Development and `the Girl Effect` Black Feminism, Post/Decolonial Feminism and Development

Critical annotated bibliography (3000 words max including bibliography)

A critical annotated bibliography of key texts on ONE of the topics. You should look at how ideas about this topic have developed and evolved over time and how this relates to broader trends in the development literature.

Development and `the Girl Effect`
Black Feminism, Post/Decolonial Feminism and Development


ADVICE TO STUDENTS

You need to demonstrate that:

You know how to identify the most important key texts on the chosen theme
That you can summarise these texts accurately and briefly.
That you understand how to read sources critically.
That you can evaluate/reflect on your own work.

FORMAT OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The annotated bibliography should be written up in the following format:

Fully referenced, critical summaries of 5-7 key texts.
Critical reflection on the readings.

STYLE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The annotated bibliography must be:

Written in a narrative form and not in bullet points.
Each reading that you summarise and critique should be headed by the short bibliographic data (author, year). (These headings do not count as part of the 3000 words).
At the end of your annotated bibliography list all of your sources in alphabetical order giving full bibliographic details for each source using the Harvard referencing system.

CONTENT OF THE ASSESSMENT

The bibliography should summarise and critique 5 to 7 of the most important key texts. Using your reading list and bibliographic research tools you need to identify the 5-7 most important key texts on a concept or theme. These texts can include chapters in edited collections, journal articles, and books.

The readings should be taken from a range of sources; students that review only one edited collection or one special issue of a journal from which the 5 – 7 readings are taken will fail.

The starting point for this assessment is to summarise each source in about 100 – 150 words. For books you might begin by writing one line for each chapter and then re-write this into a narrative form. Think about what the key point of the reading is; identify its central argument; is it empirical or theoretical; what kinds of evidence does it use?

The next task is to critically evaluate the reading in about 150 - 200 words. As you do these try to answer the following questions of the reading: is its argument coherent and plausible? Are you convinced by the argument and why? How robust is the data? What theory is the argument located within? Are concepts consistent with theory? Are the conclusions internally consistent?

At the end of the bibliography evaluate your work in a paragraph of about 200 words. Here you should think about what the balance of the readings is: are they all from one theoretical stance or using a similar body of data? What is the dominant paradigm about how to understand the concepts or issues you have been reading about? Are there dissenting voices? What gaps do you think there are in the way that these key texts handle these concepts or issues?