The purpose of this exercise is to practice writing an abstractof an academic work. An abstract is a concise summary of the topic,goals, content, and argument of an academic work. Learning to writea good abstract is a key step in developing a critique of anacademic work—you cannot provide a good critique of an article orbook until you are able to first summarize the author’s argumentand the evidence she uses to support it.
Assignment:
For this exercise, write a 150-200 word abstract of chapter 5(“The Phenomenology of Terror”) in Buried Secrets by VictoriaSanford.
Your goal is to provide a succinct summary of: the topic of thechapter, Sanford’s thesis in the chapter, and the data she uses tosupport it.
Guidelines:
The first sentence(s) should describe accurately and conciselythe main theme of the chapter: What is it about? What is the maintopic??Where, when, and with whom was the research done?
The following sentence(s) should concisely state the author’sthesis and how she argues her position. Remember that a thesis mustbe stated in the form of an argument, not a statement of fact.
The next sentence(s) should briefly outline the information thatthe author uses to support her thesis. For example, is the dataethnographic or is it historical or a combination of both? Does theauthor draw primarily on media sources or did she conductinterviews? With whom did she conduct interviews and why? How doesthe author present or organize her data to support her case?
Your abstract should end with a summary of the implications ofthe chapter: Why is this chapter significant? What does the authoraccomplish or hope to accomplish by presenting this data?
