Lit review in feminist theory class

[Adelaide9216]

Hello,

so I have a concentration in gender and women's studies in my MSW program. I've never studied feminist theory before. I have to do a lit review by the end of the semester but must submit a proposal this week. I have chosen my topic, but I am really struggling to find an example of a literature review essay based on books on feminist theory. Is this normal? I've contacted my librarian but he is away for a conference for a couple of days and I am pulling my air out because I just want to see how this type of lit review is done in feminist courses.

Help, anyone? 

[Sigaba]

6 hours ago, Adelaide9216 said:

Hello,

so I have a concentration in gender and women's studies in my MSW program. I've never studied feminist theory before. I have to do a lit review by the end of the semester but must submit a proposal this week. I have chosen my topic, but I am really struggling to find an example of a literature review essay based on books on feminist theory. Is this normal? I've contacted my librarian but he is away for a conference for a couple of days and I am pulling my air out because I just want to see how this type of lit review is done in feminist courses.

Help, anyone? 

Could you disclose the specific topic you have in mind?  How would you phrase your topic in four keywords?

In general, perhaps for a running start, take a look at:

http://www.jstor.org/subject/womensstudies (maybe pick journal titles that seem promising and do broad searches, or just start looking at tables of contents).

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40388740

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720210

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40071255

A challenge you may encounter writing a literature review on a topic that is new to you is efficiency, especially if there are terms that are both complex and contested. To help with this challenge, I recommend that you keep an eye open for writers who are especially good at taking difficult concepts into more easily digested pieces. Their works may only be tangentially related to your interests and that would be all right because the aim is to focus on how they structure their arguments, turn phrases, and make transitions from subtopic to subtopic.

You might also benefit from establishing a "budget" for how much space you're going to devote to defining a term--a sentence, maybe two, and the rest of it would go in your footnotes.

Something else you might try is to have a running conversation with someone whom you consider smart in which you talk through what you want to say in your essay. IMO an ideal candidate would be someone who is interested in your development as a scholar but perhaps disinterested (not uninterested) in feminism. You get the phrasing down in a conversational sense and then you write it like you said it.

 

[Adelaide9216]

Hello! Thanks!

I've chosen to do it on indigenous feminism(s). I want to give different definitions and then explore some of the controversies around the term. My keywords would be indigenous OR aboriginal AND feminism

I have to look at 3-4 books and then draw out common themes or differences in relation to one another. She recommended that I look at Signs, differences and GLQ academic journals but I am struggling to find an example of what she wants us to do.

Is a literature review and an review essay the same thing? 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2017 by Adelaide9216

[cowgirlsdontcry]

21 hours ago, Adelaide9216 said:

Hello,

so I have a concentration in gender and women's studies in my MSW program. I've never studied feminist theory before. I have to do a lit review by the end of the semester but must submit a proposal this week. I have chosen my topic, but I am really struggling to find an example of a literature review essay based on books on feminist theory. Is this normal? I've contacted my librarian but he is away for a conference for a couple of days and I am pulling my air out because I just want to see how this type of lit review is done in feminist courses.

Help, anyone? 

I have a guideline that my professor gave our Research/Bib class during my MA.  I write all proposals for seminar papers based on this guideline. The lit review is part of a longer essay (not a standalone doc), usually created from an annotated bib that allows the audience to see "enough ties to the literature that they feel confident that you have found, read, and assimilated the literature in the field" (McGranaghan). This particular guideline is geared toward the literary scholar, but is general enough that it can be used as a general outline for other areas within the humanities. All you need this week is the proposal. Work on it one step at a time and it will all come together. Let me know if this is useful.

Guidelines on writing a research proposal.docx

Edited October 14, 2017 by cowgirlsdontcry

[Adelaide9216]

Hello, when I click on the link it says that it is not available for my account.

[rising_star]

I'm confused by the question. The way a literature is done doesn't change based on the course. A literature review is a literature review. Now obviously you'll want to include how feminist thinkers/scholars have written about your topic but otherwise you approach this the same way you'd approach any literature review. There are a number of quick writing guides for lit reviews online (I like the one from UNC's writing center as a basic resource). You may also want to review the section on literature reviews in Leanne Powner's Empirical Research and Writing book. It's written for political science undergraduates but all of the same advice replies regardless of one's field, imo.

[Sigaba]

5 hours ago, rising_star said:

I'm confused by the question. The way a literature is done doesn't change based on the course. A literature review is a literature review. Now obviously you'll want to include how feminist thinkers/scholars have written about your topic but otherwise you approach this the same way you'd approach any literature review. There are a number of quick writing guides for lit reviews online (I like the one from UNC's writing center as a basic resource). You may also want to review the section on literature reviews in Leanne Powner's Empirical Research and Writing book. It's written for political science undergraduates but all of the same advice replies regardless of one's field, imo.

I disagree with the portion in bold face type. A historiographical review would get torn to pieces if it used the conventions acceptable in other disciplines. And vice versa. Or so I've heard.

MOO, I think that one should search as close to the forests of one's own discipline to find examples of lit reviews. 

[rising_star]

On 10/16/2017 at 6:52 PM, Sigaba said:

I disagree with the portion in bold face type. A historiographical review would get torn to pieces if it used the conventions acceptable in other disciplines. And vice versa. Or so I've heard.

MOO, I think that one should search as close to the forests of one's own discipline to find examples of lit reviews. 

I don't think of historiography as a literature review though. If we're talking a standard literature review of a topic, it doesn't matter whether one is writing for a course in sociology, English, or conservation biology because the basic tenets of a literature review don't change. A good literature review provides clear evidence about how a particular topic has been thought about and guides the reader toward  a specific question or an understudied area. Or, you know, what various online handouts say (examples here, here, here, and here).

I only took two PhD-level history courses so I'm not going to speak about historiography in detail. But, from what I recall, the historiography papers I had to write did involve reviewing sources, the evidence they used, and their overall argument and using those to show general trends in the field. That... yea, that's what happens in social and natural science literature reviews all the time. Depending on one's specific study/topic, there may be more emphasis on the use of particular data sources (e.g., archives, existing national data sets, etc.) or the methodologies used to examine those data. Still, the similarities are there. (But also, OP asked about a lit review for a women's/feminist studies course and those can't really be that dissimilar from those in other social sciences and humanities areas. Or, if it is, the professor for the course should've already made that clear to the students.)