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Research and Writing Seminars: Develop Your Scholarly Voice. Each session in this suite of four interactive seminars integrates the learning of academic research and writing skills and is taught by a librarian in collaboration with a writing instructor. The goal of each seminar is to help you develop your own voice as an emerging scholar by enabling you to identify, situate and substantiate your arguments in the context of the scholarly discussion taking place in your discipline. The seminars are designed for humanities and social sciences undergraduate students. Graduate students might wish to consider the research-related skills offerings in the Graduate Professional Skills Program.

Take any three (3) of the four (4) seminars to earn credit on your Co-Curricular Record.

Literature Reviews

Learn how to conduct comprehensive research and synthesize the “state of the art” knowledge on a particular topic. Through short lectures, interactive class discussion and hands-on exercises, you will learn:

• The different kinds of literature reviews you may be asked to write at university
• The definition and purpose of literature reviews as part of the scholarly conversation
• Strategies for narrowing your topic and developing a thesis
• The steps to writing a literature review, including how to organize your content
• To avoid common mistakes students make when writing literature reviews

Key terms for this session: description versus evaluation, comparative analysis, synthesis, Literature Review Synthesis Matrix

Location: E.J. Pratt Library, E-Classroom (room 306) Directions

Other seminars in this series include:

• Critical Reading
• Writing to Cite
• Annotated Bibliographies