The Annotated Bibliography
What is an annotated bibliography?
An annotated bibliography should present the most useful and relevant resources, in whatever format, to answer a specific research question or inform a researcher on a specific topic. Each annotation includes:
The completed annotated bibliography is organized in alphabetical order by the last name of the author or creator.
For this assignment you will need 5-7 sources and each annotation should be 4-7 sentences long (3-5 summary, 1-2 evaluation).
Research questions and topics
The first step in this process is to have a research question or topic. Bear in mind that this topic will likely change as you do your research, either becoming broader or more focused based upon what you find and the resources you have access to. Here are a few ways to narrow or focus your topic:
Source Selection & Evaluation
You want to select appropriate and well-informed sources for your bibliography. When evaluating a resource, the first question you should ask is, "does this source help me answer my research question?" If the resource can't do that, move on. This is another reason to have a good research question or a well-defined topic, so you can easily decide if a resource will help you or not.
In order to do this, for a book, read the preface, introduction, or table of contents. If the source is a scholarly article, read the abstract, introduction and conclusion, and any headings. Remember that resources can also play different roles in your research process. Some books may give you the larger context (historical, religious, political, social) that you need in order to read and analyze more specific discussions in scholarly articles or understand the significance of primary sources.
When searching the library catalog or article databases, use these criteria to see if your search results meet the basic qualifications for a standard scholarly source:
When evaluating other types of sources, such as websites or podcasts, these criteria still apply. Is the author or speaker someone who has expertise in the topic? Who is producing or publishing the information? Do they back up their claims with sources or sound arguments? Are they just talking in soundbites or aphorisms?
Primary sources are another valuable type of source. See our Primary Sources at ZSR guide for tips on finding, evaluating, and using this type of source.
If you still have questions about a source, contact me or take a look at this website!
Citations
Consult ZSR's Citation and Style Guide page for citation examples in the most popular citation styles. The two styles recommended for this course are Chicago 17 and MLA 9. If using Chicago 17, make sure to follow the examples for the bibliography entries rather than the Author-Date style.
Regardless of the citation style you are using, the same elements are required by each style, so make sure to collect the following information as you do your research so that you don't have to go back and find it again later:
Punctuation is very important in citations. Make sure book and journal titles are in italics, "chapter titles and article titles are in quotation marks", and you are using colons, commas, parentheses, and periods in the appropriate places. The links above should give you good examples to follow for a variety of source types. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or another ZSR librarian!
You might also consider using Zotero to organize your citations.
Writing Annotations
The written part of an annotation has two basic parts:
In the process of deciding whether a resource is appropriate for your topic, you should have skimmed the table of contents, introduction, conclusion, or other parts of the resource to get an idea of the contents. This should help you with your summary. Your evaluation will be an explanation of the reasons why this resource helps to answer your research question or informs your topic. Does it help round out the context of the time period or event you are researching? Does it introduce a significant figure and their role? Does it discuss important primary source documents that share first-hand accounts of the event or time period? Does it summarize the most important theories or discussions around your topic, or possible solutions to your question? Remember that each of your sources will have a different role to play in your research, and you aren't going to find one resource which has "the answer" on page 135!
Here are some other things to consider:
Topic: What does recent scholarship (post-2000) say about the identities (sexual/ethnic/gender) of Perpetua and Felicitas?
Gold, Barbara K. Perpetua: Athlete of God. Women in Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Though specifically not a biography (1), this recent monograph does a good job of summarizing what is known about the life and context of Perpetua. Several chapters of this book will be relevant to my topic, but specifically “And I Became Male: Gender and the Athlete” and “Perpetua’s Life: Family (Natal and Christian), Education, and Social Status” will help to clarify the role of gender in the story, as well as Perpetua’s relationships with her family and other martyrs. The book includes two maps, several images of Perpetua and Felicitas, and an appendix that is a translation of the martyrdom text (unclear if it is by Gold?). The bibliography is extensive and will help me locate recent publications and academics who are working on this topic.
Landman, Christina. “Wealth and Contra-Culture in the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis.” Studia Historiae
Ecclesiasticae 37, no. 2 (September 2011): 1–9.
Landman’s article discusses the ways in which Perpetua’s story overturn the prevailing cultural norms of Greco-Roman society, but also its specific Carthaginian context. Through Perpetua’s actions in the arena and in the dreams she has while in prison, she acts in ways that are opposite of the emphasis on wealth and child-sacrifice that characterized Carthage. The most compelling piece of her argument looks at the dream of the lanista, or trainer, who, while wearing more wealth than Carthage (fully purple toga, silver and gold sandals), kisses Perpetua and calls her daughter, “The validity of the contra-culture in acknowledged. A new family has been formed. Its values are publicly displayed and its victory is proclaimed.” (7)
Sowers, Brian. “Pudor et Dedecus: Rhetoric of Honor and Shame in Perpetua’s Passion.” Journal of Early Christian
Studies 23, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 363–388. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591569.
Using the construct of honor-shame and its manifestation in Roman cultural rhetoric, Sowers shows how the text of the passion makes the martyrs victorious in their deaths. Sowers looks specifically at kinship and familial relationships, the importance of viewing and spectacle, and the skill of agonistic oration (388) and how the narrator/Perpetua up-end the traditional victory paradigm. Rather than the father being honored, he is shamed. Rather than the martyrs being shamed in the arena, it is the crowds who are shamed for viewing the spectacle. Rather than the legal authorities winning their arguments, it is the young woman who is able to be skillful with her words. Sowers includes extensive footnotes, with significant commentary in addition to bibliography.
Trzeciak, Frances. “Mosaic Portraits of Twelve Apostles and Twelve Martyrs (Six Female, Six Male) Depicted on the
Barrel Vaults of the Cappella Arcivescovile in Ravenna.” The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity. Last modified July 1,
2019. Accessed October 23, 2019. http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E05950.
This database allows the researcher to locate primary source information relating to Christian saints before 700. This includes literature, but also mosaics, churches, and archaeological sites. The database can be searched via keyword, saint name, source, or type of cult activity, such as festival, liturgical activity, or miracle. A search for “perpetua” resulted in a list that included various literary texts, a basilica near Carthage, and mosaic portraits from Ravenna, which attest to her popularity in Italy.