Finding Sources Through Library Research Assignment In this overview, we will ex

Finding Sources Through Library Research Assignment
In this overview, we will explore how to search within databases, journals, and open-access resources. This will help you to complete assignment P1.4 and equip you with the necessary tools to continually search for peer-reviewed publications throughout all the Projects in the course.
Before you begin researching, consider the following questions to help you access your prior knowledge about research and what it entails, in order to build upon and expand it throughout the course:
1.    Have you used library databases before? Explain your familiarity with using the library for research. Explain any confusion or difficulty you might have had with databases.
2.    What is your experience with academic/scholarly (we use these terms interchangeably) sources? What questions do you have about scholarly sources and how to find what you need for the research essay, ultimately? 
3.    What are the steps you’ll anticipate taking to find sources, and what are the different ways you can get assistance with the research if you need it?
4.    How easy do you think it will be to find sources – both popular and scholarly – on your topic? What are the potential pathways you might take within your research topic?
5.    What are you looking forward to learning about in the research process – either about your topic, or about doing research? What do you hope you will end up knowing more about?
Academic Sources & the USF Library  (Links to an external site.)
Effective and efficient academic writing requires a solid understanding of types of sources and how to find them. The readings below will help you discern between popular and scholarly sources as you research – both source types you’ll need for Project 1.
Readings
Reading
•    Finding Sources Through Library Research (Interactive Reading)Links to an external site.
•    Plain Text VersionDownload Plain Text Version
•    Evaluating Sources: Where to BeginLinks to an external site. (Purdue OWL)
•    Scholarly vs. Popular SourcesLinks to an external site. (Yale)
After reading these resources, you’ll be better-prepared to understand different approaches to using the library to conduct academic research.
USF Library HomepageLinks to an external site.
Though the USF Library has a plethora of resources that can help students throughout different stages of the research process, we want to highlight five of the main features you’ll likely use throughout this course:
•    Quicksearch (functions like Google)
•    Databases & journals (to the left of Quicksearch)
•    Subject guides (Guides/how-to drop down menu)
•    Open access (click subject guide → library services → open access)
Researching Tips
When researching, your initial searches might yield too many results to be helpful. In order to narrow down your results, use these search limiters to refine your search results:
•    Availability and Location
•    Peer Reviewed
•    Publication Date Range
•    Language or Geography
•    Subject or Category
Additional research strategies:
•    Hyperlinked subject headings
•    Hyperlinked subject terms
•    Bibliographies or References
•    Related readings
Prepare to Search for Sources
•    List key words/phrases you can use for USF Library’s QuicksearchLinks to an external site., or a library database search
•    Start with initial research to give you ideas about sources you might find, then proceed
•    Finding academic or scholarly sources – use USF Library’s subject guidesLinks to an external site., databasesLinks to an external site., e-journals,Links to an external site. and open accessLinks to an external site. holdings like Digital CommonsLinks to an external site.
Gather Sources and Information
•    Evaluate sources as you go –  appropriate, likely to use or not? Consider evaluating the sources you find by using the CRAAP test methodLinks to an external site.
•    Encyclopedias or Wikipedia are too broad and not usually extensively researched enough to count as a source in a research essay, but they can provide a good starting point to understand something and they might lead to better sources
•    Keep a Works Cited list as you go, or at least a list of links so you don’t lose what you find – use MLA or APA or ask your instructor about following another style guide
•    Good rule of thumb: find four times the number of sources required, then discard less helpful ones – 75% of what you locate won’t be as helpful as you hoped, ultimately
Reading for Information
•    Annotating – mark up or use margin notes on printed articles or digital text
•    Taking Notes – helps you think through the information and organize what’s important
•    Using Note Cards – helps you organize later if you want to be able to “shuffle” information to organize writing ideas
•    Record your ideas from the research, note any parts you might quote, note any questions that arise that you might want to address in the essay
Writing a Brief Summary
•    Write summaries or identify/mark sections of information in sources you want to use — organize around key theme or idea about your topic
•    Map out the “conversation” as you go and organize your research around each point you might want to make from the source information you have gathered
•    Cross-check your information in different sources – are you interpreting the information accurately and do you have more than one source to support a key idea?
•    Think about how you’ll use more than one source to support each point – several bits of evidence or information from sources are necessary to effectively support points you’ll make in your research essay – identify what you have and then you’ll know if you need more research about something
•    In addition to summarizing, you will quote directly or paraphrase in writing your research essay, so keep your sources handy and keep them bibliographically organized so you can easily create a Works Cited or References entry, and you’ll have them ready for in-text citations
Assignment
In a response of about 300 words, please address the following:
1.    List 3-5 initial key terms or phrases you plan on using in order to conduct research. For each term or phrase, explain why you believe this term will generate relevant academic resources — does it directly relate to your topic; do experts in the field use that term when discussing related research; do you believe using a combination of these phrases will help in your exploration process?
2.    Write your current topic and list 2-3 academic fields/disciplines that you believe are directly related. For example, a research essay on COVID-19’s impact on college students’ mental health could be related to psychology, applied behavioral sciences, biology, sociology, business, and more. For each field/discipline listed, explain why you believe your topic is related to the field/discipline.
3.    For each field/discipline you provided in #3, list 2-3 databases or subject guides that you plan on consulting when researching. For each database and/or subject guide, write a brief explanation of why you believe searching your keywords/phrases inside that particular database and/or subject guide might yield helpful results.
4.    Which parts of this lesson – whether about resources the library offers or the distinctions between scholarly and popular sources – stood out to you? Does this new knowledge about research challenge any prior knowledge you had about researching that you wrote about in the beginning of class? Does it confirm what you knew? What are the similarities and differences from your previous experience to this assignment?

