Tuesday, March 26, 2013

APA Style for Legal Citations

I just came across a post on the APA Style Blog about citing legal sources in APA style. In the past we've had students who were asked to do this, so I wanted to provide you with the link to that post, which basically tells you where to refer to in the Style Manual and links to other blog posts on citing specific types of legal sources:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/02/introduction-to-apa-style-legal-references.html

If you're not familiar with it, the APA Style Blog is a pretty useful place to look for information on how to cite odd sources in APA Style. I just used it for a question about citing photographs. I found this other post about "Frankenreferences" pretty helpful as well; it describes how to craft a reference from scratch if what you are citing is not in the manual.

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/02/the-frankenreference.html  

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Examples of how to use historical context to write about literature

An English II instructor asked for examples to show students how they would use research about historical context to analyze a work of literature, in the same way they are being asked to do in their research paper. I found these examples of literary criticism on "Young Goodman Brown" and "Everyday Use," two common EII readings, and thought I would share them in case other instructors are looking for something similar or you'd like to use them in your own instruction.

From Literature Resource Center:

"Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': Early Nineteenth-Century and Puritan Constructions of Gender" by James C. Keil, from The New England Quarterly.

"African-American Women Writers, Black Nationalism and Matrilineal Heritage" by Joan S. Korenman from CLA Journal.

From JSTOR:
"In Spite of it All: A Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'" by Sam Whitsitt from African American Review.