Specifications for the Review Essay
The review essay is a key element in your work for the
seminar. It allows you to pursue a concentration of readings on a topic of
particular interest to you, then to tell your colleagues about it via the list.
This page gives some specifications for the review essay, not to be picky,
but rather to provide helpful guidance.
1. Coverage:
5 or 6 books
2. Target
length: 2000 words (equivalent of 8 typed pages)
3. Method
of submission: send an email
message to Professor Isern (not to the
list), attaching the essay as a Word document
4. Heading:
see example in box below
5. Double-space
the text of the essay
6. Other
matters of style: see A Manual of Style, University of Chicago
Press
7. Content:
see discussion below
Word is the standard program for word processing, and so
if you send the essay in that format, posting will be easy. Prof. Isern can readily convert a Word document into a pdf file for posting at the website. When you send, fill
in the subject line of the message with the phrase, "Review Essay."
Here's what the heading of a
review essay might look like.
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Agriculture on
the North American Plains
A
Review Essay by Tom Barton
Adelman, Jeremy. Frontier
Development: Land, Labor, and Capital on the Wheatlands
of Argentina and Canada,
1890-1914. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.
Dick, Everett. The Sod-House
Frontier, 1854-1890. New York:
D. Appleton-Century Co., 1937.
Fite,
Gilbert C. The Farmer's Last Frontier, 1865-1900. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston,
1966.
Fowke,
Vernon C. The
National Policy and the Wheat Economy. Toronto:
University of
Toronto Press, 1957.
Hargreaves, Mary Wilma M. Dry
Farming in the Northern Plains, 1900-1925. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1957.
Isern,
Thomas D. Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs:
Harvesting and Threshing on the North American Plains. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas,
1990.
Agriculture, a topic of pre-eminent importance in the cultural and
economic history of the Great Plains, has
received generous attention from the region's historians. . . . [and so on with the essay, double-spacing text]
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So much for form—now, as to
content. Build the essay in the usual manner, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
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Beginning
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An introduction of one paragraph. This should tell
readers what the essay is about and why it is interesting and important
enough for them to care about it. The paragraph ends with a thesis
statement that provides a thread you will carry through the review sections
below. (It's a good idea to check the thesis statement with Prof. Isern by email message as you are writing.)
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Middle
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This is the bulk of the essay, consisting of a series of
short reviews treating the five or six books you have read. These sections
devoted to the individual works—a few paragraphs each—should do
justice to each work, but the whole should be more than the sum of the
parts. Keep these things in mind:
·
Pay attention to transitions. As you leave off
discussion of one work, make a smooth transition into the next.
·
Make comparisons and contrasts, one work to
another.
·
Watch for, and point out, common themes and
approaches.
·
Watch for, and point out, disagreements
among the works.
·
Don't be picky, but do be
critical—that is, this is a review, not a report.
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End
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A conclusion of one paragraph. This should remind
readers of the importance of the topic and summarize what the authors you
have read can tell us about it.
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Ordinarily Prof. Isern receives the review
essay and goes over it, then sends the author suggestions for revisions. This
is not a forum in which we get heavily into editing or focus on writing
style, but revisions may address both matters of academic substance and
matters of style, in both cases aimed at the best possible presentation to
colleagues in the seminar. After receiving the essay with any revisions
complete, Prof. Isern posts it (as a pdf file) in the Coffee Klatch Annex (framed into the
home page of the seminar) and sends a notice to the list that it is available
for review.
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