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WGSS 490: Senior Seminar in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

This guide was created to support the writing of your final research paper.

Literature Reviews

Example literature review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is not research, it is a review of the research that has been done on your topic.

A literature review is NOT just a summary, but a conceptually organized synthesis of the results of your search. It must

  • organize information and relate it to the thesis or research question you are developing
  • synthesize and critically analyze the results comparing and contrasting their findings
  • identify controversy and themes that appear in the literature

A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question. (From Univ. of Toronto)

Check out these sites for more help understanding literature reviews

Tips on conducting research for a literature review

  • Use bibliographies and reference pages of articles to direct your research. You may start to see some trends with the people who are writing about your topic. Check the bibliography for more articles about your topic.
  • Use the authors who you have found to be writing on your topic as starting points. Look for additional articles, and rebuttals, retractions or responses to their research

Use this chart to track articles you read for your literature review:

 

Where else are scholars sharing their work?

  • Consider what information sources scholars might be using to disseminate their work. Is there a conversation on social media? Follow scholars whose research aligns with your disciplinary focus. Scholarship by people from marginalized or underrepresented groups is often boosted by colleagues on social media.
  • Don't be dismissive of articles from more obscure and/or open access journals. Scholars publishing in other countries offer valuable contributions, but international journals are often underutilized, especially if they come from non-English speaking countries.
  • Try to immerse yourself into wherever scholars in your field are communicating more informally. This can give you a glimpse into the voices that are communicating important information but not necessarily through traditional means. In addition to social media, this can include blogs and other forms of journalism.
  • Once you are familiar with the scholars writing about your topic, incorporate their names into your searches.

Paraphrased from: Bellamy, Liz . "Whose Shoulders Are You Standing On? Inclusive Citation Practices in Literature Reviews." CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2020. https://projectcora.org/assignment/whose-shoulders-are-you-standing-inclusive-citation-practices-literature-reviews.