 for you and you have time to review them.
• MLA Bibliography: This is the best, most comprehensive bibliography of criticism written about English and foreign language literatures. The bibliography is available on-line at the library (or, if you have the right software and permissions, remotely) and also in large catalogues. You can search key words, author names, and titles. To save time and conduct thorough research, write a list of key words relevant to your project before starting your search. The MLA database provides bibliographical information and subject information about articles, but does not provide full text. Our library has a very limited collection of periodicals; do your MLA search early so that you will have time to use Interlibrary Loan (see ILLiad, below) as needed. If you are fortunate, the MLA database will provide a link to an full electronic text located on JSTOR (described below).
• JSTOR: This database provides the full text of articles from a limited number of periodical publications (many of which also have print versions). Generally speaking, you should back into JSTOR from the MLA Bibliography so that you do not miss important articles that appear only in print.
• ILLiad: Interlibrary Loan is an essay-saver (sometimes it feels like a life-saver) in a city that lacks a large research library. The UNF library staff are very responsive to requests, and books and articles often arrive within a few days of your request. Sometimes, though, they do not; so, request early and do not absolutely count on being able to see a desired text.
• Special Collections: If you are doing work on literature you may wish to use rare texts in Special Collections either at UNF (where our Special Collections are relatively small) or at a research library such as UF (considerably larger). You can gain great pleasures and many critical insights from working with a first edition of a text.
• Microfilm/Microfiche/Microcards: Can't get to a Special Collections library? Many historical texts (including journals, newspapers, and now-rare popular publications) are available on various microforms. These often can be obtained through Interlibrary Loan (see ILLiad, above).
• English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC): This reference database lists nearly all English-language titles extending from the beginning of publishing to 1800.
Hints for Reviewing Critical and Theoretical Sources
Books
• Look first at front matter and back matter: i.e. at full title, at series information (if any), at table of contents (chapter titles, etc.), and at index. Construct a sense of the book's focus and what the book covers. In five minutes or so, you should be able to determine whether the book will be of use.
• Read the introductory chapter. Introductory chapters of critical monographs frequently include a chapter description which explains in a paragraph or two the content and argument of each chapter; find this chapter description and get the author's own summary of the book's specific concerns and objectives.
• Use the table of contents and index to go to specific areas of interest to you; then, expand your reading outward to gain a fuller understanding of the context and direction of the specific discussion. When reading selectively, beware of reading out of context; an author might make a provisional case using evidence that is directly relevant to you only to move well beyond that case by chapter's – or book's – end.
Articles
• Consider the title closely for the specific topic and method range that it suggests: will the article address more than the work(s) you are interested in? less? Will it take a feminist approach? a psychoanalytic approach? a new historicist approach?
• Read the first paragraph (or two) and the last paragraph (or two). Does the author summarize the argument and content of the article?
• Page through the article, looking at subject headings (if any) and reading occasional sentences or paragraphs. Does the article look as if it warrants reading in its entirety?
Writing Annotated Bibliographies
As you collect materials, you may wish to start writing a bibliography (well before you actually start writing your essay) so as to be able to review your potential sources at a glance. For related purposes, you may wish to annotate your bibliography. An annotated bibliography briefly describes and sometimes evaluates sources. (See the annotated bibliography at the end of this booklet.)
The Graduate Faculty of the M.A. Program in English at the University of North Florida believe that the most important and lasting communication in the study of literature occurs through writing, and that writing well about texts at a graduate level is inseparable from good reading, conversation and research. Nearly all graduate English courses require substantial writing and use this writing as the primary basis for course grades.
In Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff identifies two crucial questions that graduate students should ask themselves when writing: "So what?" and "Who cares?" (198) Effective critical writing, he argues persuasively, should answer both questions clearly.
Why does the essay you write matter? What is at stake in your argument?
What are the implications? What standard ways of thinking about a specific text – or textuality or language itself – must be reconsidered in the face of your essay's argument?
For whom does your essay matter? Who else is thinking about the texts, the issues and/or the theories you are discussing? Do they agree with you or disagree with you?
Such questions imply certain courses of action for writers. Central among them is learning the field – in other words, learning what others have said and written about your subject. These others are likely to be among those to whom your essay most matters, and these are the people with whom you should consider yourself to be engaging in a critical conversation when writing your essay. The literary critic and theorist Kenneth Burke suggests that we should think about this conversation as we might think about a conversation at a cocktail party. Graff, paraphrasing Burke, explains, "people who walk up to a conversation, listen to what is going on to find out what the interlocutors are already talking about, then make a contribution to this pre-existing conversation generally have more success than those who interrupt whoever is speaking and launch into an unrelated discourse about whatever happens to be on their minds" (Graff 194-5).
Graduate faculty generally will not expect you to be experts on the topics you write about. Some essay assignments may ask you to explore ideas instead of (or as well as) taking a well-supported stand in a critical controversy. The best exploratory writing, though, delves as well into a complex body of what people already know or think that they know.
The M.A. Program also values compositional clarity and a manifest knowledge of the conventions of critical writing. Even the most brilliant thinking will be lost on readers if they are unable to access it through the thinker's writing. And even the most brilliant and clearly written essays will lose authority if the writer shows an ignorance of critical discourse conventions.
Unless an instructor requests otherwise, then, essays should establish a focus or an argumentative claim and should develop it clearly, logically and with supporting evidence. Essays should be free of grammatical and mechanical errors.
Also, unless an instructor requests otherwise, essays should use the MLA (Modern Language Association) format as set forth in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed. (2003). Essays should have titles that engage the reader's interest and inform the reader of the paper's focus. They should be double-spaced throughout (including in block quotations and notes), with one-inch margins and a standard 12-point font. Pages should be numbered. If notes are necessary, they should appear as endnotes. A bibliography of texts mentioned in the paper should appear on a Works Cited page.
GRADUATE FACULTY: GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS
Graduate Faculty
Mary Baron
Dick Bizot
Keith Cartwright
Timothy Donovan
Chris Gabbard
Kathy Hassall
Marnie Jones
Sam Kimball
Tru Leverette
Nancy Levine
Clark Lunberry
Jason Mauro
Pam Monteleone
Betsy Nies
Bill Slaughter
Jillian Smith
Brian Striar
Allen Tilley
Bart Welling
Mike Wiley
Mark Workman
Mary Baron, Professor; Director of JAXWRITES
Teaching Interests: British Renaissance; adolescent and children's literature; the illustrated book; pedagogy; the problem of evil (literature and theology)
Current Research and Writing: STORYKNIFE (poetry); National Writing Project; educational consulting
Select Publications and Projects: Wheat Among Bones (poetry, 1979); Letters for the New England Dead (poetry, 1974); "Getting Out of the Way" (with Denise Rambach, 2002); "Gerard Manley Hopkins" (1998); "Blind Rebellion: Lessing's The Good Terrorist" (1986)
Richard Bizot, Professor; Director of Irish Studies
Teaching Interests: modern and contemporary Irish literature; Victorian and modern British literature; literature and the other arts
Current Research and Writing: Irish literature, especially poetry; the story of Salome and John the Baptist in history, legend, literature, and the arts
Select Publications and Projects: "Authority and Violence in the Irish Schoolroom: Time in Armagh" (forthcoming); "Eavan Boland Subverts 'the previous terms of... discourse' in 'Mother Ireland' and Other Poems" (under consideration); "A Sense of Places: The Homing Instinct in the Poetry of John Montague" (1995); "Films from