Annotated Bibliography
For this project, you will do some scholarly research on Watchmen. The finished project will be an
annotated bibliography with 4 sources. One of these sources is the article I provided to you, “The
Human Stain,” to get you started.
Objectives:
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Find appropriate
sources
Use MLA citation
Distinguish between types of sources
Summarize sources
Evaluate sources
Apply research to course text
The first step is finding 3 sources that would be helpful in preparing your Watchmen final presentation, so
be sure to review the possible topics. This should help you focus on what types of articles that will be
most useful. You should not simply use the first sources you find.
(For help, read the Research Overview section of Purdue’s OWL site
(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/552/01/#resourcenav) ).
Keep in mind that these academic sources don’t necessarily need to be directly about the particular work
you are researching. You may use history, psychology, sociology, economics, or any approach that you
can clearly apply to your chosen work. After deciding upon 3 sources, you will create an annotated
bibliography.
The Assignment: For each article, you will turn in a 1page, singlespaced response that includes the
following. Label each section.
Citation (Use MLA format. For help go to OWL(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/11/)
Summary (Be sure to present the main points, and demonstrate by using examples and quotations)
Evaluation (Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the content, type, and author of your source)
Synthesis (Briefly explain how you would use the source in a research paper about the literary work)
Assessment and Grading:
You should use the rubric to help guide you while you are working on the project. Please refer to the
Glossery for the definition/explanation of terms. The assessment categories for this project will be:
Summary
Evaluation
Synthesis
I will be giving you your grade for the assignment. Though the grade will largely be based on how you do in
these three categories, there is not a grand equation that connects grading to the rubric. You will also
need to get the citations correct. I will count off for mistakes there.
Name 1
Student Name
ENGL 4200
Dr. Collins
25 September 2011
Annotated Bibliography: Maus
Chodoff, Paul. "The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview." Political
Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1997, pp. 147-157. EBSCOhost, libraryproxy.sdmesa.edu/
login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3791989&
site=eds-live.
Summary
In the article “The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview,” Paul Chodoff
asks crucial questions regarding the psychological effects of the Holocaust on both
survivors who directly experienced the event and individuals indirectly exposed to the
horrors of the concentration camps. Chodoff begins by giving an account of a patient,
whose story he introduces as that of “a former inmate (Mrs. S) who was a patient of
mine” (148). After establishing an account of the Holocaust from this first-hand witness,
the psychologist Chodoff attempts to “describe some of the immediate effects” of such
experiences and “how prisoners responded to concentration camp stresses” (148). Next,
the author approaches the crucial question “Did it make any difference for survival how a
prisoner behaved in the camps?” (152). After explaining that survival was less about
“how prisoners behaved” and more about “luck, accident, and chance,” (152) Chodoff
investigates the difficulty which many survivors of the Holocaust experience in dealing
with what he labels as “survival guilt” (154), a form of psychological anxiety experienced
by former prisoners when faced with the task of adapting meaning to their survival
amongst the death of millions. Chodoff then compares and contrasts the symptoms of
another psychological issue which he terms “Concentration Camp Syndrome” (153) with
the symptoms associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the concluding pages of
his article, Chodoff shifts focus from the survivors of the Holocaust to those who
experienced the Holocaust in another manner. Here, he includes a brief discussion
concerning the psychological effects on second generation survivors before moving on to
the effects that the Holocaust has had on post World-War II German society.
Evaluation
Paul Chodoff is a practicing psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., and is associated with the
Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University. His article “The Holocaust
and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview” offers a unique look at the effects of the
Holocaust on survivors through the perspective of a psychiatrist. In writing his academic
article, Chodoff relies on his personal practice of psychology as well as with the
academic research of his peers. As in any patient interview, some aspects of the story
might not be true to the minute detail. Never-the-less, such interviews are a vital part of
understanding both the event in question and the psychological effects of it on the
individual being interviewed.
Name 2
Application
This article would prove beneficial to research involving the psychology of various
characters in Art Spiegelman’s Maus. In particular, the issues of “survival anxiety,”
“Concentration Camp Disorder,” and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder may be applied to
Vladek in order to explain his character and better understand the trouble he experiences
in applying meaning not only to his memories, but to the fact that he lived through an
event that millions of others did not.
Cohen, Steven M., and Leonard J. Fein. "From Integration to Survival: American Jewish
Anxieties in Transition.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, Vol. 480, 1985, pp. 75-88.EBSCOhost, libraryproxy.sdmesa.edu/login?url
=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.1045336&site=eds
-live.
Summary
In this article, authors Steven Cohen and Leonard Fein introduce the idea that the Jewish
population in America has gone from a point of cultural integration and assimilation to
fighting for survival of religious tradition. In the beginning of the article the authors
discuss the transition into American society which Jews fought for upon immigration.
