Assignment 1

GER 1790 9.0 / HUMA 1190 9.0
2022-2023
Assignment 1
Annotated Bibliography
This assignment is intended to develop your library research skills and your awareness of the different sources available for an academic paper in the Humanities at York University. Follow the 3 steps below to prepare your annotated bibliography.
Important dates:
Sept 27/29/30
· Assignment is explained in lecture and tutorials
Oct 4
· Librarian will hold a workshop and answer your questions during the lecture
Oct 21
· Annotated Bibliography is due at 23:59
1) Select one of the following topics and locate six (6) sources on this one topic in scholarly journals, books or e-books available through York University library.
Kant and the Enlightenment
German Romanticism, Music and the Visual Arts
Weimar Culture after World War I
The Cold War in German culture
Culture in Nazi Germany
Memorials and Memory Culture after 1990
Germany’s Postcolonial Legacy in the Arts
German Reunification in Literature and Cinema
Germany’s Relationship with its European Neighbours
Migration from and to Germany in German literature and film
Sports, Politics, and Nation in German Culture
Electoral system in Germany
Make sure that you include only scholarly sources, e.g. from a scholarly journal and not a newspaper or magazine (i.e., Maclean’s, Time, The Economist)
List articles in English only.
Journal articles are usually 10 pages or more, make sure you do not list book reviews.
Do not list non-scholarly electronic sources (such as Wikipedia).
Do not list general surveys, government reports or other items from the course reading list.
For this assignment, your sources should not be older than 25 years.
2) List your articles in the bibliography in MLA Style format, 9th edition.
List your articles alphabetically starting with the author’s last name.
Note that the articles as you find them listed will not necessarily be in an approved format. Make sure that you change the format appropriately.
Make sure that you give the names of authors, title of the article, the date, the name of the journal, and both the volume (and issue number, if there is one) and page numbers.
3) Provide an annotation below each entry in your list. An annotation is a brief statement of 3-5 sentences for each source noting its key argument(s), its methodology and use of data, what makes it an acceptable scholarly source and what makes it a relevant and useful source for an academic essay on this topic.
Library Assignment Tips
Your assignment is to identify good scholarly sources that are relevant to the topic you have chosen. To determine whether to include a source and use them in a potential research paper, you need to read enough of it to know something about its content, focus, subject matter and approach. In assessing the usefulness of the sources you have found, consider some of the following questions:
Who wrote it? Why does this matter?
When was it written? Does it still matter?
What audience is it intended for, and what is the purpose of the source? What is it “about”? (Please note that “to inform us about Germany in 1989”, for instance, is extremely vague and almost certainly not the point of the piece in question… Be specific about the kinds of questions the source is trying to answer)
How is the information contained in it documented or cited?
Is this publication scholarly? Why?
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of elements that might make up a good source, but rather a list of suggestions to begin the process of evaluating the ones you have found. Once you have prepared your list and are working on the annotation,
Read enough of the source to understand its main focus and aim
Formulate your annotation in your own words, do not copy and paste
Do not refer to the author by their first name only. Use their full name the first time you mention them and then refer to them by their surname.