Friday, May 18, 2012

Blog about those research sources!

Those doing literary research should make public their working sources during their research and drafting processes.
Student Rachel Rueckert posted reviews of
books she was researching both on Goodreads
and on her research blog.

Blog about the books and sites that you are reading, researching, and skimming! Tweet about some of those articles you are going through! Post reviews about the books you research, make blog posts evaluating that archival website or digital resource! Keep your researching and thinking as public as possible! 


Read on to learn why.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

How to Write a Literary Research Paper in the Digital Age

This post is intended to give a sketch of my current thinking on how to go about doing research and writing on literary topics while working from within both print and digital contexts.

I am an advocate of experimenting with new forms of academic communication, and I believe teachers and students should be actively exploring how to reach traditional aims of academic writing, but not merely through the production of text-only, paper documents.

However, for now, I am setting aside such experimenting and instead will look at how one can use online writing and social media to improve the processes and products of traditional college-level writing about literature. In short, here is a recipe for using digital methods for traditional, print-based academic writing.

Here, then, is my proposal for the literary research paper of the 21st century in three phases: Exploration; Development and Drafting; and Publication:

Monday, May 14, 2012

Essentials for Today's Literary Research

creative commons licensed
m kasahara - Flickr
For those involved in reading and writing about literature today, I have identified four broad categories which I believe represent areas in which students need familiarity and literacy. By this I mean one should know what these things are, how to find them, and how to make use of them for researching literature. How literate are you in each of these areas?:
  1. Traditional Scholarly Sources
  2. Electronic and Online Sources
  3. Social Networks
  4. Digital Research Tools