Annotated Bibliography & Topic Proposal Paper
Purpose of this Assignment:
The purpose of this assignment is to continue engaging with the growing body of
research regarding the intersections among sexual identity and communication from an
intersectional lens. It will serve as the foundational beginning to your culminating
project. This assignment is worth up to 50 points.
Synopsis of this Assignment:
For this assignment you will research a topic regarding sexual identity and
communication that you are interested in. You will read and annotate five peerreviewed articles and write an accompanying short paper about the themes you saw in
the research and what you think needs to be built upon or is missing from what you
saw. Although you will only turn in your annotations for five articles, it is likely that
you will have to read through many more abstracts and full article to find what you
need for your research. All articles must be from Communication Studies or Gender
Studies journals! This assignment is worth up to 50 points.
Requirements:
1. The paper is typed in MLA format. It will be typed, double-spaced, Times New
Roman, 12 font, and 1 inch margins all around.
2. The short paper will be 2 – 3 pages and include:
a. A summary of your topic
b. The rationale for studying this topic
c. Two to three themes you saw in the research (citing the articles to
evidence this)
d. What you saw lacking in the research
e. Why you want to research this topic
f. A conclusion that ties all of this together
3. An annotated bibliography that includes:
a. Five peer-reviewed sources
b. Each peer-reviewed article will be annotated separately
i. The annotations will include an abstract of the article in your own
words (70 – 100 words).
ii. What the limitations are on the article
iii. What you found particularly important in the article
iv. Each annotation should be no longer than one page TOTAL.
4. All articles must be from Communication Studies, Gender Studies, or Sexuality
Studies Journals! No Psychology journals please.Annotated Bibliography
Comm 525
Olzman
This paper will be broken into the following parts for evaluation:
MLA Formatting (Are your citations correct? Does the paper follow MLA format?) 10
Organization (Does the paper flow well? Do your annotations flow well?) 10
Content (Are articles included in your paper? Did you follow the requirements? etc) 30
Total 50
Criteria for Evaluation:
A: An A paper will have all of the above components incorporated into the speech and
will carry out these requirements exceptionally well.
A: A B paper will have all required components. Some components may be executed
better than others, but overall the requirements are met at a high level of quality.
C: A C paper will have all the basic components, no more and no less.
D: A D paper includes some components but loses others.
F: This grade is only earned if you do not turn in the paper at all or the paper is
plagiarized.Annotated Bibliography
Comm 525
Olzman
Example:
Please note that my example had different parameters from your assignment. It was also
written two years ago and that means some MLA rules may have changed regarding
citations. Please make sure to utilize the most updated MLA rules.
Kristjansson, Margitte. “Fashion’s ‘Forgotten Woman’: How Fat Bodies Queer Fashion
and Consumption.” Queering Fat Embodiment. Eds. Cat Pausé, Jackie Wykes and
Samantha Murray. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. 131-146. Print.
Margitte Kristjansson writes, “Through an analysis of fat fashion, I will attempt to
explore some of the ways that the fat female body both exposes cultural dimensions of fat
consumption practices and is also capable of queer those consumptions practices” (132). By
using queering here, Kristjansson sets up the argument for destabilizing cultural norms around
consumption. She argues by using Bordo that fat female bodies are always seen as dangerous in
terms of consumption and sexuality: that in their size, they will consume too much and take from
men. This article situates itself within Western consumer practices. By doing this Kristjansson
explains the conflation of the “bigger the better” type of mentality that SUV companies and
developers (to name a couple) have adopted and how this gets conflated with fatness although
there are many studies out there that contradict the idea that the more one eats the more weight
they gain. She goes on to explain how “fatshion” (134) blogs have taken off within in the U.S.,
yet it is still incredibly hard to find fashionable clothes for fat bodies. She uses queering in a
particularly interesting way. She argues that fat women may uphold patriarchy because they are
still striving to be beautiful through fashion, but become queer because it is always a failed
attempt. By resisting this “failure” and demanding access to couture feminine clothing, they are
rejecting notions of hiding their bodies and being unseen. Of other interest in this article toAnnotated Bibliography
Comm 525
Olzman
Intercultural Studies is that Kristjansson critiques and explores the connections between
American anxiety around fat bodies and cultural “others.” In doing so, she critiques uses of race
in connection with fat phobia.
This essay is useful because it includes arguments for why fat bodies are always already
queer as well as offering critiques of Whiteness in fashion. Although this article does not
reference intersectionality directly, Kristjansson does a nice job of having an intersectional
analysis. It is also a useful perspective because this article lives in a contradictory space.
Kristjansson, obviously, enjoys the queering of fashion by fat bodies but is still able to offer a
critique of it. She embodies what it means to write in this contradictory space, which, because
experiences are not uniform, is a complex and important space for a scholar to write from.