Apr 1

Academic Journal Articles

Find three academic journal articles that touch on your topic. They can come from academic journals OR from collections of articles bound as books (i.e. from an “article anthology”). Some strategies for finding articles (try them all, so you get experience using each of these tools):

• Use the standard BU Library search system, turning on the filter for "peer-reviewed article" and for "available online"
• Plunder the bibliography of a published book or article you found earlier
• Look on Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

Note: to count for this assignment, the article must (1) date within the last 20 years, (2) be written from a historian’s perspective, (3) focus at least in part on the events and culture of the period we’re studying.

Pro Tip Use keyterms (names, events, places) from your research so far to find articles on aspects of your topic that interest you.

For Class On your GoogleDocs research findings page, create a new heading, "Peer-Reviewed Articles." Then list bibliographic information for each of your articles, along with a BU library link and a screen capture of the first page. In addition, for each article give the following three bits of information:

1. One sentence naming the article's topic
2. One sentence voicing the prior understanding that the author addresses (often explicitly voiced as a reference to the work of prior scholars)
3. One sentence voicing what the author has to say in response to that prior understanding. What new insight or findings does the author present (the article's I Say)

Choose one of these article write-ups to highlight in the comments below.

In Class

• Evaluating Academic Journal Articles (which of yours are any good?)
• Primary Sources: Illustrations or Evidence?
• Qualities of a good presentation (Steve Jobs & the iPad)