Assignment: Summarize a Theoretical Article
Comparative Literature
Paper 1
"We write to remember more accurately, understand better, and evaluate what we think more objectively. (And as you will discover, the more you write, the better you read.)"
(Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, "The Craft of Research")
Assignment
Write a 3.5- to 4-page paper (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point font) that summarizes and analyzes the main points of one of the theoretical articles assigned for this purpose. The articles are posted across three separate pdf on the LATTE site. (Couldn’t figure out how to post them to Digication by press time!)
Your paper should:
- Summarize the most important concepts and arguments of the article;
- Specify the particular relevance of the article's ideas for a comparative approach to literature; and
- Evaluate the usefulness and validity of the article in the area(s) of its relevance to comparative goals.
Please pay attention to the difference between (2) and (3)!
Pay particular attention to the following criteria:
- Be concise. Identify the central points of the article's argument and don't waste time on digressions or detailed discussions of the examples it uses;
- Use your own words as much as possible. There may be key technical terms that the article uses that you should identify and define, but otherwise you should recast the arguments in your own language (the keyword and summary methods we've practiced should be helpful in this regard);
- Be critical, but constructive. The skill we are trying to develop is to make productive use of others' research and ideas. The more you keep this in mind, the better this exercise will serve you in the long run. Don't ignore major contradictions or poor reasoning in the target article, but do maintain your focus on the potential usefulness of the article. If you find you have a general disagreement with the author's approach, save that for the evaluate part of your essay after you have summarized it;
- Maintain the distinction between your own voice and that of the author of the article you are summarizing. This will be crucial when you bring multiple scholarly viewpoints together in your final research paper, but success in that endeavor depends on practicing this skill at every stage of research, from your first jottings in the margin of the target article to the final product.
Feel free to discuss the article you've selected with DP or RW. The assigned articles are all fairly difficult. And this assignment is not a "test" of your ability to instantaneously grasp the ideas they contain. It is, rather, an exercise in the development of a research-related writing skill. An importance premise of the assignment is that the process of note-taking and writing about the article will itself play a large role in coming to understand what the article says, and in evaluating its scholarly value. (See the epigraph!)
- Please provide a hard-copy of your entry to your TA with a rubric attached.
- Upload your assignment into the course LATTE page.
- You do not need to write this in your notebook.
David Powelstock and Ryan Wepler
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