Literature Review (ideally 2,500-3,000 words)
The aim of this section is to demonstrate to a potential supervisor that you are familiar with research that has been carried out on this topic and are able to present a critical evaluation of relevant studies in a concise format.
This review involves identifying and evaluating books, journal articles, archival materials, statistical data that might be relevant to your study. What are the significant findings that can be drawn from the literature? What do you think is missing from the literature?
Some topics have more extensive literature than others, however you should aim to assess at least 15 sources for this proposal and pilot study 5 books, 5 journal articles and 5 pieces of popular culture which may include journalism, blogs, webpages and other non-academic sources.
15 is an arbitrary number that represents a handful of sources for each form of knowledge about a topic. Together they should allow you to present an overview of historical understanding about a topic or subject. (Aim for 10 academic sources. You may not find 5 books, so add to your list of journal articles to make up the 10 sources. You may find more than 5 books pick the best. Remember that popular culture is not peer reviewed so beware of relying on web resources that have not been independently assessed.
This involves organizing your sources (e.g. chronologically or thematically) and summarizing findings from previous research. How useful are these sources for your topic? You could also highlight theoretical approaches taken and/or identify the main methods that were used by other researchers exploring the same topic/subject.
There are two ways to structure present this review.
Source by source: you may choose a text and present a brief evaluation of its merits. You do this for each of your 15 sources.
An integrated discussion of sources: you may discuss your 15 sources in a discursive format such as in an essay form. Sources can be grouped together (such as chronologically or according to American or British research) and evaluated together.
