English

Session Outline

Here is a plan for what we will cover today:

1. Go over assignment details.

2. Provide an overview of how to search LibrarySearch and Google Scholar for scholarly sources.

3. Learn the difference between scholarly and non-scholarly sources.

4. Practice information evaluation skills.

5. Show a couple of different ways to get help if you have questions.

This work (Question Mark Symbol Icon Character, by Peggy_Marco), identified by Pixabay, is free of known copyright restrictions.

The Assignment

Objective

Select one of the topics below and write a thesis-driven research paper on Madelaine Miller’s Circe.

• Examine the depiction of motherhood in the novel, focusing on how Circe’s maternity differs from that of Perse and Pasiphaë. How does motherhood shape Circe’s understanding of herself and her relationship with mortality/immortality? How do her maternal experiences contribute to her self-actualization?

• Analyze how the novel’s setting(s) — mythological, geographical, and physical — elucidate its central conflicts and themes.

• Examine the representation of Circe and trace her internal journey towards self-actualization, paying special attention to the question of adaptation and the representation of the titular character. In other words, how is Circe depicted in Miller’s novel? How does Miller’s Circe differ from other literary representations of the same character? How does Miller’s Circe change throughout the novel?

• Consider Circe as a work of feminist revisionist mythology, focusing on Miller’s use of first-person narration in Circe reenvision the myth from a feminine perspective. How does the novel grant Circe authority over her own story? How does the novel critique and/or reimagine patriarchal structures inherited from classical mythology? How does the novel challenge or reclaim the authority of classical myth?

• In Homer’s The Odyssey, Circe is a witch and seductress, an obstacle to male heroism. Compare Miller’s feminist revisionist mythology with that of Margaret Atwood’s “Circe/Mud Poems,” focusing on how these authors challenge this marginalization and silencing. How do these authors reimagine Circe? What is the effect of Atwood’s lyrical fragmentation versus Miller’s sustained first-person narrative?

• Develop your own topic. I recommend running your topic by me [Dr. Stook] to ensure it is appropriate.

Your paper should have an introduction with a strong thesis, several supporting examples (direct quotations from the text and relevant contextual information) that demonstrate your thesis, and a conclusion. You should carefully and thoughtfully analyze your examples and ensure they support your thesis. Your mark will be based on clarity of writing and thinking, organization, a clear understanding of the text in question, the rigour of your analyses, your writing style, your adherence to MLA guidelines, and the quality of your research. 

Research Requirements
You must use a minimum of three (3) secondary sources in your research paper. Your research should take the form of relevant and reliable sources (background materials, high-quality book reviews, articles, books, and chapters in books) found via the MRU Library’s catalogue and databases. Preference is for scholarly/peer-reviewed sources. When dealing with non-scholarly sources, you should carefully evaluate those sources (i.e., your source’s author and expertise, its reliability, its currency, its audience, and its medium of publication).

Length and Appearance
Your essay must be 6-8 pages (excluding the “Works Cited” page). Your assignment should be typed using 12-point Times New Roman font and double-spaced. Your assignment must also follow the conventions of MLA format, as outlined here.

MLA 
Your paper must include a complete and accurate Works Cited page, and all citations must adhere to current MLA guidelines. You must also use parenthetical references (i.e., in-text citations) in the body of your essay every time you cite (i.e., quote, paraphrase, or summarize) a secondary source. Moreover, an in-text citation must appear after every discrete idea from your source. 

Studying Circe

Sometimes you will be asked to study and write about a literary work that hasn't received a lot of attention from scholars. This is likely to be the case in your study of Madeline Miller's novel Circe. The research on this work is growing, but you may still need to think broadly about how to expand your search to find relevant sources to inform your own analysis.

Consider expanding the search for sources for your essay to include not only scholarly analysis of this specific text, but in-depth book reviews, background information about Greek mythology, discussion of Homer's Odyssey from which the character Circe originates, or discussion of literary adaptation of the Odyssey more broadly. See the advice below for information on different types of sources and some suggestions for how to find them.

Conducting Academic Research With LibrarySearch 

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have millions of e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "The Odyssey"

  •  "character development"

• Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build) (AND narrows your search):

  • Circe AND feminism

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms (OR broadens your search):

  • gods OR deities OR divinities

• Use wild cards/truncation to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • myth* (in this example, the search myth* will search for records that contain words such as myths, mythology, and mythological)

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "Madeline Miller"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • criticism OR analysis OR commentary

• Avoid using wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol—instead write out the complete words and connect with an OR

  • myth OR myths OR mythological

Sample Searches

These searches all use LibrarySearch, our main search tool for finding scholarly sources. The following are sample searches you mind find useful for starting your own research. Take note of how these searches have some limits in place since you may need to change them.

Find book reviews and other general commentary on Miller's novel Circe:

• "Madeline Miller" AND Circe

Limited to articles only, on the novel with some criticism included (includes both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles):

• "Madeline Miller" AND Circe AND (critic* OR analy* OR comment*)

On literary adaptations of Homer's Odyssey, limited to peer-reviewed articles only:

• (literature OR literary) AND adapt* AND Homer AND Odyssey

Reference entries on Circe in Greek mythology:

• Circe AND Greek AND myth*

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!

RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

(Adapted from Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889)

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

The literary work itself, such as a novel, poem, story, play, essay, or a collection of these works.

Secondary Sources

Research and scholarship about the primary source work, or about the author/creator of the primary source.

Articles and Books - your best option

• original research appears in peer reviewed journal articles, books, or individual book chapters

• in-depth analysis, criticism, and commentary

• may explore a literary work or set of works, or an author's works as a whole, or a particular literary theme

Reference Works

• sometimes called background sources, includes encyclopedias, handbooks, or companion guides

• only basic or introductory information on a topic or person

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Book Reviews

• generally written within two years of the time the book was published

• published in journals, trade and popular magazines

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

 Add / Reorder 

Activity: Is It Scholarly?

To make sure we are all on the same page, let's put our knowledge to the test.

Skim the following resources available through the links keeping in mind the characteristics we have discussed in class (for example: what is this information and where did it come from? Was it written by an expert? Where is this source published?).

Vote whether you think this source is Scholarly or Not Scholarly.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Source 8

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to MLA style for Academic Work (2025-2026)

  • MRU Guide to Formatting Your MLA Paper (2025-2026)

  • MLA Handbook Plus

    • The go-to resource for writers of research papers and anyone citing sources. MLA Handbook Plus includes the full text of the ninth edition of the handbook.

• Academic Success Workshops: Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.