They claim that “Much of the American Jewish history-until the late 1960s- can be read
as the story of the Jewish struggle with the terms of the American offer.” According to
Cohen and Fein, “Most Jews…sought a workable balance between Jewish loyalty and
modernity, between authenticity and integration” (77). The authors go on to explain that
first generation immigrant Jews often struggled with the difficult task of assimilating into
American culture while retaining their traditions and identities. Next the article turns to
the second and third generation immigrant Jews. Rather than the task of integration that
plagued the first generation, the second and third generations are faced with the problem
of ensuring the survival of Judaism in America. Because of the removal of these later
generations from the integration period in Jewish-American history and their separation
from the atrocities of the Holocaust, Cohen and Fein argue that attempts to rediscover
and give meaning to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust are possible. The authors
claim, however, that studies and works on such aspects of Jewish history must be met
with the question “Is it good for the Jews?” By asking this question, the later generations
may ensure that their work benefits “the matter of Jewish group interests” (83). From
here the article enters the closing pages, plunging into contemporary political issues
facing the Jewish-American population, such as the debate over Zionism and America’s
support of Israel, before concluding with a final look into the cultural survival of the
modern Jewish-American community.
Evaluation
"From Integration to Survival: American Jewish Anxieties in Transition” was published
in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social S
cience in association with
The American Academy of Political and Social Science. The article was written by
Steven M. Cohen and Leonard J. Fein. Cohen, Professor of Sociology at Queens College,
Name 3
CUNY, also claims authorship of numerous works on American Jewish culture and
values. Fein is editor in chief of the independent Jewish magazine titled Moment, and
was formerly Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. Like
Fein, Cohen has produced numerous works in the field of Jewish studies. The
collaboration between these two individuals expresses itself in the form of a
well-researched academic article that approaches the Jewish-American experience in the
twentieth century.
Application
The value that this article holds for a research paper regarding Art Spiegelman’s Maus
rests in the approach the authors take to explaining the Jewish condition in twentieth
century America. Cohen and Fein’s work focuses on the struggle of Jewish immigrants to
integrate into American society, a struggle that Vladek himself would have went through
in his life as a Jewish immigrant. Furthermore, the article looks at the second and third
generations of Jewish-Americans and the ways in which they develop meaning and
identity by re-visiting the events of the Holocaust. This aspect of the article directly
relates to Art Spiegelman himself, as well as his semi-autobiographical character, Artie.
Staub, Michael E. "The Shoah Goes on and on: Remembrance and Representation in Art
Spiegelman's Maus. " MELUS, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1995, pp. 33-46. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.2307/467741.
Summary
In his article "The Shoah Goes on and on: Remembrance and Representation in Art
Spiegelman's Maus, ” Michael Staub looks to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, seeking to explain
the ways in which the work represents the Holocaust, the story of survivors, and the
effect of the memories associated with those stories. Staub starts by declaring what Maus
does and does not do, and what the work offers to Holocaust literature. Next, Staub visits
the style of Spiegelman’s Maus, claiming that “Despite its unusual status as a comic
book, Maus remains remarkably traditional in its documentary strategies for relating its
oral narrative” (34). In the ensuing pages, he deals with the question of what Holocaust
literature offers us and how it can be evaluated, claiming that even the “characters in
Maus are continually questioning what value written representations have in the first
place” (35). Continuing with the theme of written representations, Staub turns to the
burning of Anja’s diary by Vladek, and the implications of such action in the minds of
both Artie and his father. After introducing the diary burning incident, Staub focuses on
the character of Artie and the difficulties he has dealing with his father’s memories, not
only as a fictional character but as an auto-biographical representation of Spiegelman.
Staub claims that “Maus is very much about the inability of art (or Art) to confront fully
or represent metaphorically a monstrous past.” He does not limit Spiegelman’s work to a
portrayal of the psychological effects of the Holocaust on individual characters. Instead,
he goes on to state that “it is also about the tensions involved in understanding” on a
larger scale “what it means to have a Jewish identity in a post-Auschwitz age” (37). In
the following page he continues this study of an over-arching meaning by arguing that
“the key issue” portrayed by the work is the suggestion “that identity can never be
Name 4
understood as self-evident,” that “Maus works continually to disrupt comfortable
assumptions about where the differences between people lie” (38). He continues with the
idea “that ethnic identities are not fixed” (39), citing Spiegelman’s inclusion in Maus of
the decision regarding which animal he should use to portray Francoise, a French female
who converted to Judaism. In closing, Staub gives his interpretation of panels from the
first few pages of the eighth chapter of Maus, titled “Auschwitz (Time Flies).” Here,
Staub claims that “the words Art speaks” in the panels in which Spiegelman sits at his
drawing desk, “identify the various temporal landmarks relevant to Maus” (43), primarily
the struggle with the memory of the Holocaust and his method as an author of
representing his father’s story in written form.
Evaluation
"The Shoah Goes on and on: Remembrance and Representation in Art Spiegelman's
Maus” was written by Michael E. Staub, who currently holds the title Professor of
English at Baruch University, CUNY. He has had several works on Jewish experience
and the representation of Postwar (WWII) America published, including his academic
article "The Shoah Goes on and on: Remembrance and Representation in Art
Spiegelman's Maus,” which was published in 1995 by The Society for the Study of
Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS).
Application
There are several clear ways in which Staub’s ideas may be used as support for a research
paper on Maus. Staub’s attention to the significance of Maus to Holocaust literature
would prove to be helpful in research regarding the representations of survivor stories in
literary forms. Relating more directly to research on the characters in the graphic novel,
their actions, and how they react to remembrances of the Holocaust, the article would
prove helpful by assisting an understanding of the psychological difficulties of attempting
to add meaning to the memories of the Holocaust and the concentration camps. To give a
more focused example, Staub’s article would prove beneficial to research exploring the
effects on Vladek of Anja’s memory as represented in the burned diaries, and the
psychological consequences of his burning the diary.
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