Assignment 5: Literature Review

Your goal is to take the reader from “what is known” (and relevant to your topic) to “what is unknown” (and needs to be known). You should also explain how your study (the current project) reduces the unknown.

This means that you need to explain:

- Why the literature you cite is relevant to your topic
- Why the knowledge you seek to add is important

In terms of content, the literature review should:

- Be organized around and related directly to your RQ
- Synthesize previous research into summary of what is known
- Identity gaps or controversies in the current literature
- Situate the current project within these gaps or controversies

“The Performance of Desire” has an excellent literature review that does all four things, and transitions almost perfectly into the current project/methodology.

These authors show that similar research has been done on different populations, but that older, married partners have been neglected as a research population. It also offers several reasons why we need to know more about how this population negotiates and understands sex in marriage (public investment in the stability of marriage), providing a “real world” justification for the research (so this project both fills a gap in the research literature, and serves a broader social purpose).

I would recommend reviewing it before you sit down to write your own.

Q: How long should a literature review be?

A: Look at the journal(s) you are targeting. How much of these articles are taken up by the literature review? We tend to write too much. Remember to synthesize results (put multiple studies in your in-text citations) rather than summarize each study that is relevant to your current project.

Please post your final "contribution" paragraph on the course blog and e-mail me a full electronic copy of your literature review by 12 p.m. on September 30.