Portfolio including 3 entries about life writing (the body; moving across genera

Portfolio including 3 entries about life writing (the body; moving across generation and a life in object)
“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.” (Hélène Cixous, from The Laugh of the Medusa)

My body was returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on this white winter’s day. Frantz Fanon, ‘The Fact of Blackness’, from Black Skin, White Masks

Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? (Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs)

There is no nature, only the effects of nature: denaturalization or naturalization. (Jacques Derrida, Donner le Temps)

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. (Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor)

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am, ” Sylvia Plath, from The Bell Jar

CW: bodies, illness, body image
Week 8: Writing the Body

This week we are going to think about how we can write about our bodies – how they work, how they exist in society, culture and politics, how they connect us to the world and others, and what happens when they stop working, or when others refuse, objectify or commit violence against them.

Bodies – especially our own – can be difficult to write about. It’s pretty hard to get any meaningful distance! They are also awkward – they fail us, they embarrass us, they sometimes escape our control. They are political, they are historical, they are sites of power and violence. Writing about bodies can allow you to write about history, politics, family, selfhood, illness, gender, sexuality, architecture and street planning…anything! They can be a gateway to thinking about how we exist in the world, and the issues that we physically and mentally come into contact with along the way.

However, bodies can also act as a barrier to writing and the creation of the persona ‘I’. Sharing our bodies in writing – creating a body of words – can feel like a raw and vulnerable act, and it’s not for everyone. It can also be very tricky to find a form or style that manages to transcend the immediate, the personal and the physical. Every writer has their own strategies to give form and order to what can otherwise feel too close. Maggie O’Farrell, for instance, has used chapters and formal headings to categorise traumatic experiences, which then in turn allows them to take on a narrative and a sense of purpose. For my part, I find it easier to write about my body when it is in conversation with someone else’s, whether that’s another family member, or a historical figure, or another poet. That point of comparison allows me to step away from myself and find some context and meaning. What might your strategies be?

Essential Reading

Ione Gamble – Poor Little Sick Girls
Susan Sontag, extract from Illness as Metaphor
Torrey Peters – Detransition, Baby

Further reading

Luke Turner, Putting Men in the Frame, Images of New Masculinity (Guardian article, available via reading list)

Creative task

As many of the articles on the reading list explore, often we do not think about our bodies until they fail us, or until others perceive or disable them on our behalf. Other people’s gazes or comments can ‘Other’ and define us (as Fanon describes in the quote above), buildings and city layouts can disable us, illness and vulnerability can alter our sense of self.
After completing the reading, I would like you to write a paragraph about a time either:
When your body has failed you
When an external force (a person, a law, a place, an event etc) has defined/othered your body
When you have had to renegotiate your relationship with your body

Week 5: Moving across gen(re)ations
 
Reading

Yaa Gyasi – Homegoing
Lemn Sissay, My Name is Why (e-book)
The Adoption Papers Jackie Kay
Salman Rushdie – Midnights Children (the first 20 pages)

Info

This week we’ll be looking at life writing that actively crosses back and forth between generations and genres. First with the ‘found’, document-based memoir of adoption and care from Lemn Sissay, then with Jackie Kay’s ground-breaking play-poem, The Adoption Papers and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, fictionalising stories from the archives that have been lost, or passed along.

In the case of Kay, her adoption, parentage, heritage and identity. What can be gained from reading Kay’s story across genres. In My Name is Why, we see how including documents and ‘found’ material might enrich a text. Sissay lets his own adoption records speak for themselves in amongst his writing, and indeed records his immediate responses to these documents as he finds them. What material might you include in a piece?

Kay’s, Sissay’s and Gyasi together also reminds us that autobiography is always, inevitably, a collective act – we depend on the testimonies, documents and stories of others to fill in the gaps in our own knowledge of ourselves. And this dependence and plurality can present all sorts of ethical and representational problems. What happens if you don’t have access to your own story and history? Do you entirely own your own story? What obligation do you have to the other versions of you and your key events

Week Two: The material gaze – a life in objects

Shaping memoir via the use of objects allows us to give a material reality to our memories and experiences. They give a shape to thought, enabling us to contain an idea and make the abstract into a concrete.

This week we’ll be looking at different approaches and forms of doing this, and how it can provide a compelling way of writing about family, relationships, identity, and history.

We’ll also be discussing how objects can allow us to shift focus in our writing, enabling us to zoom in and embrace detail or else offer a wide-angle shot on a life in context. To see what I mean, look out for this technique in the work of all three writers – the most obvious example of this shifting zoom is perhaps ‘Ambergris’, but they all have it.

Essential Reading

Amy Liptoft, ‘Ambergris’, in Caught by the River
Vahni Capildeo, ‘Investigation of Past Shoes’, Measures of Expatriation
Fatima Farheen Mirza, ‘Boxing’; Granta

Things to think about

While reading these three very different pieces, think about how each writer uses their chosen object (or objects). How do they describe them (i.e. physical details, history, origins)? How do they use the objects to show (rather than tell?) the reader something about themselves? How do they place meaning in these objects despite us having no relationship to them? How does each piece move between the ‘zoom’ and ‘wide-angle’ perspective?

Task

Talisman, artefact, treasure, trinket

In class we will be talking about perspectives in life writing; about the importance of including a mixture of focused and wide-angle shots. When applied to objects, a focussed shot might be a detailed, unwavering description of an object or thing and a direct exploration of your relationship to it/ how it makes you feel. A wide-angle shot of an object might be a more general description of its history, its context in relation to other objects or things, its provenance or life cycle. Think about how the chosen reading does this.

Before class, I would like you to have a go at some close focus writing.

Choose an object that is meaningful to you in some way. It might mark a particular event in your life, or have been kept since childhood, accompanying you as you grew up. It might be something passed down through your family, a souvenir, or even something that you choose to keep hidden. It might be the treasured item that listed in the original persona Q&A. Or, on the other hand, it might be something seemingly every day and insignificant like a coffee cup – an object that you feel might allow you a way in to writing about an issue close to your heart. Tip: when choosing, think about its appearance and provenance. Can it tell a good story?
Have a go at free-writing about your chosen object, describing it minute, painstaking detail. Don’t talk about its history or provide any context. Just paint a linguistic picture of it. 200-500 words.
If you can, take a picture of your chosen object or thing (or bring it in!) and bring it to class along with your piece of free writing.
In class we will be developing these descriptions, as well as thinking more about ways of offering the ‘wide-angle’ shot.

Please add revisions according to professor’s recommendations below please. Ins

Please add revisions according to professor’s recommendations below please.
Instructor Feedback
Your thesis and topic sentences can’t be the same. your topic sentence needs to make a claim about one of the points in your thesis. Also, the play needs to be in italics not quotes. provide the scene in the context and inside of the ( ) you would put the page number you are getting the evidence from.
Keep in mind that you want to limit the amount that you are citing. you should make sure that vou do not cite more than 4 lines of text and that your response concentrates on what you are citing. So i encourage you to trim back your evidnece to only what you are going to talk about in your response. the key is your response needs to be longer than what you have cited.