Major Writing 2: Literature Review

Your task in this assignment is to demonstrate how the texts you have read participate in an ongoing conversation. In order to accomplish that, you will survey and describe the topic, provide a detailed summary of the conversation around it, identify the various camps involved in that conversation, and describe how the participating voices in that conversation interact with one another. 
A successful literature review will do the following:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the parameters of the topic.
• Demonstrate an understanding of why the topic is important.
• Demonstrate an understanding of how the various authors are engaged in an ongoing conversation about this topic.

This is not an argumentative essay in which you stake out a position and defend it; you are not stating your opinion or evaluating/critiquing your sources. Instead, what you are doing here is writing about the debate that the authors are having—without offering any personal opinion or comment.

NOTE: The term "literature" is not used here to mean fiction; rather, literature is the body of research and writing on a given topic. In other words, the literature is the conversation. For this assignment, you will review the literature or describe the conversation about a topic.


The literature review should be 5-7 pages. Please use 12-point Times New Roman and double-space throughout. Your literature review must include a complete and accurate Works Cited (MLA) or References (APA) page.

You will turn in your final printed out paper to me in class on Wednesday, July 23rd. You will then publish your final literature review on your blog.