The ability to write a good literature review is a very important skill to have in your toolkit. you will need to be able to synthesize a large amount of information in a concise,
informative manner. To this end, I want you to write a number of literature reviews over the course of
the semester. These are to be roughly one (single-spaced) page in length. In these reviews, you are to
take a week’s worth of readings and pull out the main lessons. Where possible, make the readings speak
to each other and highlight where you might improve upon the works that you read in that particular
week. These are not to be simply summaries of the readings. Rather, you are to turn a critical eye to the
readings and point out gaps in our understanding of the week’s topic (insofar as the scholarly literature
is represented by the assigned pieces). In an effort to encourage you to focus on the ideas, rather than
the authors themselves (rarely is it appropriate to construct a literature review in a “so-and-so said X,
while so-and-so said Y” fashion), I only want to see the authors’ names in the parenthetical citation.