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Current Topics in Anthropology

Course Number: AN450

Subject: Anthropology

Chicago style: 2 important resources

Video tutorial: How to cite in Chicago style 

Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th ed

  • NOTE: this links to Chapter 15 on the Author-Date reference system

 

All about citation using Chicago style

What is a style guide?

A style guide (or manual of style) is a set of standards for the design and writing of documents, often for a specific publication, organization, or field. The purpose of a style guide is to establish and enforce formatting style to improve communication. One particularly important portion of a style guide is how it describes how sources are cited (documented). There are hundreds of publication style guides, including APA, MLA, and Chicago. There is even a Laurier Style Guide for web content.

What is citing, and why should I do it?

What is Chicago?

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS, CMOS, Chicago) is a style guide published by the University of Chicago Press that describes aspects of editorial practice used for document preparation, including how to cite other sources. Turabian is a style that is based on Chicago, but is aimed specifically at the academic community. 

Consult the Turabian Citation Quick Guide for Author-date style sample citations.

The Laurier Library also subscribes to the entire manual online (v17 and v16). Use it Part III: Source Citations and Indexes, to determine the rules and examples of citing.

Note that Chicago offers two formats for citation:

  • Author-Date (in text citations, with a bibiography -- suggested for this class)
  • Notes-Bibliography (numbered footnotes/endnotes, with a bibliography)

What does Chicago (Author-Date) look like?

Article (Duclos 2017, 23)

Dipio, Dominica. 2019. "Telenovelas in Uganda: mediating transcultural conversations." Journal of African Cultural Studies 31, no. 2: 164-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2018.1503079.

Book (Holton 2017, 55)

Holton, M. Jan. 2017. Longing for Home: Forced Displacement and Postures of Hospitality. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Book Chapter (Scheid 2016)

Scheid, Anna Floerke. 2016. "Human Bodies, Human Rights." In Public Theology and the Global Common Good: the Contribution of David Hollenbach, 39-50. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2016.

Streaming Video (Her Story, 2016)

Her Story: The Female Revolution—The Personal Story. 2016. Accessed September 19, 2017. https://fod-infobase-com.libproxy.wlu.ca/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=98462&xtid=128865.

Where can I get citation information?

Many online databases offer the ability to generate citations from the record. NOTE that these are automatically generated, and will generate mistakes if mistakes exist in the record -- and the often do. In the end, you are responsible for your bibliography.

The OWL Purdue web site has a wealth of information and examples of the Chicago Style. See this sample paper.

 

Picking a topic - ideas

  • Picking a topic that’s interesting to you
  • Choosing something relevant to your course
  • Clarifying with the course readings
  • Scanning through some current course readings, old readings that you found interesting
  • Take a concept discussed in class and apply it to something else

Where do you find topics and background information?

What is a literature review?

  • An overview of existing research on a specific topic
  • Focused on scholarly literature: the "scholarly conversation"
  • Usually involves aspects of analysis and synthesis
  • Not just a list or a summary of material

Purpose of the literature review

  • Summarize existing research
  • Show you are aware of research done in a field
  • Show you can interpret the research
  • Identify gaps in or critique existing knowledge
  • Fit your work into the scholarly conversation

Research Questions

  • Should be:

Literature search tips

  • Conduct your search systematically
  • Create a search strategy
  • Use effective search terms and combinations
  • Decide where you’ll search
  • Repeat searches across databases
  • Track results, modify strategies as needed
  • DO NOT: type questions into a research database
  • Do: separate your terms into concepts, and link them with connectors (boolean operators) to broaden/narrow results

Example search strategy

For the research question "What implementation strategies have Arctic communities undertaken to adapt to climate change?"

  • Break it down into the following concepts and search strings:

Concept 1: Arctic OR Nunavut OR "Yukon Territory" OR "Northwest Territories"

AND

Concept 2: "Climate change" OR "Global warming"

AND

Concept 3: Adapt* OR Modif* OR Adjust* OR Regulat*

AND: narrows results OR: broadens results; links similar terms NOT: subtracts any results with your search term (use judiciously)

NOTE: if you use Omni, you must put AND, OR, NOT in all CAPS

For more details see:

Managing your information

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