Your essay will focus on 5 recent articles within the journal (published in the last five years). In your analysis, be sure to answer the following questions. Use headings to organize your responses:
Scope, Aim, and Content
What topics, issues, or debates are included in this journal? What types of studies are published?
Context of Disciplinary Conversation
Do these articles shed light on a historical event, problem, or period?
How do they fit into the “big picture”?
What incidental information can you glean from them by reading carefully?
Such information is important for constructing a narrative of the past; our medieval authors almost always tell us more than they intended to.
Taken together, do the documents reveal anything significant about the period in question (research in the last 5 years in your discipline)?
Subject
What kinds of topics are discussed in the articles?
What patterns/exceptions do you notice?
Do your documents support or contradict what other sources (video, readings) have told you?
Do the documents reveal a change that occurred over a period of time?
Is there a contrast between documents within your set? If so, how do you account for it?
Scale of Readership
How globally dispersed is the journal’s readership? Hint: look at the institutional affiliations of the editor, editorial board, and recent authors.
Sample Solution
