Produce a literature review that summaries the state of the scholarly opinion Within your literature reviews you must:
Identify at at least 12 items (books, journal articles and/or book chapters) that have direct relevance to your chosen research question: Summarize the main areas of debate that have arisen around your topic; Convey some sense of the timing behind these historiographical developments (e.g. when were the first scholarly accounts produced on your topic?
Can you identify any external factors such as political changes or historical anniversaries that have influenced new waves of research into the topic?): Consider the different sources and methods employed by some of the previous historians who have worked on your topic; Attempt to measure the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature. Here, you might also look for relevant academic book reviews to see how some of your chosen texts have been received by other academics.
Remember: the purpose of this assignment is not to narrate the course of events behind your chosen topic. Instead, you need to stay focused firmly on how the topic has been treated over the years by different historians. A successful literature review on the origins of the Holocaust, for example, would not waste words by explaining what the Holocaust was, or describing the years of Jewish persecution under Nazism. Instead, it would immediately start tracing the essential features of the Internationalist-Structuralist debate, highlighting key historians and their use of particular sources, and exploring the shift in historical inquiries into actions taken at the center by members of the Nazi hierarchy, to more localized initiatives on the ground in occupied Europe.
Top Tip: a successful literature review will be peppered with references to relevant, leading historians and supported by lots of footnotes! You need to demonstrate strong knowledge and understanding of the literature so try to avoid using vague descriptions such as ‘some historians’ – give us specific names!
Sample Solution
