Literature Reviews: A Blog for the Exasperated from Writing Works Consulting

Summer is here. Teaching is over, the marking is finally finished, and there are no meetings in the diary. You’ve got what we all crave: two months, maybe even three, of clear writing time. Hurrah! You’ve got a rock-star question, an outline of your methods, and you sit down to write, committed, passionate about your subject, and eager to get into it and make some real progress.   But you hit a snag. Your literature review.   You’ve done the recommended reading in the how-to books, sat through the self-study tutorials, and studied the step-by-step guides. They tell you about the broad purpose of your review. It should: Demonstrate professional mastery of your field Identify tensions and debates Position your work in the ongoing ‘conversation’ about your subject  Excellent. But how do you do these things, exactly? The guidance documentation falls oddly silent here. You dig in and painstakingly start accounting for every study you’ve read, but is that what ‘demon...