women or female) and "science fiction"
  • Wildcard character - to catch multiple endings of a word.
    • (fiction or novel* or stories) and (perspective* or stereotyp* or "point of view") and "science fiction"
• Use the limiters in the database results list to hone in on useful items, e.g.
  • Recent
  • Articles from Academic Journal
  • in English

Step 4: Evaluate your results and revise your search as necessary

Step 5: Retrieve the articles you choose

Your assignment involves Literary Analysis.  There are multiple possible pieces of evidence that you can look for:

• The Work: The text itself is a primary source and can always be quoted or referenced to make a point
• Biographical Information: Information about the author helps understand point-of-view and place the work in a context
• Literary Criticism: Critical analysis of the text by scholars - can be scholarly articles or chapters in books
• Comparative works: May be other works by the same author or works by others in the same genre, time period, or style
• Subject/Topic background: Either to explicate for YOUR reader on the topic of the work (e.g. some historical period, some sociological dynamic), or to comment on the genre/category of the work (e.g. feminist science fiction, utopias).

Your tools:

1.  Library databases for Literature, specifically, Literary Sources
   • Do NOT start by searching by keyword
   • Use the "Person Search" and "Works Search" capabilities located in the gray bar under the top search box
2. The Quick Search box on the library home page
   • Use this for Subject/Topic background searching

A Periodical is anything that is published regularly and includes newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, as well as some less well-known categories.  You will be required by faculty to use articles from scholarly sources and  peer-reviewed journals in your academic work.  What does that mean?  How do you know that what you are finding is acceptable?

• name of the periodical (journal, bulletin, quarterly, review...)
• more pages in the article than in a magazine article
• abstract present in the article (not just the database record)
• author affiliation given
• presence of a bibliography or references

And how do you find them in the first place?  The best way is to use a database designed to locate scholarly articles in your field of interest.

1. Try a title or keyword search
2. Some databases have a list of suggested subject words on the initial results page. Look at them and copy the useful ones. If there is no list, then look at a number of potentially useful records and copy down words and phrases from the "subject" or "descriptor" area of single record. Some databases provide a thesaurus of terms which can lead to broader, related, or narrower terms you may not have thought of.
3. Go back to the search screen and search BY SUBJECT/DESCRIPTOR using the words you learned about as a result of your first search.
4. Be sure to connect search terms correctly using the following techniques

• Boolean connectors
  • AND connects different concepts and narrows a search: Fish AND chips
  • OR, with parentheses, combines synonyms/related terms and broadens a search: Fish AND (chips OR fries)
• Use quotation marks for phrases: Fish AND (chips OR "french fries")
• Use the asterisk as a wildcard character to retrieve variations on a common stem: educat* retrieves educate, education, educating, educated, etc. Very useful for capturing plurals