Geography 458/558: Critical Review Essay Guidelines
One of the major assessments in this class is the critical review essay. You might look on this as the preparation of a mini-course in directed readings, in which you fashion a reading list and then teach yourself about some aspect of hazards and disasters of interest to you.For undergraduate students enrolled in GEOG 458, the essay will cover at least five sources (though more are certainly welcome). Of these, at least four must come from "refereed journals," that is, from research journals that practice "peer review" in the selection of the articles they publish. The other source could be a textbook, chapter in an anthology, newspaper article, article in non-refereed (usually popular) sources (e.g., National Geographic, Discover, Time, Smithsonian), web page, government source, or monograph.
Refereed journal articles can be found through bibliographies and reference lists in other journal articles, textbooks and anthologies, and, often, from materials published online. Look for the kinds of journals that appear frequently in such reference lists. Then, go look up relevant articles in those journals in the library (or ask for those articles through interlibrary loan, if we don't have them). While you're in the library (physically or electronically), browse through recent issues of those journals to get an idea what's being published on your subject matter in the journals most like to publish such subjects. This part of library research can get very addicting (and tangential).
Now that you have found a way into the research literature and read at least four refereed research articles or review articles, you need to prepare the reference list. Please use the following format for this list.
Arrange the list alphabetically by author's (or lead author's) family name.Now that you have your five sources (including your refereed journal articles) neatly arranged in your word processor, you need to analyze them in the body of your paper. To analyze them, you need to read them <G>!If it's a journal article, you'd use this format:
If it's an article in an anthology (and I'll use three authors this time):Jones, C. 2002. An interesting hazard in Italy. Journal of Some Pretty Weird Risks 14, 2: 235-239.That is, author family name first. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period. Article name in sentence format (capitalize first word and proper names/place names). Period. Name of Journal (with all major words capitalized and the whole journal's name italicized) no period and no comma volume. Comma. Number (if more than one issues appears each year). Colon. Page numbers. Period. And use hanging indentation.If it's a book, it comes out:Jones, C.; Smith, J.D.; and Gonzalez-Sanchez, M.T. 2000. Hazards in an part of Italy. In The Big Travel Book about Cool Things to Know about Italy, ed. O.L. Ling and M.N. Ndebele, pp. 45-62. New York and Rome: Publishing House.That would be last name comma initial(s) of first author. Semi-colon. Last name comma initial(s) of second author. Semi-colon. And Last name comma initial(s) of last author. Period. Year. Name of chapter in sentence case (only first word, proper names, and place names start with capitals. In italicized name of book with all major words capitalized. Comma, pp. page numbers. Period. Name of city or cities in which book was published. Colon. Name of publishing house.Sandhu, C.M. 2001. A Terrible Disaster that Hit Toledo. Columbus, OH: Vanity Press International.That is: Family name. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period. Book title with all important words capitalized. City (and state or country if you suspect your readers don't know where Columbus is). Colon. Publishing House.One way to go about this is to read the most general or popular source first, just to get a sense of your subject. Then, go through the four research articles kind of casually, just trying to get a sense of what each one is about, how the authors support their arguments, and what you're learning about the subject. This can be a pretty fast read.
Then, having read all of them and getting a sense of where they agree and where they differ, go back through the research articles, this time taking notes as you go. This will be a slower, deeper read. You might write notes for each article on the following:
- What is the hypothesis or the research question?
- What kinds of data did the authors collect?
- How did they process their data to test their hypotheses or answer their research questions?
- What are the results or findings?
Now, consider each article in relation to the others and write notes on the following:
- How do the articles support or reïnforce one another?
- Where do they differ? Do any of them contradict any of the others?
- If there are actual disagreements, is there something about their data and methods that might lead the authors to different conclusions?
- How convincing do you find each article? Why?
- Try ranking them from best/most convincing to worst/least convincing.
Now, notes strewn among your coffee cups, compose an essay in which you summarize what you've learned about your topic, what you got out of each article, and your analysis comparing and contrasting them with one another. For undergraduates enrolled in GEOG 458, this essay should be about four to six pages long (not counting the reference list), double-spaced, with 1" margins all around. Please use 11 or 12 point leading. The essay needs to be very professionally written and free of spelling, grammar, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation errors, and sexist usage as well. Please proofread it carefully (or have a literate and nasty-critical friend proofread it), because about one third of your points will have to do with writing mechanics.
Note to Graduate Students Enrolled in GEOG 558
If you are a graduate student enrolled in a master's degree program, you need to do more for GEOG 558 than undergraduates have to do in GEOG 458. You need to analyze ten sources, of which at least eight are research or review articles in refereed journals.Also, I expect a more sophisticated comparison and contrast analysis, which will entail a longer essay, perhaps six to eight pages long. You need to identify the themes that show up in many of your sources and seem to give structure to the field. What do many of your sources seem to focus on, perhaps repetitively?
Do you notice that certain people are often cited in these articles' bibliographies (you could go look those people up in the library or online, as they may be the movers and shakers in the field -- instant acquisition of research articles)?
As you acquire a sense of where the field is going, start looking for the blank spots: This is a skill you will find handy in setting up and justifying the originality of your master's thesis. Is there something that strikes you as an important question or approach that no-one seems to be noticing? If you think you've found a gap, test your hypothesis by Googling that idea. It could be that there really is a gap, which might lead you to a master's thesis topic, or that you simply haven't read enough.
Is there a sharp disagreement between/among researchers or contradictions in their conclusions? These blank spots or controversies are indications of where the field needs to go (and which, perhaps, your thesis might help resolve?). So, you are looking for the structure of common themes that unites your subject area, the missing pieces, and the controversies.
It might help if you could see a few examples of refereed journals. I've picked a few that are available through our library, so you can browse through a few issues to get a sense of them:
- Natural Hazards
- Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
- Natural Hazards Review
- Disasters
- Disaster Prevention and Management
- International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters
- Australian Journal of Emergency Management
- Risk Analysis
- Annals of the Association of American Geographers
- The Professional Geographer
- Transactions in GIS
- Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
- Geology
- Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology
- Journal of Climate
- Science
- Nature
Document maintained by Dr.
Rodrigue
Last revision: 01/25/08
