Literature Review

Literature review. Don't be fooled by the title, it's not what it sounds like at all. You might be thinking of a medley of Dickens, Keats, Tolstoy, and Hemingway on Broadway, but let me assure you that it is not like that at all. Using Glee terminology, a Literature review is a mash-up of all previous work done on the subject that you are currently studying. It is generally the first large section after your abstract in order to familiarize your readers with what has been done on the subject and give some context to your investigation.

Here's an example of a literature review that I've compiled based on Jersey Shore, just to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with here:

Jersey Shore is an MTV production starting in 2009 based on eight guidos and guidettes sharing living quarters, fist pumping, fighting and drinking obscene amounts of alcohol (imdb.com, 2009). The series is best known for coining terminology such as "DTF", "grenade" and "gorilla juice head" (urbandictionary.com, 2010) which have been commonly inserted into American Slang vocabulary. While some criticize the footage for being blatantly offensive in its stereotyping (Marche, 2010) of Italian Americans and its portrayal of violence toward women in the form of the Snookie Punch (Hess, 2009), the Shore ratings have been steadily climbing and continue to grow (thehollywoodgossip.com, 2010). For Michael "the Situation" Sorrentino, this means a $5million paycheck for flaunting his abs (people.com, 2010) and for the rest of America, it means many more seasons of "t-shirt time" and "GTL" (The Situation et al, 2010) to come.










For me, the literature review is one of the hardest parts of writing a study. It requires mountains of
reading, which I am fine with, but the process of blending all of the different reading together into a paragraph that actually makes sense is another story, one that I find tedious and frustrating. I am currently working on a  literature review about assessment and have found dozens of sources that need citing. The problem is how do I incorporate those sources? Do I read them and then try to wing the literature review based on what I've read and go back and fill in the citations? Or do I go through bit by bit expanding on my own knowledge and look to the sources for references and add the citations as I go?

At first, I decided to go with Option #1, but right now, I've read so much that what I had read is just a jumble in my mind and I have no idea where any of these ideas even came from, much less who is responsible for them. So for right now, I'm trying to explore Option #2 and citing as I write, returning later to the bibliography to see if everything has been put together correctly and reading it back to make sure that it isn't nonsensical.

Time for a run!