English 5000                         Bibliographic Project          Fall 2018

The bibliographic project is due by Friday, November 2. Prepare a scholarly bibliography of at least 30 items on a primary literary text or topic of your own choosing, using (consistently!) either the MLA or Chicago format. Please observe the following guidelines:

(a) 20 of the items must be articles in scholarly journals or essay anthologies. For journals, please where possible supply the following information (parenthetically): the sponsoring organization and/or place of publication, the number of issues published annually (i.e., quarterly), the rate of acceptance (articles submitted vs. articles accepted for publication), and the annual circulation; this information can typically be found in the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which is available both on-line and in the reference section of the library.

(b) 12 of the items must be dated 2008 or later.

(c) 20 of the items must be dated 1998 or later.

(d) 10 of the items must be annotated. Three or four sentences will be sufficient; if they derive from someone else's account--say an annual bibliography or a book review--you must cite that source. For instance, this account of how to create an annotation comes from the site of a Renaissance literature professor at George Mason U.

(e) No more than three of the items cited may be unpublished dissertations or theses.

Your bibliography should demonstrate some coherence, and be loosely organized around a topic rather than just a text or series of texts (hence not "Gothic novels," but "feminist reappraisals of Gothic novels"; not The Scarlet Letter but "The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne, and allegory." But note that some narrower topics, e.g., "Lacanian rereadings of The Scarlet Letter," may not generate sufficient bibliography.) The best approach might be to design an essay topic first, and then compile the bibliography you would need for that essay. Include a paragraph in which you describe (briefly) how the bibliography you have compiled will help you explore the topic you’ve chosen. And feel free to use this assignment as an opportunity to explore topics you might be studying on one of your other classes this semester.