American Literature II

Today’s readings (less than 20 pages total) ask you to respond to two short, peer-reviewd academic articles. Please blog about each one separately. (I’ve posted brief introductions to the articles by Cardillo and Gordon; see the course moodle for details about accessing the readings.)

(You may want to start reading ahead on our next literary work, the novel Catch-22.)

In your STW class, you will have learned about the value of peer-reviewed academic research.

An academic journal publishes original research — not a list of “correct” answers found in books written by other people, but original studies that explore questions that have never been answered (or asked) before. (In class, we imagined that a scholar discovered evidence that John Lennon stole one of his melodies from an uncredited street performer; if true, this will change the world’s understanding of Lennon’s creative process, at least for that particular song.)

Articles that appear in academic journals are written by scholars — usually professors or advanced graduate students. These academics are writing for other experts, so they will not define all their terms, they do not provide section headings or bold keywords or examples in shaded boxes. Unlike a college textbook, which is designed to help the first-timer navigate through a sea of new information, an academic article will often look like page after page of long paragraphs.

See “Academic Journals — What Are They?” and “Academic Journals vs. Magazines.”