Roman Empire Annotated Bibliography
Research Assignment: Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography: 200 Points.
Each student will write one (1) annotated bibliography, consisting of four (4)
annotated bibliographic entries, which will demonstrates the student’s ability to collect, analyze, synthesize, and present information in written form, properly incorporating, citing and documenting sources. For this annotated bibliography, students must find four (4) valid sources on a selected topic. This is a Library research project. Specifically, students are required to utilize the ASU Library’s databases J-Stor and Academic Search Complete to locate full-length scholarly articles on their research topic.
The four sources utilized for this assignment must all be full-length (minimum of ten pages each) scholarly articles found in scholarly journals. Each of the four annotated bibliographic entries must be at least 150 words in length (5-7 sentences)
excluding the citations themselves, for a total minimum of 600 words of annotation.
What are “valid” sources for this assignment?
1) Full-length (minimum ten pages) scholarly articles found in scholarly
journals. NB—History Today is not a scholarly journal.
a) These articles must be published in the English language
b) These articles may not be book reviews
c) These articles must not have been originally published prior to 1960
d) These articles must be directly on your research topic
e) These articles must approach your research topic from a historical
perspective
What are not valid sources for this assignment?
In addition to the restrictions mentioned above, the following are not considered valid sources:
1) Books of any kind are not valid sources for this assignment.
2) Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, including online dictionaries and
encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia) are not considered valid sources.
3) Websites of any kind are not considered valid sources.
4) Textbooks of any kind, including the course textbook, are not considered valid sources.
5) Historical documents, or books which are collections of historical documents, are not considered valid sources.
6) Book reviews, even if they are found in scholarly journals, are not considered valid sources.
7) Scholarly articles which are fewer than ten pages in length are not considered valid sources.
8) Scholarly articles originally published prior to 1960 are not considered valid sources for this assignment.
9) Scholarly articles published in any language other than English are not
considered valid sources for this assignment.
10) Any scholarly article which does not deal directly with your research topic, and approach it from a historical perspective, is not considered a valid source.
This is a history assignment. The selected topics, and the sources employed, should address themes that fall within the chronological parameters of the course. If your research topic is Chinese Buddhism from 500 to 1500 CE, you may not employ as a source an article about Chinese Buddhism in the 19th century; nor may you employ as a source an article about Indian Buddhism, even if it deals with the appropriate time frame.
Each of the four entries will be graded on grammar, style, format, level of detail, historical accuracy, and proper citation of sources. Annotated Bibliographies containing any amount of plagiarism will receive a grade of
Zero (“0”), with no opportunity for a re-write.
Minimum standard: students must score sixty percent (60%) of all points available (that is, 120 out of 200 points).
What is an Annotated Bibliography?
A standard bibliography is a list of citations of sources (books, journals, periodicals, etc.) one has used for researching a topic. Standard Bibliographies are sometimes called “references” or “works cited” depending on the style format you are using. A standard
bibliography usually just includes the bibliographic citation information (i.e., the author, title, publisher, etc.) for each source in the bibliography. For articles, most of the elements of proper citation—author(s), title of article, title of journal in which article appears, volume and issue number of the journal in which the article appears, date of publication of that particular issue, and the page range that the article covers in that particular issue, can usually be found at the very top of the first page of the article.
An annotation is a summary and evaluation of a scholarly source. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes not only complete citation information for each source, but also a summary and evaluation of each source. For this assignment, each of your four annotations will do the following (in five to seven complete sentences per annotation):
1) Summarize: What is the main argument of the article? What are the major points raised by the author?
2) Evaluate: does the source seem reliable? What sorts of evidence does the author employ? Does the evidence provided by the author support the major claims made by the author?
3) Assess: How does this work address your research topic and advance your understanding of that topic?
Examples of bibliographic citation, presented in proper University of Chicago format.
An example of proper bibliographic citation of an article:
Jaggard, Edwin. “Small Boroughs and Political Modernization, 1832-1868: a Cornwall Case Study.” Albion 29, no. 4 (1998), pp. 622-642.
(Note that bibliographic citations for articles contain: 1) the name of the author(s); 2) the name of the article; 3) the name of the scholarly journal in which the article appears; 4) volume number and issue number of the journal in which the article appears; 5) the date of publication of the issue of the journal in which the article appears; and 6) the page
range which the article covers in that particular issue of the journal).
Example of an annotated bibliographic citation:
Saunders, Robert. “The Politics of Reform and the Making of the Second Reform Act, 1848-1867.” Historical Journal 50, no. 3 (2007), pp. 571-591.
Saunders’ article seeks to situate the 1867 passage of the Second Reform Act in the politics of the preceding two decades, which is an approach that other historians have rejected. He argues that the failure to enact Reform in the 1850s or early 1860s was not the consequence of Conservative hostility to all political reform, but rather of the inability of Conservatives and Liberals to agree upon which types of political reforms
were desirable. Saunders’ approach provides a helpful reminder of the centrality of the question of political reform to the unfolding Liberal/Conservative debate of the 1850s and 1860s; yet he is not really able to demonstrate that the actual passage of the 1867
Reform Act was much influenced by that debate. Nevertheless, Saunders’ research is sound, drawing on a range of primary source documents including transcripts of parliamentary debates and the private correspondence of key politicians. This article has advanced my understanding of the 1867 Reform Act by illustrating the ways in
which it was, and was not, influenced by the political debates of the 1850s and early 1860s.
Roman Empire (27 BCE to 476 CE)
Temin, Peter. “Financial Intermediation in the Early Roman Empire.” The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 3 (2004): 705-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874817
Sweetman, Rebecca J. “Roman Knossos: The Nature of a Globalized City.” American Journal of Archaeology 111, no. 1 (2007): 61-81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024581
Temin, Peter. “The Economy of the Early Roman Empire.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 1 (2006): 133-51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033637
Temin, Peter. “The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34, no. 4 (2004): 513-38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3656762
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