Writing an Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Assignment Task

Read the available academic literature and answer your question in words or less. You will be given the opportunity to get feedback on your ideas during tutorials and through the annotated bibliography.

In your essay:

1. briefly outline the issue with reference to your chosen media example. i.e., what is the issue you are focusing on and how does your media reflect this issue.

2. The media is only the launch pad for your essay – it is not part of the research. The research must consist of academic sources. You only need to mention the media at the start of your essay (but if you want you can return to your media example at the end of your essay and discuss it again briefly in relation to the academic literature you have described). introduce your question in the first paragraph, and.

3. The question using academic literature.

While you may use literature from across academic disciplines your emphasis should be on social science literature. In both your annotated bibliography and essay the focus should be on the social and cultural aspects of the body (not health or psychology). Obviously, health will be relevant to many of your topics, but you need to approach it from a social and cultural perspective (e.g., how is health socially constructed? how is the medical gaze socially constructed? Etc.). Psychological literature can be used to look at the impact of certain ideals (e.g., setting up the context and background for the issue that you are researching), but this should not be the main focus of your essay. Instead, the focus should be on the social and cultural aspects such as the ideals themselves. In short, you can briefly mention the effects of the meanings, norms, and values on health/body image, but your focus should primarily be on the meanings, norms, and values themselves.

It is often appropriate to use a case study (or two) to answer your question. For instance, with regards to the above examples you could answer them using case studies:

a. Choose a certain society and look at how cosmetic surgery fits into that cultural context. For example, look at eyelid surgery in Korea, or skin bleaching in Jamaica.

b. You may choose to focus on how muscle is gendered by looking at how female athletes negotiate the meaning of muscle.

c. You may choose to focus on the boundary between ‘scarification’ (body modification) and ‘cutting’ (body mutilation).

d. China is the obvious case study here, but you may choose to briefly compare Chinese footbinding to the wearing of high heels in Western societies.

You may use one or two non-academic sources (e.g., news item, opinion pieces, magazine articles) in your final essay (but only with a good reason that you explain to the reader) – the vast majority of the material you use in your essay should be academic (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles, academic books).

It is OK if not all of your sources are on your exact topic, in fact this is probably going to be the case for many topics. For instance, there may only be a few sources that describe your chosen practice, but you will use other courses to put the practice in context. For example, you may only find a few sources that discuss Chinese footbinding, but you would then use other more general sources that discuss the roles and status of women in ancient China to put the practice in context.

Your paper must contain an argument. Purely descriptive papers are not acceptable. Your argument is just your answer to your question. It is whatever you find when you do your research. You should state your argument in your paper. Your argument could be “Footbinding was used to construct Chinese women as chaste, pure, as property of their husbands (whatever you find)”. If you are in doubt about your argument ask your tutor for help.

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