WHAT FORM SHOULD THE CRITIQUE TAKE?

BOOK CRITIQUE
Anthopology 2530
The final project for this class is a critique of a fictional book.
WHERE CAN I FIND THE BOOKS?
These books can’t be bought at the University bookstore, so you are responsible for acquiring them on your own. I’ve sent out a couple of emails about this. You can buy them used on Amazon; some of them might be found at the library, if you are speedy enough to beat the rest of the class there.
These are the books you can choose from (you only need to read one):
• Dance of the Tiger (Bjorn Kurten)
• The Inheritors (William Golding)
• Hominid (John C. Boland)
WHAT FORM SHOULD THE CRITIQUE TAKE?
Absolutely any form you would like it to. I’ve had students submit play, filmed interviews with one of the characters, powerpoints, and comic books. Frankly, I admire creativity, ingenuity, and free-thinking greatly. So have fun with these. Surprise me. Take risks. Don’t make me want to slit my wrists with boredom. How often does a professor really give you free reign to do whatever you like? Don’t waste it.
WHAT SHOULD THE CRITIQUE INCLUDE?
While I don’t care what form your critique takes, I do care what you include in it. It should be a scientific critique of the material. I’m going to state that one more time, because I don’t want a literary critique out of this (comments on writing, symbolism, etc.). A scientific critique. What scientific claims, hypotheses, and presumptions is the author making? Are they accurate based on contemporary scientific knowledge? What is the author claiming about human nature and the human condition?
How do you evaluate the author’s claims? There are two ways and your ability to incorporate these two ways is what you will be graded on.
1) Incorporate material from my lectures. You can feel free to use anything I have told you in class. This is the reason it’s a good idea to take notes.
2) You need to incorporate three peer-reviewed journal articles. This is the hard part of most students. I’m not talking about websites and Wikipedia. You actually need to find journal articles to read on the subject. The best way to
start, if you are unfamiliar with this, is search for things on “google scholar.” The university probably has electronic copies of most articles—if they don’t, and you start early enough, you can use Interlibrary Loan (
http://library.missouri.edu/services/requestill/faq/). If you still don’t know if the article you found meets these criteria, just send it to me via email. 3) Citations: All three peer-reviewed articles should be cited somewhere in the publication, regardless what format you choose to do it in. If you do a video/podcast, submit a separate citation list. See below for citation format.
WHAT IS A PEER REVIEWED PAPER?
When students end up with a grade they don’t like in this class, this is almost always the reason. Every year, at least 10% of the class gets a very low grade on the final project because they failed to include three peer-reviewed papers. When an article is peer-reviewed, that means after the author wrote it and submitted it to the journal, the journal editors sent it out to 2-4 other scientists who critically evaluated the work and determined whether it was high-quality enough to be included in the journal. It’s the “gold standard” in scientific research. In regular magazines or blogs or Wikipedia, anyone can say anything they like, without the statement having to go through this vetting process, so it is generally not considered to be the same quality. Here is a pretty good explanation of how to recognize peer-reviewed research:

5 ways to tell if an article is Scholarly (or Peer-reviewed … or Academic)

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WHAT FORM SHOULD THE CRITIQUE TAKE?

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Finally, if you really can’t tell after looking at the site above if the article you have is peer-reviewed or now, you can always email it to me, and I’ll let you know.
HOW SHOULD I CITE MY THREE PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS?
I prefer citations in MLA format. It looks like this:
Cowgill, Libby W. “The ontogeny of Holocene and Late Pleistocene human postcranial strength.” American journal of physical anthropology 141.1 (2010): 16-37.
If you actually want the simplest way to get this done, here you go:
1) Go to https://scholar.google.com/
2) Search the exact name of the article you want to cite
3) When you find it, click on the cite button below the article
4) Cut and paste whatever citation method you like (MLA for us) into your bibliography.
WHEN IS IT DUE?
The last day of class, by midnight, through email. Please don’t print anything out.
HOW LONG SHOULD IT BE?
A critique project should be like a lady’s skirt: long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting.