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100 Best Literature Research Paper Topics For Students

Literary research paper topics are among the most interesting to write about. Books are the best teachers for most learners. And, students love reading interesting literature books. But, when asked to write research papers, most students have difficulties choosing their topics. That’s because many issues can be investigated and written about.

For instance, literary topics can be about characters’ personalities in certain works. They can also be about particular characteristics of specific literary genres. Learners can also choose literary analysis topics that focus on the life story of famous writers or poets. But, regardless of what a learner opts to write about, they should choose interesting topics.

What are Interesting Literary Research Paper Topics?

Several factors make a topic interesting to write about. A topic for a research paper or a graduate thesis should generally be definite, specific, and innovative. Also, it should be interesting to research and write about. Here’s how to select interesting literature topics:

Think about something. Explore the idea to select a topic for which you can find sufficient research data from credible sources. Narrow down your subject if you find it too broad.

English literature topics can be classified into different categories. Here some of these categories and topics can be considered in each category.

Great World Literature Research Topics

Perhaps, you’ve been asked to write a literature research paper with a global perspective. Here are some of the literary analysis research paper topics that you can consider.

Explain how the supernatural and spirituality help in furthering the development of the plot in the Latin American literature of the early 20th century.
What themes are common in the Japanese poems of the early 20th century? How do they differ from those of the early 19th century?
Compare the early Chinese literary works and European literary works of the middle ages. How different or alike are they?
How were European literary works in the early 20th century shaped by the revolutionary works of Engels and Marx? What examples can demonstrate this influence?
Explain how the Muslim philosophers’ work of the 15th century led to new ideas and inventions across the globe.
Compare and contrast different anti-British works that originated in India in the 19th century with pro-colonialist works that came from England at the same time.
How did the nightmarish utopian future ideas of Aldous Huxley influence modern-day science fiction writers across the world?
Explain how the Antigone play by Sophocles deals with the conflict between the central characters while relating to the state laws and individual conscience.
How are the sentiments of the authors reflected in Animal Farm by George Orwell and concerns about the October Revolution?
Explain some of the examples of literary fiction pieces that have shaped cultures in the world. Have historic, societal, and cultural factors played some roles in shaping these literature pieces?
Being a prolific writer in the early and mid-19th century, Charles Dickens’s works were published in serialized forms. How and why has this approach become less fashionable?
Compare and contrast the early Japanese literature works and the early Chinese literature works. How do they differ in terms of values and culture?
Explain how comedy differs in literature across cultures. What comedy appeared in the early theatrical performances and it’s still present in modern literature?
Analyze chivalry and honor critically in the Green Knight and Sir Gawain. What are the qualities of these works from a similar period?
Compare and contrast the Odyssey and Iliad by Homer the Ancient Greek. Explain how cultures across the world have adapted the themes presented in the poem.

British Literature Research Paper Topics

Students have many topics to choose from when it comes to British literature essay topics. Here are some of the best literature topics from the works of British authors.

Discuss Victorian England’s picture with the works of Charles Dickens in mind
Discuss the theme of Orphans with the Oliver Twist character in mind
Explain how British Literature has influenced different cultures
Explain how British literature has addressed gender issues
Explain how King Lear highlights the differences between anti-heroes and villains
Explain William Shakespeare’s personality- Highlight facts and myths
Choose two famous British novels and then compare the characters in them
Explain the viewpoint of different writers about the Utopian civilization idea
With Harry Potter books in mind, explain why some literature books are considered classics
Explain how love and romantic love are presented in Charlotte Bronte’s works
Explain how modern literary works have been affected by the Victorian period works
Discuss the adultery theme in Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Who are the main characters in Lake Poets’ works?
Explain how violent imagery was used in World War I poetry
Explain talent as a theme in Milton’s on His Blindness
Explain innocence loss in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
Explain the theme of individualism versus collectivism in Oliver Twist
Explain why the popularity of detective novels increased in the XIX century
What role did the supernatural play in Macbeth: a case study of three witches
Class demarcation in XVII century- The vengeance theme

American Literature Topics

Some teachers ask students to choose American literature research topics for certain reasons. If asked to write on such topics, here are some of the American literature research paper topics to consider.

Analyze key aspects of American ideology, particularly in the literature written before the 20th century.
Determine thematic concerns and literary styles of the major historical period of American literature between the colonial period and post-modernism.
Show the American identity uniqueness of texts
Propose connections between the American literature concerns and themes in the larger historical development and social issues that face the present world
Examine major concerns and themes that reappear across the American literature
Highlight the major themes in Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Explain the African American Experience with female authors like Alice Walker, Zora Neal Hurston, and Toni Morrison
Explain the predominant theme in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Explain how Jonathan Edwards epitomizes Puritan definitions in his sermons
Explain the use of historical personalities and events by Washington Irving as the background for his works
The Crucible demonstrates how a community can be torn apart by hysteria. Explain
Explain how Sylvia Plath demonstrates the social pressure faced by women in the 1960s in the Bell Jar.
Explain how John Knowles demonstrates the impact of war on everyone
Explain the strong belief in the education power by Maya Angelou as depicted in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Explain how Thornton Wilder conveys life as a gift in Our Town
Discuss the themes of anger and pity in the Grapes of Wrath
Explain how Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck portrays the Great Depression struggles
Discuss the portrayal of the unconquerable spirit in Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Plays by Eugene O’Neil are tragically realistic. Explain
God is humanized in The Creation poem by James Weldon Johnson. Explain

Some of the ideas here are great poetry topics. Nevertheless, they require careful research and analysis to write about.

High School Literary Essay Topics

Some topics in literature are ideal for high school essays. Here are examples of literary analysis paper topics for high school students.

Compare and contrast the major characters in your preferred book
Choose your favorite character in a book and explain your reasons for liking it
Please explain why the quality of a literature book is not determined by its length
Highlight the similarities of your favorite books
Discuss the top 4 authors in horror books
Explain why reading some books is more difficult than reading others
Explain what it takes to write a high-quality poem
Who is your favorite poet and why?
Explain what makes your favorite book interesting
Who is your favorite character in literary works and why?
What makes some literature books difficult to read?
Who are your favorite top 5 authors and why?
Should the age of readers be restricted to some books?
What is your favorite literary genre?
Explain why the author determines the quality of a book more than the story
Discuss the literary works of your favorite authors
Why is it important to captivate readers with the introductory chapter of a book?
Which book genre makes great movies?
Why is the work of Harry Potter so popular?
Explain why your favorite horror book is scary

Unique Research Topics in English Literature

Some literature research topics are unique and can be written about by learners at different study levels. Here are examples of such topics.

Analyze the use of literary devices in novels
Discuss the author’s autobiography
Analyze literary genres and the role played by an artist in them
Compare the works of a similar genre
Highlight the gender roles of characters in literary works
Social stratification and Harry Potter- Discuss
With Charles Dickens’ work in mind, explain the peculiarity of the bildungsroman genre.
Explain how The Lord of the Rings uses artificial language
Explain how the Sherlock Holmes image influences the world of detective fiction
Explain the war theme in the world literature

These are also great literary journalism topics. Nevertheless, they require extensive research to write about.

In a nutshell, students have many literary argument topics to consider. The most important thing is to choose an interesting topic that you can find sufficient data to write about. Also, don’t hesitate to check our history topics .

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Are you looking for an engaging literary research paper topic? Whether you're writing a college-level essay or a master's thesis, the right literature research paper topics can make all the difference. They range from exploring particular genres or authors to examining the use of language in literary works. By researching these topics, you will gain a greater understanding of the ideas, improve your critical thinking skills, and learn to appreciate the nuances. This article will explore such literature topics for research and open up endless possibilities for analysis and interpretation, ranging from classic to modern-day texts. Are you ready to choose a trending topic and write a paper that will win your professor’s heart?

What Are Literary Research Paper Topics?

Literary research paper topics focus on a particular literary work, such as a book, poem, novel, play, or story. They provide a great starting point for researching the specific aspect you're planning to explore for a better perception of the idea and help to eliminate any artificial facet. Literary research topics may analyze a single text, compare different writings by the same author, or contrast different authors' styles. Common literature topics for research papers comprise symbolism, characterization, themes, plot structure, historical context, point-of-view analysis, biographical contexts, and intertextual connections. These research paper topics may also focus on how an author has been interpreted or evaluated over time, analyzing the critical reception of their works and examining any changes within literary canonization. Additionally, these topics can explore how literary works intersect with other disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, or economics.

Characteristics of Good Literature Research Paper Topics

Literary research paper topics are usually considered good when they are:

Relevant They should be engaging, thought-provoking, and appropriate to the academic work.
Specific Similarly, good literature research topics must have a narrow focus and not be overly broad.
Interesting They should pique your interest and encourage you to explore and aspire to know more about the literary work.
Challenging Deep analysis, thoughtful reflection, and creative thinking are also vital.
Unique They should be memorable and offer new insights into academic work.

With these important characteristics of literary topics for research papers in mind, you're ready to start writing!

How to Choose a Literature Research Paper Topic?

Choosing a literature research paper topic can be daunting, but with careful thought and planning, you're sure to find the perfect one. In order to do this, you need to complete the following:

Brainstorm: First, start by brainstorming topics that interest you. Think about the works you've been studying, authors and genres you enjoy reading, and themes that have resonated with you.
Narrow it down: Once you've identified a few research topics that intrigue you, narrow them down to one that is most relevant and specific.
Research: Explore if it is relevant. This will guarantee that you have enough material to work with.
Refine: Once you have researched, refine your topic to ensure it is specific and engaging. Consider the most interesting aspects and how they can be explored further.
Choose: Finally, choose the title that best reflects your interests and passions for an enjoyable research experience!

With these tips, you can find the perfect literary research paper topic! Don’t have time for reading piles of books? Get professional help with research paper writing from StudyCrumb and have your study completed by a real pro.

List of Literature Research Paper Topics

A list of literature topics for research offers a wide range of literary-related issues that can be explored and studied for your project. It includes ideas that could spark your creativity and help you choose the best title. Whether you're interested in exploring the works of Shakespeare or examining modern literature, this list of literary research paper topics has something for everyone!

Use of symbolism in romantic poetry.
Importance of technology within cyberpunk genres.
Impact of fantasy on contemporary culture.
Representation of male or female authors as represented by classic literary works.
Postmodernist views of time and space in literature.
Representation of race and ethnicity within contemporary fiction.
Representation of LGBTQ characters in literary works.
The role of mythology during the era of ancient works.
Social media impact on modern texts.
Classic and contemporary literary criticism.

Interesting Literary Research Paper Topics

If you are interested in classic books or modern trends, these ideas can be a fascinating starting point for your project. They include theories, criticism, comparison, and specific authors or genres. Besides providing an analysis of the work, a literary research paper topic could also comprise examining different themes. Explore the following interesting literature topics for your project:

Literary influences of Jane Austen's works.
Symbolism as represented by gothic texts.
Relevance of classic mythology within contemporary fiction.
The role of magic or fantasy in children's literature.
The role of women in Victorian literature.
Representation of race and ethnicity in early 20th-century literature.
Themes of love and loss in romantic poetry.
The use of horror genres in contemporary fiction.
Postcolonialism's impact on literary works.
Nature in 19th-century literature .
Representation of LGBTQ characters as represented by contemporary fiction.
Technology's impact on modern literary works.
Classic and contemporary interpretations of gothic texts.
The role of magic and fantasy in modern literary works.
Representation of death and loss in 20th-century works.

Great Literature Research Paper Topics

A list of great literature research topics provides a variety of ideas related to literary works. These research topics in literature can offer an exciting starting point for your English paper:

Rebellion themes in Shakespeare's tragedies.
Class and economic status in Victorian texts.
Symbolism in romantic poetry.
Impact of British imperialism on literary fiction worldwide.
Gender and sexuality representation in early 20th-century writings.
Postcolonialism in 19th-century fiction.
The literary influence of WWII on modern writings.
Vampires' role in gothic literary texts.
Use of fantasy in childhood writings.
Technology's impact on contemporary literary works.
Race and ethnicity as represented by postmodern fiction.
Religion in romantic poetry.
Themes of love and loss in 20th-century texts.
Horror genres in literary fiction.
Postmodernism's impact on contemporary literary works.

Unique Literature Research Paper Topics

Unique literature topics for research papers can help students explore new concepts and gain a deeper understanding of their subject. Below are rare literature paper topics for you to review:

The role of jealousy in 17th-century literary works.
Gender identity as represented by reformist fiction.
Mythological figures as portrayed by Greek and Roman poetry.
The relationship between gender and power in Shakespeare's plays.
Themes of isolation in 20th-century British poetry.
Metaphors in the works of Gabriel García Márquez .
Themes of rebellion and revolution in African American literary texts.
The role of women in medieval romance literature.
Poverty representation in Victorian novels.
Themes of oppression and freedom in colonial Latin American texts.
Use of metaphor and allegory in Dante's divine comedy.
Influence of industrialization on 19th-century fiction.
Dystopian settings within modern literature.
Religion in contemporary fiction.

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Controversial Literary Research Paper Topics

Controversial literary research topics can provide students with an opportunity to explore complex and sometimes contentious issues related to literary texts. Find below a controversial literary research paper topic for your dream English project!

Racial stereotypes during 19th-century English literature.
Themes of sexuality and desire in ancient Greek poetry.
The relationship between political power and language in Shakespeare's plays.
Conflict representation during 20th-century English fiction.
English role in colonial Indian literature.
Gender and racial representations within African American autobiographies.
Themes of justice and control in Victorian English novels.
Themes of oppression and resistance in feminist texts.
The role of English in modern Japanese fiction.
Themes of identity and belonging in postcolonial Indian literature.
Censorship, free speech, and social responsibility in 19th-century English novels.
Politics and power representations in Latin American poetry.
Gender, race, and class representations in English renaissance drama.
English as a tool for political ideology within the works of George Orwell.
Language used to defy authority during modern fiction writing.

Fresh Literature Research Paper Ideas

Coming up with fresh ideas for literature research topics can be daunting. Students may want to look at the works they have studied or venture outside the traditional reading list and explore different authors and genres. Some literature research paper ideas comprise studying how certain authors influenced the literary movement, analyzing how language has been used throughout history, or examining gender, race, and class representations from a literary text. Here is a perfect list of fresh ideas!

Aesthetics as presented by postmodern fiction.
The theme of loss as portrayed by African authors .
Use of language throughout history.
Identity and belonging representation in contemporary young adult fiction.
The intersection between art and literature in modern poetry.
Themes of authority, rebellion, and revolution in medieval epic poetry.
Role of fantasy in horror fiction.
Gender, race, and class representations within British romanticism.
American literary realism and naturalism.
Influence of symbolism on French modernist poetry.
Construction of memory within African American autobiographies.
Representation of narrative time in Latin American fiction.
Social injustice theme during early 20th-century American drama.
The relationship between social identity and language during postcolonial fiction.
Values and beliefs representations as presented by ancient Greek mythology.

Literature Research Paper Topics for Students

For students looking for research topics in literature for study, there is a wide variety of options available. Depending on the level and course, they might focus on analyzing particular authors, literary movements, or genres, exploring the use of language throughout history, or examining representations of gender, race, and class in books. You also need to study literary devices and their effects on readers when exploring literary topics for a research paper . Below are examples of literature topics for different students:

Literature Research Paper Topics for High School

These are literature topics to research, specifically tailored to high school students. They involve exploring the influence of literary work on culture, analyzing a single author's literary movement or genre, or investigating language use throughout history. This list of research topics in literature for high school provides an original starting point for your literary project!

Racism as presented during early 20th-century works.
Social criticism within contemporary dystopian young adult fiction.
Folklore's impact on contemporary poetry.
Representation of nature in modern literature.
Spirituality as portrayed by reformist literature.
Social class representation within postmodern novels.
The theme of environment in romantic works.
Colonialism representation during postcolonial works.
Effects of pop culture on modern fiction.
Mental illness representation during 19th-century poetry.
The role of music and art in early 20th-century literary texts.
Literature's influence on identity building in minority cultures.
Family dynamics in postmodern poetry.
Family and community representations during gothic fiction.
Literature as a tool for social change.

Literature Research Paper Topics for College Students

These titles entail more serious and in-depth scrutiny than a high school literary paper. A college-level literary research paper topic provides students with a broader range of analysis. It encompasses looking at literature as a form of political commentary to get its relationship with other art forms. Below are literature research paper topics for college students:

Identity construction during postmodern poetry.
Alienation themes within modern fiction.
Gender role representations in Shakespearean tragedies.
The relationship between narrative and memory within Holocaust literature.
Nature's role in contemporary American fiction.
Authority and subversion themes during the early 20th-century drama.
Race, class, and gender representation within African American autobiographies.
Social media influence the literary language.
The relationship between social identity and language in postcolonial fiction.
Values as presented by ancient Greek mythology .
Psychological distress during 20th-century war narratives.
Attitudes towards mental illness as portrayed by gothic texts.
The relationship between science and literary imagination.
Social hierarchy within Victorian novels.
Religion's role in southern American literature.

Literary Research Paper Topics by Categories

Research paper topics for literature by category offer an exclusive and stimulating perspective on literary analysis worldwide. They can be grouped into literary movements, authors, and genres, as well as topics related to language and history. If you are interested in European, American, and English literature topics, these ideas will help you find the perfect literary research paper topic for your project.

World Literature Research Paper Topics

Research paper topics for world literature allow students to explore literary works from any part of the world, including texts written in English, Spanish, and other languages. Below is a list that provides original world literature research topics for any project:

Impact of colonialism on native literary traditions.
Gender representation within French literature.
Religion's role within literary works from Latin America.
Symbolism in English poetry from the 19th century.
Themes of nationalism within modern Russian fiction.
Power and politics in Spanish plays.
Conflict as portrayed by African literature.
The role of folklore within Chinese fiction.
Themes of cultural identity in Japanese drama.
Family ties in Italian poetry.
Symbolism in Arabic literature.
Social class representation in Indian novels.
Impact of globalization on middle eastern fiction.
Human rights themes by contemporary Australian poets.
Western representations of other cultures in modern literature.

American Literature Research Paper Topics

In research paper topics for American literature, you examine the works of early American writers and poets, as well as those from later periods. Here is a list of American literature topics for your paper!

Attitudes towards race in early American novels.
Colonialism during 19th-century poetry.
Freedom and rebellion themes within revolutionary literature.
The emergence of gothic horror in American fiction.
Impact of transcendentalism on American writing.
Gender representation during pre-civil war literature .
Themes of morality in post-World War II American fiction.
Role of religion during 19th-century American novels.
Slavery and its abolition by American poets.
Social class representation during early American drama.
Themes of identity in postmodern American fiction.
Industrialization of 20th-century literature.
War and conflict representation by contemporary American playwrights.
Racism in 20th-century American novels.
Assimilation and immigration themes in post-World War II American literature.

British Literature Research Paper Topics

In British literature research topics, you explore works from early British writers to contemporary authors. Ideally, research topics for British literature should encompass works written by authors from all eras, including Medieval, Renaissance, and modern. Here is a list of English literature research paper topics for your perfect essay!

Gender representation during medieval English literature.
Colonialism's effects on British literary works during the 18th century.
Influence of British writers on modern literature.
The role of nature in 18th-century British novels.
Interpretations of classic British literary works.
Social class representations during 19th-century British fiction.
Themes of love and romance within Victorian literature.
Industrialization's impact on 20th-century British novels.
Patriotism and nationalism during post-World War II literary work.
Multiculturalism representations in postmodern British fiction.
Effects of censorship on British authors during the 20th century.
Mental health representation in modern British poetry.
Representation of historical events in British works throughout time.
Technological representations in 21st-century British Novels.
Intersectionality by contemporary British playwrights.

Did you know that you can generate a bunch of title ideas using our Research Paper Topic Generator ?

European Literary Research Paper Topics

European literature research paper topics offer an excellent opportunity to explore the works of European authors. They allow you to study and analyze the academic traditions and cultures of some of Europe's most influential writers. You can find such literary research paper topic ideas in the list below:

Representations of the European monarchy in classic novels.
Censorship effects on European authors during the 20th century.
Impact of World War II on European authors.
Gender representations within Victorian poetry.
Literary works from different countries and cultures in Europe.
Use of language, symbolism, and imagery to explore themes in European texts.
Themes of nature and environment within German short stories.
Technology representations in late Victorian poetry.
Popular culture's influence on European literary movements from the 20th century to modern times.
Impact of European literary works on people's perceptions of other cultures.
Use of supernatural elements within European gothic writings from the 18th to 19th centuries.
Identity representations in French social realism texts.
Technology's impact on contemporary European literary works.
Family and community representations during post-war theater.
Themes of justice and injustice within European dystopian texts.

Literature Research Paper Ideas by Periods

You may aspire to find literature topics for research papers from different historical periods. This involves studying literature from various cultures or eras, such as ancient, medieval, or modern ones. These ideas also cover the examination of themes and symbols used in writings and scrutinizing characters and their development through various works. Other topics include the exploration of texts from a political perspective in relation to their historical contexts. These ideas contain some literary research topics from various periods:

Ancient Literary Research Paper Topics

There are many exciting options to consider if you're looking for ancient literature research paper topics. They can be studied with regard to history, culture, art, and philosophy. To gain more insight, you could explore the works of Homer, Henry James, Virgil, and the Mahabharata, or old Egyptian writings, such as The Iliad and Odyssey . Below is a list of ancient literature topics for research you can choose from.

Gender representations in epic poetry.
Role of mythology and religion in ancient texts.
Influence of philosophy on ancient literature.
Power representations in Greek tragedy.
Heroism by early epic authors.
Love and marriage in ancient texts.
Ancient narratives of war and conflict.
Slavery representations in Roman poetry.
The role of music and art in classical literature.
Nature representations in ancient texts.
Politics' influence on Greek comedy.
Family and community representations in roman narratives.
Characters' representation in epic poetry.
The role of technology in early literary works.
Representations of the divine in ancient texts.

Read more: History Research Topics for Students

Medieval Literature Research Paper Topics

The medieval literary study provides a unique opportunity to explore literature research topics of the Middle Ages. From Beowulf to The Canterbury Tales , these works offer insights into this era's cultural beliefs and values. Here are such literary topics for research papers to focus on:

Representations of medieval chivalry in literary works.
Religion's influence on medieval works.
Gender representation in medieval texts.
The role of magic in medieval narratives.
The impact of feudalism on medieval texts.
Honor and loyalty representations by chivalric texts.
The role of courtly love in medieval works.
Knights and warriors' representations in literary works.
Warfare representations in medieval texts.
The role of education and learning in medieval literature.

Renaissance Literary Research Paper Topics

The Renaissance literature research paper ideas explore works of literature during the Renaissance era, which spanned from the 14th to the 17th century. They focus on the themes, authors, and literature of this period to provide a better understanding of how literary works have evolved within this timeframe and their impact on our current literature. Some of the most influential figures who contributed immensely to writings during this era were William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. If you are interested in researching this period, you can consider a literature research paper topic from the list below:

Love and romance representations in Renaissance texts.
Science and technology in 16th-century literature.
Class and social status representations in Renaissance literary works.
Classical mythology in Renaissance poetry.
Representations of family and community in Renaissance narratives.
Effects of humanism on Renaissance literature in Europe.
Imagery role by William Shakespeare .
Representations of art, music, and theater in Renaissance texts.
Politics' role in 16th-century literary texts.
Nature representation by John Milton or Torquato Tasso.
Exploration influence on Renaissance narratives.
Influence of Renaissance literature on modern writing.
Women's representation in literary texts by Anne Bradstreet or Aphra Behn.
Magic and supernatural representations in literary works of Renaissance.
Humanism and individualism themes within Renaissance literature.

Romantic Literature Research Paper Ideas

Romantic literature emerged during the late 18th century and flourished throughout the early 19th century in Europe. It is characterized by its focus on emotion and depictions of nature. This movement had a lasting impact on literary works and has been highly influential. Research topics in literature can explore the writings of authors such as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth. Here are some ideas related to romanticism:

Nature representations in Romantic texts.
The role of emotion as depicted in 19th-century literature.
Influence of Romantic authors on modern literature and culture.
Women's representation in Romantic narratives.
Industrialization impact on 19th-century texts.
Influence of religion and superstition in early Romantic texts.
Use of technology to discuss themes in Romantic texts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The role of education as portrayed by Romantic narratives.
Character analysis and plot structure in gothic fiction.
Nationalism and patriotism as represented by post-Napoleonic war poems.

Modernist Literary Research Paper Topics

Modern literature emerged during the early 20th century until the end of World War II. It is characterized by a rejection of traditional conventions and focused on experimentation with form. This movement had an unprecedented impact on literature research topics and is highly influential today. If you are looking for literary topics for research papers that focus on modernism, consider exploring the following:

Nature representations by modern texts.
Social inequality in 21st-century novels.
Modernism's influence on current literature and culture.
Climate change within contemporary fiction.
Impact of social injustice on 20th-century literary works.
Urbanization representations by modern literary texts.
Education's influence on modernist narratives.
Wealth and power in early modernist texts.
Themes of urban life by Ezra Pound or Wallace Stevens.
Modernism's impact on classical literature.
Globalization themes within postmodern poetry.
Multiculturalism themes in contemporary literary works.
Mental health representations in modern British novels.
Global conflict representation in modern fiction.
The influence of psychoanalysis on modernist literature.

Current Literature Research Paper Ideas

Current literature paper topics can look at the latest trends. They include exploring contemporary works such as Harry Potter by J.K Rowling and Stardust by Neil Gaiman. These topics may also involve analyzing social media's effects on literary writings. If you are looking for current literary topics for a research paper, consider the following:

Technological impact on literary works in the 21st century.
Art, music, and theater in modern texts.
Impact of conflict on recent literary works.
Social injustice in 21st-century narratives.
Racism, ethnicity, and slavery in contemporary texts.
Wealth and power in recent literary works.
Globalization themes in postmodern poetry.
Urbanization in modern writings.
Immigration within postmodern British novels.

In case you need more paper topics, feel free to browse our blog. We have a wide arsenal of ideas starting from philosophy research paper topics to education research paper topics .

Bottom Line on Literature Research Paper Topics

Literature topics for research can explore a wide range of themes and works. Whether you are looking for visionary ideas about poetry, fiction, or books from different eras, there is no shortage of literature paper topics to choose from. To narrow down your focus and find the best idea for your project, consider researching literary movements, reading widely, and thinking about the areas that interest you most. Literature topics for research papers should be chosen based on students' interests and areas of expertise. By conducting in-depth research, you will gain a greater appreciation for literary work and its impact on society. With this article as a guide, you can take the time to find a topic that speaks to you and create an engaging research paper.

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100 Best Literary Research Topics – Fresh Perspectives on Literature Pieces

Selecting the right literature topics for a research paper work can be challenging due to the wealth of literary works and themes available. To find the perfect topic, focus on your personal character interests, the scope of your assignment, and the availability of resources or requirements of American universities. Reflect on the literary periods, authors, or themes that captivate you, and investigate potential questions or ideas related to them. Seeking guidance from your instructor or peers can also be beneficial, as can browsing academic journals, literary critiques, or scholarly databases to discover trending literature research paper topics or ongoing debates in the literary and cultural field.

How to Understand If a Topic Is Good?

Choose literary topics for research paper works that genuinely interest you ensure there is a sufficient amount of primary and secondary sources, and contribute to the existing body of knowledge. You need to determine if literary research topics in history are suitable for your literary research paper, consider the factors: interest and engagement with the literary research topic, the scope and maintenance of the subject.

Test it with an Outline

You need to create a preliminary outline for your paper, organizing your ideas and potential arguments logically. Together with our research paper writing service , you gain the success results. In another way, you can concentrate on the text`s main points and reveal the literary research topics intricacy, pertinence, and scope.

Write a Thesis Statement

Craft a premise statement that encapsulates your central argument and offers a fresh perspective on your chosen literature research paper ideas to ensure it is neither overly broad. An effective premise statement should be clear, concise, and debatable, sparking further discussion and analysis, and if you feel troubled with managing this task our website writes for you any essay .

List of Literature Research Topics

When choosing literary research topics, consider exploring various spheres of interest that offer diverse subjects for examination. For instance, focus on the works of specific authors, the characteristics of a particular literary period, or the themes and poetry that recur across different eras. Delve into the representation of historical and social issues in literary research topics, such as gender roles, race, or mental health, and investigate how to make the list of the best research paper topics . By examining American literature research topics, you can find literature topics for research that resonates with your interests and contributes to the existing body of literary knowledge. Additionally, you may explore genres like science fiction or magical poetry, examining their impact on society and culture. Investigating the relationship between literature and other disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, or history, can also yield fascinating American or British lit research paper topics.

British Literature Research Paper Topics

You can investigate captivating elements of literary research paper topics through an array of research work topics. By scrutinizing distinct themes, genres, and historical eras, you can profoundly comprehend the multifaceted and diverse landscape of English literary research subjects and their impact on American authors. This exploration allows you to broaden your knowledge, develop critical thinking skills, and foster a genuine appreciation for the creative and intellectual contributions within the field of English literature research topics.

Gender Roles in Shakespeare’s Plays.
Power Representation in Jane Austen’s Novels.
Love and Marriage in John Donne’s Poetry.
Gothic literature’s influence on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Imperialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Symbolism in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Nature’s Role in William Wordsworth’s Poetry.
Social Class in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
Supernatural Elements in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
World War I’s Impact on Early 20th-Century Literature.

American Literature Topics

From iconic novels to influential authors, these literary research topics encompass the essence of American identity, history, and culture. Unravel the complexities of this vast literary landscape as you delve into themes of race, ethnicity, the American Dream, and more, uncovering the unique perspectives and voices that have shaped and defined American literature throughout the centuries.

The American Identity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
The American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
The American Symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
Race and ethnicity in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain.
The American Slavery in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Road Trip in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
Magical Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The American Civil Rights Movement’s Impact on 1960s American Literature.
The American Religion in Flannery O’Connor’s works.
The American West in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

Science Fiction Literary Research Essay Topics

With these topics, you can delve into a myriad of literary research topics that explore the depths of futuristic societies, alternate realities, and advanced technology. Unearth the themes, symbolism, and socio-political commentary embedded within these stories, fostering a deeper appreciation for the power and allure of sci-fi literary research topics.

Artificial Intelligence in Asimov’s “I, Robot” and Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Dystopia in Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
Alienation in Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle.”
Time Travel in Wells’ “The Time Machine” and L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”
Genetic Engineering in Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake.”
Environmentalism in Herbert’s “Dune” and Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.”
Virtual Reality in Gibson’s “Neuromancer” and Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.”
Post-apocalyptic settings in McCarthy’s “The Road” and Mandel’s “Station Eleven.”
Identity in Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” and Delany’s “Dhalgren.”
Extraterrestrial Life in Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Lem’s “Solaris.”

High School Literary Research Essay Topics

These subjects should be carefully selected for their relevance and appeal, they provide the perfect foundation for developing critical thinking, analytical skills, and a love for literature. Discover thought-provoking issues relevant to high school readers with these high school literary research topics. By delving into contemporary literary research topics that resonate with teenage audiences, you can foster a greater appreciation for literature and its impact on young minds.

Mental Illness in Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Plath’s “The Bell Jar.”
Symbolism in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” and its relevance today.
Identity and Self-Discovery in Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and Walker’s “The Color Purple.”
Racism and inequality in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
Nature and Symbolism in Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” and Frost’s works.
Isolation and Loneliness in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
Gender Roles in Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and Chopin’s “The Awakening.”
Magical Realism in Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Allende’s “The House of the Spirits.”
War and its effects in Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” and Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
The American Dream in Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

Modernist Literature Research Paper Topics

Discover interesting literature topics of self-discovery, rebellion, and experimental styles that resonate with teenagers, while gaining an understanding of the cultural and historical influences that fuelled this revolutionary movement. Fell the groundbreaking literary movements in these modernist research topics in literature and chose the best one for you.

Fragmentation in Modernist Literature: Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Modernist Literature and Trauma: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
World War I’s Influence on Modernist Literature: Owen’s Works and Ford’s Parade’s End.
Time in Modernist Literature: Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
Women’s Role in Modernist Literature: Barnes’ Nightwood and Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
Identity in Modernist Literature: Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Stream of Consciousness in Modernist Literature: Mansfield’s “Bliss” and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
Modernist Literature and the City: Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” and Eliot’s “Preludes.”
Modernist Literature and the Movement: Pound’s The Cantos and H.D.’s Trilogy.
The “Lost Generation” in Modernist Literature: Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Renaissance Literature Research Paper Topics

The era, characterized by a remarkable resurgence in culture, art, and intellectual pursuits, has impacted the trajectory of human civilization. Uncover the rich tapestry of the revival literary research topics for your literary research paper.

Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Women in Twelfth Night and the Duchess of Malfi
Humanism in Utopia and Petrarch’s Sonnets
Fate in Romeo and Juliet and Doctor Faustus
Courtly Love in the Faerie Queene and Astrophil and Stella
Classical Themes in Julius Caesar and Dido, Queen of Carthage
Reformation in Paradise Lost and the Temple
Power in Macbeth and The Revenger’s Tragedy
Revival Influence on Hamlet and the Spanish Tragedy
Kingship between Richard II and Edward II

Controversial Literature Research Paper Topics

Debate and analyze character issues in literature with these controversial literature literary research topics. These subjects allow you to explore literary research topics, ethical dilemmas, and social commentaries within literary works, providing an opportunity for intellectual growth and open dialogue.

Mental Illness Portrayal in Literature: Helpful or Harmful?
Cultural Appropriation in Literature Ethics.
Racial Slurs Use in Literature Controversy.
Trigger Warnings in Literature and Free Speech Impact.
Censorship Effects on Literature and Society.
Authorial Intent Ethics in Literary Interpretation.
Sexuality Representation in Literature Controversy.
Violence against Women’s Portrayal in Literature and Society’s Impact.
Cancel Culture’s Impact on Literature and Publishing.
Literary Classics Value Debate in Modern Society.

World Literature Research Topics

Embark on a literary journey around the globe with these World literary research topics.

War Depiction in Global Literature
Novel Evolution in Different Cultures
Immigration and Diaspora in Literature
Love and Relationships in Global Literature
Colonialism’s Impact on Global Literature
Mythology in Global Literature
Cultural Identity in International Literature
Political Oppression and Resistance Themes
Eastern Philosophy’s Influence on Western Literature
Spirituality and Religion in Global Literature

Literature Research Paper Topics for Students

These literary research topics are designed to challenge students’ critical thinking and analytical skills while fostering a deeper appreciation for literature.

Technology’s Impact on Contemporary Literature.
LGBTQ+ Community Portrayal in Literature.
Mental Health Representation in Young Adult Literature.
Feminism’s Role in Shaping Contemporary Literature.
Globalization’s Impact on Literature and Culture.
Social Justice and Activism Themes in Modern Literature.
Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary Literature.
Postmodernism’s Influence on Contemporary Literature.
Environment and Climate Change Representation in Literature.
Science Fiction’s Role in Reflecting and Shaping Contemporary Society.

Modern Literature Research Paper Topics

Analyze the intricacies of modern literary research topics masterpieces for university students.

Magic Realism in Garcia Marquez’s Works
Morrison and Baldwin’s Literary Techniques
Feminism in Alice Munro’s Short Stories
Postmodernism in Don Delillo’s Novels
Mental Illness in the Bell Jar and the Yellow Wallpaper
Identity in Adichie and Lahiri’s Works
Colonialism’s Impact on Achebe and Ngugi WA Thiong’O
Stream of Consciousness in Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses
Masculinity in Hemingway’s Novels
Memory Role in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novels

Ancient Literature Research Topics

Delve into the origins of storytelling and literary research topics for your literary research paper. These literary research topics will allow you to investigate various themes, genres, and styles across different time periods, ultimately enhancing your appreciation for the transformative power of storytelling.

Women in Greek Tragedies
Mythology in Homer & Virgil Epic
Poetry: Greece vs Rome
Prophecy in Greek Tragedies
Fate in Oedipus Rex & Macbeth
Dreams in Egyptian Literature
Gods in Mesopotamian Literature
Love Poetry: India & China
Oral Tradition in African Literature
Karma in Mahabharata

In conclusion, selecting literary research topics is an essential step in the writing process, as it sets the foundation for your entire paper. Explore various subjects within English, American, or global literature, and consider literary research topics such as gender roles, power representation, or the impact of historical events on literature discuss. Remember to choose literary research topics that genuinely interest you, as this will make the literature discussion and writing process more enjoyable and engaging. Test your literary research topics with an outline and a premise statement to ensure it is focused, specific, and manageable.

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Literature Topics and Research

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This handout provides examples and description about writing papers in literature. It discusses research topics, how to begin to research, how to use information, and formatting.

What kinds of topics are good ones?

The best topics are ones that originate out of your own reading of a work of literature, but here are some common approaches to consider:

A discussion of a work's characters: are they realistic, symbolic, historically-based?
A comparison/contrast of the choices different authors or characters make in a work
A reading of a work based on an outside philosophical perspective (Ex. how would a Freudian read Hamlet ?)
A study of the sources or historical events that occasioned a particular work (Ex. comparing G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion with the original Greek myth of Pygmalion)
An analysis of a specific image occurring in several works (Ex. the use of moon imagery in certain plays, poems, novels)
A "deconstruction" of a particular work (Ex. unfolding an underlying racist worldview in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness )
A reading from a political perspective (Ex. how would a Marxist read William Blake's "London"?)
A study of the social, political, or economic context in which a work was written — how does the context influence the work?

How do I start research?

Once you have decided on an interesting topic and work (or works), the best place to start is probably the Internet. Here you can usually find basic biographical data on authors, brief summaries of works, possibly some rudimentary analyses, and even bibliographies of sources related to your topic.

The Internet, however, rarely offers serious direct scholarship; you will have to use sources found in the library, sources like journal articles and scholarly books, to get information that you can use to build your own scholarship-your literary paper. Consult the library's on-line catalog and the MLA Periodical Index. Avoid citing dictionary or encyclopedic sources in your final paper.

How do I use the information I find?

The secondary sources you find are only to be used as an aid. Your thoughts should make up most of the essay. As you develop your thesis, you will bring in the ideas of the scholars to back up what you have already said.

For example, say you are arguing that Huck Finn is a Christ figure ; that's your basic thesis. You give evidence from the novel that allows this reading, and then, at the right place, you might say the following, a paraphrase:

According to Susan Thomas, Huck sacrifices himself because he wants to set Jim free (129).

If the scholar states an important idea in a memorable way, use a direct quote.

"Huck's altruism and feelings of compassion for Jim force him to surrender to the danger" (Thomas 129).

Either way, you will then link that idea to your thesis.

275 Good Literature Research Paper Topics & Ideas

18 January 2024

last updated

Literature research paper topics span a vast range of themes, diving deep Into diverse cultural expressions of humanity encapsulated in texts. They may include examining the role of gender, race, or class in seminal works, deconstructing narrative strategies used by specific literature authors, or probing historical and social contexts that influenced particular literary movements. Comparative literature studies offer fascinating insights by contrasting different authors, periods, or cultures. Literary theories, like postmodernism, feminism, or post-colonialism, provide additional lenses to interpret texts critically. On a more granular level, an analysis of symbols, motifs, or character development in a single literature work can yield rich discussions. The impact of digital media on literature is another progressive angle. With the vast scope and depth, literature research paper topics invite the exploration of multi-faceted dimensions.

Simple Literature Research Paper Topics

Love Themes in “Romeo and Juliet”
“Pride and Prejudice”: A Study of Class Differences
Symbolism in Classics: “The Old Man and the Sea”
Epistolary Style in “Dracula”: Advantages and Limitations
Human Nature in “Lord of the Flies”
Nature Imagery in Wordsworth’s Poetry
Dualism in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
Portrayal of Women in “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Morality in “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Shakespeare’s Use of Soliloquy in “Hamlet”
Dystopian Elements in “1984”
Heroism in “Beowulf”: An Analysis
Innocence and Experience in Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”
Significance of Dreams in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
Children’s Perspective in “The Secret Garden”
Comparing Bronte Sisters: Themes in “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”
Post-War Reality in “The Catcher in the Rye”
Survival and Humanity in “The Road”
Animal Imagery in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”

Interesting Literature Research Paper Topics

Dystopian Projections in Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”
Magical Elements in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”
Challenging Class Systems in Dickens’s “Great Expectations”
Existential Concerns in Kafka’s “The Trial”
Depicting Childhood Trauma in Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”
Exploitation Themes in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”
Steinbeck’s Critique of Capitalism in “Grapes of Wrath”
Illusion and Reality in Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Cultural Collision in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
Decoding Ecofeminism in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Prodigal Summer”
The Symbolism of the Mississippi River in Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
Questioning Morality in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”
Loss and Regret in Ian McEwan’s “Atonement”
Feminist Undertones in Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”
Violence and Rebellion in Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange”
Exploring Oppression in George Orwell’s “1984”
Unveiling Transcendentalism in Thoreau’s “Walden”
Interpreting Paradox in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”
Understanding Antiheroes in Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho”
Power Dynamics in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”

Literature Research Topics for High School

Tracing Gothic Themes in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
Unmasking Symbolism: Interpreting Imagery in “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Exploring the Concept of Heroism in J.R.R Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”
Feminist Perspectives in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”
Satirical Elements in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
Dystopian Societies: A Comparative Study of George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
Postmodernist Techniques in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”
Southern Gothic and Memory in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
Cultural Displacement and Identity in Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club”
Manifestations of the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Interpretation of Dreams and Reality in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”
Analysis of Autobiographical Elements in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
Divergent Perspectives of Time in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”
Intersection of Art and Life in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
Native American Mythology in Louise Erdrich’s “Tracks”
Human Morality and Ethics in Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”
Parallels Between War and Chess in Stefan Zweig’s “The Royal Game”
Cross-Cultural Relationships in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”
Stream of Consciousness Technique in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”
Understanding Death Through Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Literature Research Topics for College Students

Examination of Heroic Archetypes in Homer’s “Odyssey”
Exploring Cultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”
Decoding Magical Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
Inquiries Into the Absurd in Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”
Dissection of Class Conflict in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times”
Understanding Transcendentalism through Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays
Manifestations of Fate and Destiny in Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”
Delineation of Feminine Strength in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”
Satire as a Societal Mirror in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”
Unveiling Symbolism in Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Assessment of Postmodern Elements in Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49”
Dissecting Racism in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Extrapolating Environmental Themes from Ernest Callenbach’s “Ecotopia”
Demystifying Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”
Journey Motif in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”
Analyzing Dual Personalities in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
Tragic Love in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”
Portraying Madness in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Uncovering Utopian Ideas in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”

Literature Research Topics for University

Decoding Stream of Consciousness Technique in Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse”
Assessment of Existentialism in Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea”
Deconstruction of Racism in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
Investigating Trauma in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”
Dissection of Consumerism in Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho”
Examining Gender Norms in Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”
Inquiry Into Surrealism in Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore”
Tracing Familial Ties in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
Interrogating Nihilism in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”
Exploration of Spirituality in Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha”
Deconstructing Masculinity in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”
Deciphering Nature Imagery in William Wordsworth’s Poetry
Delineation of Social Status in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence”
Analysis of Post-Colonial Themes in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
Investigation of War Commentary in Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”
Exploration of Existential Crisis in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
Dissecting Rebellion in George Orwell’s “1984”
Examination of Love and Loss in John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars”
Tragic Themes in Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”
Unveiling Modernism in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”

Literature Research Topics for Master’s and Ph.D.

Cultural Displacement Analysis in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”
Nietzschean Perspectives in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”
Autobiographical Influence in Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”
Subversion of Gender Norms in Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”
Psychoanalytic Reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories
Investigation Into Metafiction in Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler”
Identity Negotiations in James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
Sartrean Existentialism in Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”
Deconstruction of Colonial Narratives in J.M Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians”
Utopian Idealism in Thomas More’s “Utopia”
Questioning Morality in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”
Feminist Readings of Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”
Analysis of Symbolism in William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury”
Investigation of Absurdism in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”
Dissecting Magical Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
Tracing Mythological Allusions in Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”
Comparative Study of Tragic Heroes in Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Exploration of Trauma in Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”
Conceptions of the Self in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”
Analyzing Paradox in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”

English Literature Research Paper Topics

Cultural Criticism in Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”
Deconstructionist Readings of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
Analyzing Gender Dynamics in Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”
Colonial Discourse in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
Comparative Study: Shakespeare’s Comedies vs. Tragedies
Psychoanalytical Interpretation of Characters in D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers”
Religious Allusions in George Herbert’s Poetry
Depiction of Victorian Society in Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”
Exploration of Feminist Themes in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”
Romanticism and the Sublime in William Wordsworth’s Poetry
Subversion of Gothic Conventions in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
Satirical Elements in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”
Examining Narrative Structure in Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”
Critiquing Imperialism in Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”
Identity Politics in Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”
Analyzing Trauma in Pat Barker’s “Regeneration”
Metaphysical Elements in John Donne’s Poetry
Modernism and Stream of Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”
Inquiry Into Postmodernism in Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”

World Literature Research Paper Topics

Comparative Analysis of Magical Realism in Gabriel García Márquez’s Work “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”
The Interplay of Irony and Satire in Voltaire’s “Candide”: An In-Depth Study
Existentialism in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: A Philosophical Inquiry
Politics of Gender in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
Power of Storytelling in “Arabian Nights”: A Narrative Examination
Tragic Elements in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”: A Dramatic Analysis
Influence of Historical Context in Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”
Modernist Themes in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: An In-Depth Analysis
Postcolonial Perspectives in J. M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace”
Examination of Symbolism in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
Unraveling Surrealism in Federico García Lorca’s “Blood Wedding”
Quest for Identity in Wole Soyinka’s “Death and the King’s Horseman”
Peculiarities of Bildungsroman in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”
Melodrama and Sentimentality in Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”
Postmodern Techniques in Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”
Religious Motifs in Yukio Mishima’s “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”
Deconstruction of the Hero Archetype in “Beowulf”: An Analytical Study
Decoding Mythology in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”
Gothic Elements in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”: A Comprehensive Analysis
Semiotics of War in “The Iliad” by Homer: A Deeper Look

American Literature Research Paper Topics

Symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”: A Deeper Understanding
Modernist Elements in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Decoding the Racial Landscape in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
Examination of the Feminine Voice in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”
Nature and Wilderness in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”: A Thorough Analysis
Existential Themes in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”
Gothic Tropes in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories: An Analytical Approach
Subversion of Romantic Ideals in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”
Postmodern Experimentation in Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49”
Humanism and Individualism in Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”: A Comprehensive Study
Interrogating Social Issues in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”
Absurdity and Alienation in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”
Motifs of Feminism in Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”
Unraveling Magical Realism in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
Tracing Violence and American Dream in Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”
Discourses of Power in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”
Investigating Racism and Injustice in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Exploration of Gender and Class in Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth”
Southern Gothic Elements in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”

Early American Literature Research Paper Topics

Revisiting Puritan Ideology in John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”
Interrogating Witchcraft in Cotton Mather’s “Wonders of the Invisible World”
Colonial Discourse in John Smith’s “A Description of New England”
Unearthing Abolitionist Rhetoric in Phillis Wheatley’s “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral”
Narrative Structures in Mary Rowlandson’s “The Sovereignty and Goodness of God”
The Dichotomy of Faith and Reason in Jonathan Edwards’ Work “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Tales of Captivity: An Analysis of Olaudah Equiano’s “The Interesting Narrative”
Puritan Ethics in Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband”
Exploration of Moralism and Feminism in “Charlotte Temple” by Susanna Rowson
Sentimentality and Revolution in Hannah Webster Foster’s “The Coquette”
Mourning and Memorial in Edward Taylor’s “Preparatory Meditations”
Decoding the Political in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”
Unraveling Utopia in Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”
Intersections of Religion and Ecology in William Bartram’s “Travels”
Slavery and Autobiography in “The History of Mary Prince”
Examining Native Representation in James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans”
Investigation of Transcendentalism in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
Deconstruction of Gothic in Charles Brockden Brown’s “Wieland”
Manifest Destiny and Conquest in Washington Irving’s “A Tour on the Prairies”
The Interplay of Autobiography and Identity in Benjamin Franklin’s “The Autobiography”

Modernist Literature Research Paper Topics

Stream of Consciousness Portrayal in Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”
Decoding Symbolism in T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
Mythical Allusions in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”
Questioning Identity in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”
Exploration of Absurdism in Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”
Unraveling Dystopia in George Orwell’s “1984”
War Imagery in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”
Discourses of Power in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
Interrogating Alienation in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
Confronting Colonialism in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
Critique of Consumerism in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
Religious Symbolism in William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying”
Time and Memory in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”
Revisiting Surrealism in André Breton’s “Manifestoes of Surrealism”
Constructing Feminine Voice in Djuna Barnes’ “Nightwood”
Melancholia and Desire in Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”
Tracing Revolution in John Dos Passos’ “The 42nd Parallel”
Racial Tensions in Richard Wright’s “Native Son”
Examination of Silence in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”

Renaissance Literature Research Paper Topics

Interrogating Love in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”
Humanism in Thomas More’s “Utopia”
Religious Symbolism in John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets”
Examining Power in Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus”
Quest for Knowledge in Francis Bacon’s “The Advancement of Learning”
Nature and Desire in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”
Comparative Analysis of Metaphysical Poetry: John Donne and George Herbert
Petrarchan Influence in Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”
Tragedy and Revenge in Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy”
Decoding Allegory in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”
Courtly Love in Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur”
Exploration of Colonial Discourse in Richard Hakluyt’s “The Principal Navigations”
Interrogating Femininity in Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko”
Carnival and Power in Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel”
Satirical Elements in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
Renaissance Humanism in Pico della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man”
Political Machinations in Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The Prince”
Deciphering Madness in Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy”
Rhetoric and Persuasion in Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan”
Imagery and Metaphor in Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella”

Literature Review Research Paper Topics

Synthesis of Feminism in Contemporary Women’s Literature
Historical Contexts of Postcolonial Literature: A Critical Examination
Deconstruction in Postmodern Literature: A Comprehensive Analysis
Comparative Review of Magical Realism in Latin American Literature
Understanding Trauma Narratives in Holocaust Literature
Unveiling Dystopia in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
Identity Politics in Post-Apartheid South African Literature
Power Dynamics in Dystopian Science Fiction Literature
Dialogues of Ecocriticism in Environmental Literature
Subversion of Narrative Structures in Experimental Literature
Poe’s Gothic Tradition: An Analysis Across Multiple Works
Discourse of Mental Illness in Modernist Literature
Comparative Analysis of Existentialism in European Literature
Review of Cyberpunk Tropes in Contemporary Literature
Revisiting Chivalry in Medieval Arthurian Literature
Metamodernism in 21 st -Century Literature: A Critical Review
Investigation of Spiritualism in Transcendentalist Literature
Tracking Satire in 18 th -Century British Literature
Review of Queer Themes in LGBT+ Literature
Understanding Cultural Hybridity in Diasporic Literature

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314 education research paper topics & special ideas, 256 lgbtq+ research topics & paper ideas.

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How To Choose The Literary Topic For An Essay

There are several ways on how to pick up an idea for a successful academic paper. Feel free to choose the most fitting alternative from the list below.

Select a literature style as a topic for your paper. This is one of the most common ways to pick up an idea for your essay. You will need to determine the basic features of a chosen literature style, choose the masterpieces you are going to describe, and classify the literature works. However, it might be a bit difficult since there are many controversial literature examples that are not easy to analyze.
Choose an author as a topic for your academic paper. This way, you will describe the main ideas, concepts, and innovations created by a particular writer, as well as the impact of this personality on literature as a whole. Still, avoid turning your research paper into a biography.
Pick up a certain book as an essay topic. It is a good idea but it might appear to be difficult to add something new to the chosen field.

Literature Topics For Research Papers: Women In Literature

The role of women in society has been changing over time. The topics below will help you understand the basic issues a common woman faced in different centuries, as well as discover the most impressive literature masterpieces created by female writers.

The Aged Mother: Criticism Essay
The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin: Response Paper
La Estrategia De Chochueca by Rita Indiana Hernández: The Summary
Women And Children In Modern Literature
The Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
Charlotte Bronte And Her Role In The World History
J.K.Rowling As A Bright Example Of A Successful Female Writer
Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird Summary
The Stories Of Virginia Woolf
Inspiring Female Writers And The Lessons They Teach Us
Gender Roles In Literature

The World Literature Research Paper Topics

There is nothing new that world literature research topics remain popular among students for years. These topics allow you to improve the knowledge of the global trends in literature, discover the masterpieces of the world literature, and understand the cultural processes in various countries in different centuries.

Barn Burning By William Faulkner: Loyalty And Blood Themes
Cliches In The Modern Literature
Critical Issues In Literature
The Social Issues In The Literature Of 20th Century
Modern Trends In Literature
The Difference Of Literature In Various Countries
The Influence Of Literature On The Society
Masterpieces In The Literature Of 18th Century
Masterpieces In The Literature Of 19h Century
Masterpieces In The Literature Of 20th Century
Reading Literature As A Modern Way Of Self-education
Greek Mythology And Its Role In The World Literature
The Impact Of Literature On Modern Culture
Literature Periods
The Role Of Comedies In The World Literature
The Role Of Tragedies In The World Literature
Psychological Trends In World Literature
Politics In The World Literature
Romance In Literature

The Best Literary Analysis Essay Topics

Literary analysis is one of the most common solutions for choosing easy-to-write research paper topics. The fact is that analysis is one of the inevitable steps of understanding the basic concepts of literature. Therefore, the analysis topics might become a perfect option for beginners in the world of literature. Moreover, you don’t need to be exceptionally creative when composing essays on analysis.

Car Crash While Hitchhiking: The Analysis Of The Literary Fiction Story
The Ethics Of Belief by Clifford: An Advanced Summary And Analysis
The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara: Analysis And Summary
An Advanced Analysis Of Tree And Culinary Lesson
Mcwp 6-11 Leading Marines: The Analysis
My Native Land, My Home by Claude Mckay: In-Depth Analysis
Analysis Of Salvation By Langston Hughes
Preventive Corrective And Detective Controls
A Black Man Talks Of Reaping Analysis
Servant Leadership And Diverse Context
The Impact Of Literature Nowadays

Satire Topics Ideas For A Successful Essay

Satire has been the main trend in literature for years. But how did it change over time? What is the difference between satire and irony? What are the satire’s basic features? Writing an essay on these topics might be an excellent idea.

Ancient And Modern Satire
Trends In The Modern Satire
Literature Techniques In Writing Satire
Satires Of Rome
Satires Of Ancient Greece
Satire In Political Poems
Satire And Comedy: Common Features And Differences
English Satire
Satire In The 18th Century
Satire In The 19th Century
Shakespeare's Satire
World Famous Satirists
The Difference Between Anecdotes And Satire
The Motivation Of Satirists
Satire And History
Satire And Irony: The Main Differences
Humor And Satire In The Modern Literature
The Origins Of Satire
Radicalism And Satire
Black Humor And Satire

Controversial Topics In Literature Of All Times

In case you are looking for something contradictory to write about, the controversial literary research paper topic might be a nice option for your needs. The conflict of generations, formalism, and Franz Kafka are no longer the only alternatives to write about.

Is Modern Youth More Self Centred Than The Other Generations
Common Theme Between Xla And Faat Kine
Franz Kafka And His Role In The Literature
Formalism In Literature
Structuralism In Literature
The Parents And Children In Literature
Documentary In Literature
War And Peace Topics
The Role Of Family In The Modern Literature
The Conflict Of Generations

Western Literature Topics For A Brilliant Research Paper

Western literature holds a special place in the history of world literature. Wars, conflicts, riots, totalitarianism, technical progress, and other topics are all common for western literature.

Witches Loaves By O'Henry: The Lessons The Story Teach Us
Ernest Hemingway And The “Lost Generation”
Mark Twain And His Most Brilliant Characters
Welsh Literature
Latin American Literature Masterpieces
Oscar Wilde And His Impact On Literature
Trends In Celtic Literature
Trends In Icelandic Literature
American Dream In Literature
Death In Western Literature
Identity In Literature
Imperialism In Literature
Race Issues In Literature
Travel In Western Literature
Utopian Literature

Most Popular European Literature Topics

The literature of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages has lots of masterpieces many students admire. The development of the culture can be also easily studied by creating an essay on the European literature research paper topic.

The Use Of Setting And Atmosphere In Dracula By B Stoker
Theme Of Power In Othello By William Shakespeare
French Literature
German Literature
Spanish Literature
Finnish Modern Literature
Danish Modern Literature
Polish Modern Literature
Latvian Modern Literature
Renaissance Literature
Medieval Literature
Realism And Symbolism Trends
Political Poems And The Role In The World History
Postmodernism Trends
Latin Literature Trends
The literature of the 17th century

Eastern Literature Research Paper Topics For Diligent College Students

Eastern literature covers lots of periods and countries. You can write about Japan, China, Egypt, Ancient East, or Mesopotamia, as well as explore the cultural trends in different countries.

Turkish Literature
Arabic Literature
Sanskrit Literature
Famous Arabic Poets
Persian Literature
The Main Trends In Modern Chinese Literature
The Main Trends In Modern Japanese Literature
Confucianism
Famous Chinese Fiction
The Topic Of Death In Eastern Literature
The Topic Of Honor In The Eastern Literature
The Issues In The Eastern Literature
Saint Pachomius
Khalil Gibran
Anthony Of Egypt
Philosophy In Ancient Chinese Literature
Metaphor In Japanese Literature
Masculinity In Arab Literature
War In Persian Literature
Wisdom In Eastern Literature

How To Create A Brilliant Paper On Literature Topic

Choosing a suitable and easy-to-write topic for your essay is only half of the job you need to do. The most challenging thing is to create a concise, precise, fresh, and understandable academic paper with no mistakes. So, here is what you need to do to get the highest score for your essay:

Create an attractive and catchy introduction
Pick up the most interesting ideas for your paper
Create an outline
Point out the most important facts in the body of your essay
Choose only reliable and up-to-date sources
Create a paper in a proper voice and tone
Complete the paper with a fitting conclusion
Make your paper look solid
Avoid any grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, as well as typos
Use proper formatting

As far as you can see, creating a successful paper is not as easy as it might seem from first glance. In case you feel this task is unaffordable for you, you can get professional help with creating a winning academic paper according to your needs for a reasonable cost. Buying an essay is as simple as 1-2-3, while the entire job of creating an academic paper will be done by professional writers.

REFERENCES:

Research tips for students
Basic facts about literature
The literature of ancient China
The literature of ancient Rome
Shakespeare's Life and World
The benefits of reading literature
Classic literature study guides

200 Compelling Literary Research Paper Topics to Explore

Literary research holds the key to unlocking the power of knowledge and education. But what makes a research paper truly impactful? It all starts with selecting a fascinating topic. This blog post presents 300 handpicked Literary research paper topics that will ignite your scholarly pursuits. From cutting-edge trends to unexplored territories, these topics promise to fuel your intellectual curiosity and make you write like a professional writing services provider. So, let’s get started!

Table of Contents

Comprehensive Lists of Impressive Literary Research Paper Topics

Be it anything you want to research related to Literary, our comprehensive lists of topics have you covered. So, without further ado, let’s begin with our first list.

American Literature Topics for Research

Picking up a topic from this list will allow you to uncover hidden narratives, analyze iconic works, and more. Here you go with the list.

A Study of Domestic Gothic and postwar architectural culture in Shirley Jackson’s House Trilogy
Anti-racism Resistance in American Literature
Political and ideological agendas are reflected in American Literature
American Literature from a feminist point of View
Leonard Cohen’s Psalms or the demons of Tradition: the Book of Mercy and the Psalms of Leonard Cohen
An Overview of Spanish Literature Written in the United States
Correlations and contrasts between postmodernism and American Literature: A study of their relationship
Poetic Hybridity in American Poetry: existing and Resisting through Its Hybridity
Bram Stoker’s Dracula depicts vampires in what can be considered a realistic fashion
Comparison between Stephanie Meyer’s vampires vs. L.J. Smith’s vampires
How Bram Stoker’s Dracula differs from William Polidori’s The Vampire
Anne Rice vs. Stephanie Meyers: Different Approaches to writing supernatural Literature
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Evolution of the Character with Time in Literature and Movies
Illustrations of Nosferatu, the first vampire character to appear on a screen in Literature
The relation between intertextuality and social space
Depiction of La Lorna and other supernatural elements in American Literature
Contemporary literary figures of Orality: ruptures and Continuity
What is the fascination with supernatural imagery in American Literature and popular culture?
Writings in English about refugee camps in Contemporary Literature
Taking a comparative look at contemporary theater stages
Comparing The Crucible with the actual Salem witch trials

Literary Research Paper Topics Related to English Literature

Pick a topic from this list and brace yourself for an awe-inspiring journey, illuminating the profound impacts of English literature on our hearts. Here’s the list.

What is Shakespeare’s contribution to classic English Literature?
Comparison and contrast of Shakespeare and Marlowe
Shakespeare and Marlowe: busting myths
Historical and Political Analysis of English Literature during the Middle Ages
The Elizabethan Era and English Literature
An Understanding of Victorian Literature from a political perspective
Comparing Edwardian Literature with its predecessors, what makes it unique?
English Literature at its Zenith
Greek Influence on English Literature: the history of English Literature
Comparing women’s Literature to classical English literature in terms of literary and social issues
An Overview of British Fiction from the 19th Century
Women in Classic English Literature: their portrayal and Characterization
Arab civilizations influenced Literature in the early English period
A collective analysis of English Poetry from the 19th to the 20th Century
The Impact of Modernism on English Poetry
The Social and political history of Victorian England as Portrayed through English Literature
Literary explorations of British colonial slavery during the 18th and 19th centuries
Adaptation to postcolonial cultures, neo-Victorian Culture, and Postcolonial Literature
Literature of the postcolonial period versus Literature of the British period
The history of books and publishing in the 20th-21st Century in British fiction
Emotional expression and perception, semantics, lexical semantics
A History of Ideas and Literature from the 18th Century
An overview of the history of publishing and books
Aspects of Race and Ethnicity, popular culture, and Politics
Britain’s Revolutions and the Rise of Socialism: Literature that influenced them
Actors of Shakespeare’s time, the role of the Elizabethan theater
Literature’s contribution to understanding British politics and society today

Postcolonial Literary Research Paper Topics

Dig into stories that question the effects of colonialism and look into issues of identity, resistance, and decolonization. Get inspired by the captivating stories that are reshaping the history of colonialism with these topics.

A Study of Heart of The Darkness from an analytical perspective
Heart of the Darkness: Conrad’s Treatment of Africans in the Story
Achebe’s stance against the design of Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness vs. Things Fall Apart: Comparisons and Contrasts
A Look at the Treatment of Africans in Things Fall Apart
Concept of native society in Things Fall Apart
A Study of the indigenous culture of Africa in Light of Things Fall Apart
Postcolonial Literature Compared to British Literature
Literature is written in the French language dealing with postcolonialism
The Analysis of Postcolonial Literature Written in India after the End of Colonialism
Ahmed Ali’s Works as Part of the postcolonial movement: a critical analysis
An Analysis of Twilight in Delhi as a postcolonial novel through the Lens of critical theory
Depiction of the colonized races in British Literature
Conrad’s treatment of negros and the accusation of racism
A Critique of Orientalism from the Perspective of Edward Said
Elements of Postcolonialism Twilight in Delhi
The elements belonging to the narrative framework of the postcolonial theory
Understanding Postcolonialism with Edward Said’s Orientalism
An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory: Concepts and Definitions
The Evolution of the Woman within Postcolonial Literature
An Overview of Algerian Postcolonial Literature
British Literature, with its treatment of African nations
Postcolonial and Feminine Resistance in Algerian and Sahrawi States
Postcolonialism: An Effort to search its history
Identity, alterity, and Hybridity in postcolonial states
Introduction to postcolonial theory

Arabic Topics in Literature

Discover the fascinating world of Arabic Literature and explore its cultural heritage, poetic stories, and social dynamics. Here you go with the list.

Literature of the Arab World and its Influence on French Literature
The Influence of Arab Culture on Middle Ages Literature
Hayy Bin Yaqzan is the first novel by modern criteria
A collection of poetry by Shafi’i and historical, literary Analysis
A Study of Religious Literature in Arabian Civilization
Islamic Golden Ages were characterized by more significant progress in theological Literature
Poetry from the Arab world is the foundation of modern global poetry
Literature related to Mahdism in Islam
Arab-Islamic culture is significant in the Literature written in Arabic
The Evolution of Arabic Poetry and Literature
The Poetry of the Arab Diaspora and Nature’s Aesthetics
Ghazali’s literary works and acknowledgment of divine essence
A study of the relationship between Arabic poetry and music and song
Al-Gazzal’s two doors of knowledge through the heart
Iberian expansion as a cause of Islamic culture’s influence on Western Literature
Music and poetry from the pre-Islamic period in Arabic
Arab Literature and social criticism in the modern era
Aristotelian Philosophy and Greek Mythology in Modern Arab Literature
The culture and civilization of the Ottoman Empire were influenced by Arabic poetry and music
Arabic Literature’s Depiction of Morality and Politics
A Study of Arab Literature by Christian Authors
The philosophy of Islam is expressed and explained through Arabic culture
An Introduction to the History and Literature of Islam

Existentialist Literary Research Topics

Dig into the deep thinking, self-examination, and emotions of uncertainty that come with exploring the works of important writers trying to figure out life, independence, and more. Here’s the list.

The post-war emergence of existentialism
War-torn human characters reflect existentialist Literature.
What is the character of Godot in Waiting For Godot? How does Beckett explain what he is saying?
Existentialist Drama into 21st-Century of Western Literature
How does Beckett become an existential absurdist?
Samuel Becket’s Life from a contemporary perspective
The Reasons and inspirations behind Sartre’s Existentialism
Waiting For Godot is interpreted in real time and real life.
Considering Jean-Paul Sartre’s works from different perspectives.
The Existentialist Literature: a critical analysis
Horrors of War and Existentialist Literature After and About the Vietnam War
A Comparison of Absurdism and Existentialism in Western Literature
Theater of absurdity representation of existentialism
A 21st-century Take on absurdist theater as a significant part of British Literature
Existentialism: Is it Here to Stay? Getting rid of absurdity in a changing world
Does the search for meaning transcend modern man?
Existentialism in British Literature
“There is infinite hope in the universe, not for us.” How do you see Kafka as an existentialist? How does he differ from the philosophers of his field?

Literary Research Topics Related to Poetry

Check out our great research paper topics and how powerful poems can be!

Pioneers of European Literature in the realm of poetry
Inspiration for John Keats’ poetry by Fanny Brawne
The difference between Keats and his contemporaries
Analyzing John Keats’ Works from a historical perspective
The poetry of social protest in the early Renaissance
What makes the poetry of the Renaissance the most outstanding?
An early role played by Midland poets in the development of English poetry
Literature of the Highlands and its Contribution to English cultural development
The challenges of the development of English poetry
Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry
Poetry as a Pillar of Modern Literature
The Importance of legal vocabulary in a poetic context
Thinking about poetry as a critique from the Renaissance era
The genre and meaning of Auden’s poem
Poetry of Robert Frost: A study
Research on the poetry of William Shakespeare
Wordsworth as a pioneer of modern Literature
Poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson: a historical analysis
A general study of the Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A Look and Study of the Aubreys of Innocence by William Blake
Prose versus poetry in the early Renaissance
Story of Love and Death, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Emily Dickinson is one of America’s most famous poets
Maya Angelo’s struggle for civil rights and using poetry as a vector of fight

Literary Research Topics Related to Novel

Go deep into the story, getting to know the characters and thinking about the themes to unlock the timeless charm of this popular type of writing. Here’s the list.

A Study of the Gothic Novel in the British Isles
Publishing Literature the modern novel: conditions and Sources of Innovation
History and Fiction in African-American Women’s Literature
Toni Morrison is one of the pioneers of the American novel
Covenant: An American Novel of South African History
James Michener’s works in novels and different aspects of modern American society
Modern Literature in the Film and tv industry
Novels of Thomas Hardy, a critical analysis
What is the significance of Jane Austen as a pioneer of English literature? What are your thoughts on this?
A Comparison and Contrast of American dystopian novels
Supernatural novelists of English literature, between William Polidori and Bram Stoker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is the first supernatural novel in the history of English literature
Children’s Literature written in British territories
Postcolonial novels from a 21st-century perspective
The Vampire Diaries, the pioneering novel for gen-z supernatural fascinations
Anne Rice vs. Stephanie Meyers: what is different and what is similar
Knowledge, Power, and Authority in Contemporary Fantasy
Tensions and Expression in the Modern American Novel
Political Depiction of Christianity in American Novels and Movies

Literary Research Topics Related to Drama

Check out these cool topics to write an amazing research paper your teacher is expecting of you.

Shakespearean Drama from historical practices
Plagiarism allegations about Shakespeare
William Shakespeare vs. Christopher Marlowe: Contrasts and Comparisons
An overview of Shakespeare’s plays and how they formed modern theater and cinema
Waiting For Godot by Beckett, from a directorial and cinematic perspective
Elizabethan vs. Jacobean Drama: What makes them different?
Oscar Wilde as a playwright, from a modern perspective
Shakespeare as a pioneer of the European literature boom
Role of Queen Elizabeth I in the Promotion of English Drama and Theater
Stages of Transformation: at the Crossroads of Theater and abolitionist movements
Role of Drama in European Literature
The Drama of the 21st Century and how it differs from the Classics
Greek tragedy compared to Shakespearean tragedy
Greek Tragedy vs. Classical English Drama
Modern vs. Classical tragedy, essential comparative elements
Was European Literature initially focused on Drama? Why or why not?
The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the most beloved plays. Why?
Oscar Wild as a dramatist
Literature formed Freudianism, a psychoanalytical analysis of the plays that inspired Sigmund Freud
Mourning Becomes Electra and Oedipus Rex, how two tragedies formed the Basis of modern psychology
Literary Analysis of the Supernatural in the Plays of Marlowe
Classic vs. Modern Literature in the Area of Tragedy and Drama
Edward Bond, a playwright of hope or despair?
When does British Literature portray elements of World war
Literary devices used in early British literary works and Renaissance literature
Language diversity in historical novels in the Victorian literature era
European culture depicted in early American Literature
American literature contribution to Studies on Classical Literature
Literary Argument on literary works of the Renaissance in Comparison with Indian Literature

Interesting Literature Topics

These literary research topics can spark your interest, challenge your views, and help you appreciate Literature even more.

Travel writing for college students living the American dream
Use of poetic language and literary devices in Japanese literary works
Social identity in dystopian Literature that World War II inspired
Male and female characters in African American Literature
Literary novels in the genre of young adult literature
Literature paper on Japanese Literature depicting Post World War II modern culture
Literary Analysis of artificial language in Utopian and Dystopian Literature
The modern culture depicted in American and Asian culture
Literary Analysis of Harry Potter and novel writing for university students
Harry Potter is a significant literature contribution opening new doors to literary research.
Comparative Literary Analysis of travel writing vs. literary journalism
Literary Analysis of travel writing in Indian Literature
African literary responses to American Literature on world war in the Twentieth Century
How American Literature Differs from Modern Chinese Literature: Form and evaluate literature response on Written Literature

Hopefully, these lists of good topics for research papers have helped you pick a suitable subject and make a real difference in literary research. Remember that a good topic always plays a pivotal role in the paper’s success. If you are still trying to figure out how to proceed with your assignment , count on the professional expertise of our writers .

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
Should graduate students be able to form unions?

What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
How does stress affect the body?
Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
What were the causes of the Civil War?
How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
What caused Hitler's rise to power?
Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
What are the pros and cons of fracking?
What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
How are black holes created?
Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
Has social media made people more or less connected?
What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

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Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .

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120 Fresh and Thought-Provoking Topics for Literature Reviews in Different Disciplines

A literature review is an account of the scholarly works published on a topic. It is different from an annotated bibliography – and far more interesting at that. Instead of being just a list of summaries, a literature review synthesizes the information from all available sources in an overall relationship to your guiding concept. This may be the problem you are discussing, a statement you are arguing, a theory you are verifying, etc.

The goals of a literature review may vary:

giving a historical overview of the research in the field
summarizing the existing state of the topic
finding a problem or a gap in the research field
developing a new theory, etc.

That is why good literature review topics are often formulated as research questions. This type of paper is not an easy writing. You will need to parse immense volumes of information, synthesize and summarize coherently. You also need to devote plenty of time to reading.

This post contains a list of literature review topics suggested for various subjects. However, when choosing the most fitting one to dig into, ask yourself, what are the passions that you can apply to this research? This assignment will take a while, so you will need more than just a good study discipline to soldier on. A bit of enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation will get you much farther.

Literature Review Topics Examples on English and World Literature

Some of the suggestions in this post are linked to literature review examples in our free database. By clicking on a title, you get to a corresponding sample page, where you can read the entire text. If the topic you like isn't linked, but you would like to read an example, you can order it. We will arrange the most qualified paper writer to prepare it for you exclusively.

Ready? Let's start with topics for literature review papers on English and World Literature.

Phoenix as a symbol for endurance in a worn path
The novel Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark through Girard's Lens
Ender's Game by an Orson Scott Card
Depiction of freedom and happiness in Brave New World
Feminism and Post-Colonialism in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games
Rationality, logic, and mathematics in the novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time
Victims of their time as a character type in the World literature
The last days of Judas Iscariot : a play by Stephen Adly Guirgis
The use of symbolism in Kafka's prose
Naturalism in American literature
Grotesque and Sublime in the prose of Edgar Allan Poe

Lit Review Topic Ideas on Science and Technology

Next are some literature review topic ideas on science and technology.

Electronic library and effects of its implementation
Benjamin Franklin: scientist and inventor
Virtual Reality, science fiction, and society today
Science, Technology, and Society as a field of knowledge
Frederick Winslow Taylor and the principles of scientific management
What is the future of work
Concepts of science and technology
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and influence of technological advancement on man and nature
Types of machine learning
Internet of Things and biometrics: implications, benefits, threats
Emotional intelligence and natural language processing
SmartCity projects that have already been implemented and their lessons

As the field is vast, we can barely scratch the surface with these suggestions. To help you with brainstorming, here are a few tips on how to choose good topics for a literature review yourself:

Make sure the topic ties nicely with class requirements as well as your interests
Do some preliminary research to see if there is enough literature on your topic
Scale up if the information is scarce or down if there are too many sources to handle
Use sources recommended for reading in the class materials
Supplement the list with only trustworthy scholarly sources

Follow these guidelines, and you are on a path to some great ideas!

Psychology Literature Review Topics

When brainstorming topics on psychology, don't forget about the subdisciplines: biopsychology, social, educational, organizational, etc. If the suggestions below won't be enough, try looking for inspiration in Biology, Sociology, Education, or Business. The most exciting topics are often at the intersection of different areas of knowledge!

Tricyclic antidepressants vs. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) in treatment of depression
Stress, its causes, effects, and coping strategies
The family system and psychology
Tibetan compassion practices: working with terror, trauma, and transcendence
Behaviorism psychology
Culture and psychopathology
Correlation between diet and cognitive functions in primary school students
The evolutionary role of phobias and intrusive thoughts
Popular psychology and its implications
PTSD in mass disasters survivors: immediate relief and long-term assistance
Cults and vulnerable populations
False memories and gaslighting

Nursing Literature Review Topics

Nursing lit review topics are probably the most diverse in scale, as you can see from the examples below. They can describe a larger issue or a concrete solution applied to a narrowly defined problem. Following this principle, you can modify our lit review topics suggestions zooming out or in on the subject material.

Legalization of medical marijuana and its effects on the youth
Health effects of fiber: research findings
Achieving higher levels of education and training for nurses
Organic foods and cardiovascular disease
The importance of Central Venous Line (CVL) and Central Venous Access Devices (CVAD)
What effects do different types of music have on humans and their mental health?
The use of laboratory-grown organs for transplantation
The role of xylitol in alleviating dry mouth
The detection of tar and nicotine content of cigarette smoke extract using HPLC
Rheumatoid arthritis: etiology, diagnosis, vulnerable populations
Mobility aids for the elderly and quality of life
The role of play in the recuperation of hospitalized children

Education Literature Review Topics

To get more ideas from these literature review topic examples, try isolating an issue and put it in another educational context. For instance, student motivation in primary school vs. middle school or sleep deprivation in high school vs. college. This should give you plenty of material for brainstorming.

Simulation education for crisis prevention program
A critical consideration of the new pedagogy in its relation to modern science
Lack of students interest in studying science
Discovery-based learning and student-centered learning with a focus on mathematics at a high school level
The adverse effects of sleep deprivation on academic performance: a college student's struggle
Gender bias in special education programs
Higher education for senior citizens: challenges and best practices
Significant challenges of the teaching profession in the US
Factors contributing to international student mobility
Student motivation in private vs. state colleges
Benefits and challenges of homeschooling for students and families
Correlation between workload, stress levels, and self-esteem in middle-school students

Sociology Literature Review Topics

The best advice on finding current sociology topics is to look at the challenges your community faces. Become the first one to notice and address these issues!

Are video games affecting our current and future students ?
Ways to prevent social media bullying
Spanking of children in the USA
The relation of poverty and exposure to crime in adolescent men
Transgender discrimination
The link between science and Utopia in Utopia and the New Atlantis
Effectiveness of group therapy in social work
Peer pressure, depression, and causes of suicide in the adolescents
Religious separatism social issues connected with it
Causes and effects of domestic abuse
Physical appearance and social status
Race, nationality, ethnicity, and identity

Political Science Literature Review Topics

Political science is one of the more formal disciplines on this list. Being heavy with abstract concepts, it doesn't lend itself easily to casual brainstorming. Well, at least start with these:

Electoral College, its functions, and role in public life
Why American and the British IPE are so different
Contingency planning
Effects of political gerrymandering
American political parties
The present urban regimes in Canada
International policies and domestic regulations: precedence and clashes
Tolerance as a political virtue
Grassroots activism and its impact on state and federal law
National security and constitutional freedoms
Historical analysis of anarchism
The effect of social media on civic engagement

Criminal Justice Literature Review Topics

Criminal justice is a complex field. It's ripe with variance and challenges – which is good for topic ideas at least. And you have state, federal, and international levels to add more variables.

Juvenile justice and the Missouri model
Car-related crime in the USA
An analysis of the impact of sexual harassment/sexual assault in the military
The process of the arbitration without the involvement of national courts
Serial killers and profiling
Policing and criminal justice systems
Psychological effects of cyberbullying on adolescents
Sexual human trafficking from the Central America region
Human sex-trafficking: the Canadian perspective
Gender and racial bias in criminal investigations
Possible ethical and legal dilemmas of using sniffer dogs
Sting operations vs. entrapment: ethics and regulations

Chemistry and Biology Literature Review Topics

Biology is fascinating. It has something for everyone: from biochemistry and genetics to ecosystems and nature preservation. Here are some suggestions to guide your choice:

Brain size correlation
Haruko Obokata, ethics of stem cells research, and scientific misconduct
Genomic and molecular genetics major and its perspectives for students
DNA use in mass disasters
DNA detection from dried blood spots
Captive breeding of marine mammals: pros and cons
The Dynamics of ER and mitochondria
Biomarkers in gastric cancer treatment
The chemistry behind gene splicing
Carcinogens and hyper-processed foods
Primates and monkeys as potential sources of novel zoonotic infections
Natural gases, ecosystems, and the global warming

Business and Marketing Literature Review Topics

Finally, here are some business and marketing topics as well. These disciplines might be relatively new, but they are among the most dynamic and information-rich – which means great fun to explore.

Effectiveness of neuromarketing in comparison to traditional marketing methods
Green supply chain management
Effectiveness of e-marketing to non-profit making organizations
The value of information
Shareholder engagement/activism and corporate performance
The relationship between ethics, stress, and productivity in the workplace
The role of integrity in business
Client confidentiality and its role in a prosperous business
Businesses, their impact on the community, and social responsibility
Startup fundraising stages
Innovative marketing in the age of instant feedback: risks and possibilities
Strategies for staff motivation

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221 Awesome Literary Research Paper Topics To Choose From

Are you looking for the best literary research paper topic or wondering how to choose a topic for a literary research paper? You are at the right place. The hardest part of doing research is getting an ideal topic. Once, you get a great topic you are good to go.

We have a great number of best-rated expert writers that can provide well-done professional papers. As students in college, we understand that high payment rates can be frustrating, that’s why we offer cheap prices for high-quality work. We offer the best help with research papers to get top grades. Browse through this variety of topics to find the best fit for you.

Literature Research Topics

Getting an ideal literature research paper topic can consume a lot of time. In this category, you will get some of the best literature research topics.

Discuss the American dream in literature.
How do religion and literature correlate?
Discuss the “stream of consciousness” style of literature.
Examine artificial languages in literature.
How is mythology termed in literature?
Discuss why Harry Potter became that popular.
Is it advisable for literature to be gendered?
Evaluate between utopian and dystopian literature.
Discuss the work of Shakespeare.
How can you rate the feminist literature – does it have a ground?
Evaluate the impact of the work of Shakespeare.
Can fan fiction be considered an independent part of literature?
How do clichés work in literature
How are the Byronic characters in literature?
Discuss the good and evil of studying literature.
The literary work during WWI
Evaluate the portrayal of war and peace by George Orwell.

Interesting Literature Topics

Did you know that there are interesting literature topics? They deal with the evolution of literature and how it has grown till the present time. Thinking of literature topics for research paper is challenging, so here are some more options.

How can you term irony and sarcasm in literature?
How can literature be termed as an instrument of propaganda?
Discuss madness in literature.
The influence of trickster characters in literature.
Discuss travel writing in the 20 th century.
Evaluate narrative nature and verse since 1900.
How has city living changed since 1900?
Evaluate literature as part of modern culture.
How are social issues exposed in literature?
The relation between literature and psychology.
The influence of European culture in the Midwest literature.
The differences between the literature of different countries.
The effect of European culture on modern literature.
The impact of feminism on modern culture.
Evaluate Japanese literature in the 20 th century.

Literature Topics for a Research Paper

In this category, you will get a wide variety of literature topics that you can use for your research. A well-written research paper will help you get top grades.

What can you term as the cultural production of Latina writers?
Discuss the representation of Ethics in literature.
Evaluate the famous work of Ernest Hemingway.
Expound on the invented languages in literature.
Why do you think “Harry Potter” has become so popular?
How is the Image of death represented as a character in literature?
The impact of literature on kids.
Is there an appropriate gender in literature?
Evaluate the Victorian literature.
Elaborate on the complete work of William Shakespeare.
Discuss whether fanfiction is independent literature.
Which are the Byronic characters in literature.
Elaborate irony versus sarcasm in literature.
How can literature be used as an instrument of propaganda?

Literature Research Paper Topics

In this category of research paper topics, you get to relate one phenomenon with the other. They are also based on some well-known novels. When thinking of literary topics for research paper, consider your scope of knowledge and interest in the topic.

The correlation between psychology and literature.
How is the construction of social identity?
How can you describe the settler nationhood and the wilderness in North American poetry?
Why does place matters to a poet?
Evaluate travel writing in the 20 th century and 21 st century.
The influence of animals in children’s literature.
Evaluate the importance of humor in children’s literature.
Discuss the best children’s novels from 1900.
How does young adult literature represent disability?
How to read to under five years old children to develop relationships and imaginations?
Evaluate the modern novel and psychology.
Define the cross-disciplinary boundaries between archaeology and English literature.
Evaluate the 19 th -century novel and science.
Evaluate how history is important in deciphering modern literature.
How is philosophy important to literature.

English Literature Research Paper Topics

In English literature, it focuses on how various novels, classics, or books are written to explain a certain phenomenon. Here are some literature topics that you can start with:

Evaluate the methods of teaching English literature.
Investigate modern Indian literature in English translation.
Evaluate women writers and the survey of English literature.
Investigate the impact of the Bible on English literature.
Evaluate the impact of the Classics on Literature.
Define the scope of English literature in Educating people.
Explain the influence of Darwin on Literature.
Explain medieval English literature.
Examine Women studies and Feminism in India.
Evaluate the short history of the Norton Anthology of the English language.
Evaluate the English Renaissance study.
Investigate medieval feminism in middle English Studies.
Evaluate women in Indian English Literature.
Discuss feminism and modern Indian literature.
Discuss the evolution of English in North America.

Topics in Literature

Literature requires full concentration to get to the bottom of a certain phenomenon. We have simplified the topics to make it easier for you to do your assignment in college.

Discuss Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet based on Male melodrama.
How as black lives matter movement influenced black literature?
Evaluate the contemporary refuge literature.
Investigate post-colonialism and climate change in literature.
Discuss tradition and modernity through the lens of Tagore Gora.
Investigate the relation between pre-independence and post-independence in Indian literature.
The role of African literary responses to Racism.
The literature on homosexuality.
The significance of Literature in the modern world.
Feminism growth in the twentieth century.
The effects of fairy tales perceptions in the modern era.
Correlation between pre-independence and post-independence Indian literature.
Discuss the novel, “To kill a Mockingbird from 1960”.
The significance of Shakespeare in the world of Literature.
How did the artistry of writing novels start?
The character analysis of Emy and Rebecca in Vanity Fair.
The Depiction of vampires in the 19 th and 21 st -century literature.

Research Topics in English Literature

In this category, there are comparison topics that you can analyze for your research. These are based on well-known books and novels in English.

Evaluate the diversity of Chaucer’s genres in tales of Canterbury.
The accuracy of historical novels in the document happenings.
How has the role of a woman changed in twentieth-century literature?
What effect does Milton’s paradise lost have on 17 th -century literature?
How have James Joyce and William Burroughs done their novels?
What is our modern perspective about 19 th -century novels and the general public and similar perspectives when they were first published?
Evaluate the less-known work of well-known writers.
Examine why adults find Lord of the Rings appealing.
How does the work of Maya Angelou play a role in African literary responses to racism?
Recognizing the unconscious in modernist literature.
Evaluate the representation of Hindu and Buddhist thought in Modern Literature.
The representation of abortion in British Literature.
Profess poetry in terms of style and faith in Hopkins.
Evaluate the evolution of literature in the twentieth century.
Describe the writing nature in the age of chemical countryside.

Literature Topics for Research Papers

These are some of the best literature topics for research papers. They require minimal effort to submit a well-written research paper.

The roles of gender in modern literature.
The importance of having animals in children’s literature.
Analysis of the first world war.
How accurate is History as described in historical novels?
The difference between literature in the US and Great Britain.
Analyze the 19 th -century poetic imagination.
Examine the 19 th -century poetic imagination based on astronomy.
How is quantum physics applied in literature?
What is the most important work written by William Shakespeare?
The Female masculinities in old English Literature.
The difference between modernism and realism.
Critical analysis of First World War poetry.
The analysis of the meaning of fairy tales in literature.
The influence on literature during the renaissance era.
The historical analysis of children’s literature.
The idea of death in Renaissance literature.
The historical background of Duma’s novels.

Literary Topics for a Research Paper

Literary topics are diverse. This can make it hectic to choose an appropriate one for your research paper.

Discuss the most important work of Shakespeare.
Describe the gothic novel’s gender representation.
The effect of social media language on learners.
The travails of the African woman.
The utilization of language activities in teaching and learning of English Language.
Discuss women in nation-building and influence on literature.
The relevance of folktale in the learning of literature.
The significance of drama and poetry in literature.
Factors affecting the choice of language in a multilingual society.
Comparative study of morphological processes in English.
Comparative study of Achebe’s “Things fall apart”.
The significance of proverbs in literature.
The influence of politics in the building of literary texts.
The analysis of speech in literature.
The analysis of threat in literature.

Research Topics in Literature

These research topics are based on various societal aspects and impacts on the world. They also deal with people’s emotions and behaviors in different contexts.

The nativization of English in African literary texts.
An analysis of the Asian theatre and influence on modern literature.
The examination of leadership in literature.
The relevance of literature in the world.
What is the need to study literature?
Evaluate the evolution of literature from the start till now.
Analyze the methods used in creating styles in the literature.
What are some of the feminist criticism of some selected Feminist works?
The importance of fiction in literature.
The relevance of emotion and narration in novel writing in literature.
Discuss how conflicts are brought out in literary novels.
What is the effect of language diversity on the development of a country?
Discuss the relevance of music and revolution.
The challenges of language on national development.
What is the communication medium used in literature?

Literature Paper Topics

Here are some of the best literature paper topics that you can use for your research. As long as you narrow down the research topic, getting relevant information will be easy.

The difference between linguistic and grammatical theories.
The problems related to tenses in literature.
The evaluation of word formation in literature.
The significance of poems in literature.
The evolution and levels of modern literature.
The personal happiness versus societal norms in Victorian literature.
The sentence structure of English literature.
Does the native language of a person influence adoption of a second language?
An analysis of problems associated with learning a second language.
The manifestation of non-standard usage of English among University Students.
The influence of rituals, music, songs, and dances in literature.
The poetic language and influence on the expression.
How can literature be termed as the vehicle for social change?
The syntactic problems associated with English usage.
The influence of society on students’ performance in literature.
Teaching and learning strengths in literature.

American Literature Research Paper Topics

Finding an ideal research paper topic in America’s context can consume a lot of time. Here you will find simplified topics for your research paper.

Discuss contemporary American Literature.
The African Realism and influence in Literature.
How did colonization influence modern literature?
Define 20 th -century Latin American literature.
Evaluate African Americans and their fight for equality in American Literature.
Define realism, naturalism, and modernism in African American literature.
Evaluate Allen Ginsberg and American Protest literature.
Examine American literature and society.
Analyze American literature in Post-World War II.
American Literature in the 20 th and 21 st century.
American literature and religious ideologies.
Anne Bradstreet’s contribution to American Literature.
The influence of Asian American literature.
Evaluate the color interpretations in the great Gatsby.
The common themes in American Literature.

Literature Research Paper Topics for College Students

Are you a college student looking for an ideal literature research paper? Here are some topics for you!

Provide your understanding of censorship in American Literature.
Evaluate black American women writers and their influence on the world.
Architectural imagery in 20 th century African American literature.
How do characters lose their innocence in literature?
The different modes of communication in literature.
The conversation of American Sign Language in literature.
How are dialects and death shown in literature?
How does Literature portray American culture?
How does self-verification occur in African American Literature?
The generational divide and impact on modern literature.
The establishment of traditional excellence.
Explore the modern literature.
How can you define masculinity in literature?
The impact of World War I on American literature.
The significance of African American literature addressing the black experience.
The male and female characters in Beowulf.
The relationship between mother and daughter in Beloved.

Literature Review Topics Examples

Do you know how to do a literature review on various topics? Try any of this and see your proficiency in the sector.

A literature review on rational and rationality.
A literature review on dependence and development.
A literature review on resource scarcity in the modern world.
A literature review on pop culture.
A literature review on Feminist international relations.
A literature review on complex organizations and regimes.
A literature review on censorship in TV shows.
A literature review on global warming and its influence on mankind.
Literature review on why children’s books are popular.
A literature review on how authors choose writing styles.
The use of artificial language in literature.
How education affects literature per era.
The most effective villains in literature.
How does Shakespeare inspire modern authors?
Propaganda and literature in the modern world.
Toni Morrison’s views on the civil way
The concept of war in the book; a fable by Faulkner.

Don’t Want To Spend Time Writing a Literary Paper?

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University Library

Research Guides

Literature and Literary Research

Getting Started
Finding Books and Articles
Finding and Using Archival Sources
Finding and Using Reference Sources
Working Smarter

What's a good topic?

Choosing a topic can be one of the hardest parts of writing a paper. There are so many possible things to write about, and even if you have a general idea, it can be hard to know whether your topic is a good one.

Writing a literature paper is different from writing many other kinds of papers. In literary analysis, it's not the ideas of other people that matter as much as your own interpretation of the texts you're reading. The bulk of your paper will be made up of your analysis of the text: the use of language, imagery, rhythm and repetition, word choice, the structure of the plot, or the representations of characters, emotions, events, or places. Your job is to analyze these elements of the text and through your analysis to assert an idea, or a claim, about the text, the author, or the context in which the text was written.

So what makes a good topic? A good topic is a theme that you think is represented in the text you're reading. But how do you get from a good topic to a good research question?

What's a good research question?

Once you recognize a theme in a text or texts, your next step is to determine what you think the texts are saying about that theme. Read the text again, paying particular attention to your theme. What does your interpretation lead you think about the theme or idea? This is your claim, and your paper is structured around using analysis of the text or texts to support your claim.

For example, you may be interested in looking at community or society in Thoreau's "Walden." You may have read the text and noticed a contradiction between Thoreau's claims of self-reliance and his interaction with society. You would then re-read the text, asking yourself as you read "What is the representation of society and Thoreau's relationship to it in 'Walden'?" After reading the text closely and paying special attention to these aspects of "Walden," you may be ready to make the claim that while Thoreau believed he was self-reliant, in truth he was still part of a network of people, and still part of his society and community. Or you may discover that your initial thought was wrong, and that Thoreau really did separate himself from his community in the way he wrote about.

Types of Sources

There are a lot of different kinds of sources that you can use in your analysis. This guide will show you how to find and use these by type.

Primary Sources are the main pieces of evidence you will use to make your claim. The texts you are reading are a primary source; they are the most important primary source you're working with. Other examples are newspaper and magazine articles, diaries and letters, photographs, maps, and reviews written or created at the same time as your text. These sources can help you put your subject into context.

Reference Sources give you a broad overview of a person, place, event, or idea. They provide commonly known facts. Reference sources are not cited in your paper, but can be very useful for grounding you in your subject and ensuring that you have solid background information. Literary biographies are a form of reference material, and give you lots of information about authors, with an emphasis on how their lives are related to their writing.

Secondary Sources are also sometimes referred to as criticism. These are books and articles that scholars have written about a particular work of literature, movement, or author. Criticism can help you get a sense of the themes that other scholars read in a particular text. They may help inform your own understanding of a text, either because they reinforce your interpretation, or differ from it. Criticism is usually published in books or as articles in scholarly journals.

So how do I use sources?

Primary sources are the evidence that we use to support our claims. They aren't the articles that other scholars and researchers have written, but original source material that we can use to better understand our topic. Primary sources in literary research include the text or texts that you're analyzing, but might also include additional material like letters written by the author, photographs, reviews written when the text was published, newspapers articles. Many different kinds of things can be used as primary sources, depending on your subject.

For example, if you're studying Thoreau's relationships with others, you may want to find out more about Thoreau's role in his community by reading primary source material (letters that he wrote to friends and colleagues, newspaper articles about him or about his community) or by reading more about the context of his life in Massachusetts (the political and artistic movements of which he was part, the actual location of his cabin in relation to the town of Concord). These additional sources are used to support your interpretation of the text you're analyzing.

You may want to use secondary sources to discuss other scholars' ideas and interpretations of the topic and text you're writing about, especially if you don't agree with their interpretations. Pay especially close attention to aspects of your topic that scholars don't agree about, and to different interpretations or ideas about a text. If there are major debates about the authors or texts you're studying, you'll want to reference them in the paper to help inform your reader and provide context to your own interpretation.

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Last Updated: Feb 2, 2024 12:45 PM
URL: https://libguides.sonoma.edu/literature

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What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

Methodological

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Cite this Scribbr article

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McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 2 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

Roughly how many sources should you include?
What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
Should you evaluate your sources?
Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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UConn Library
Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

Getting Started
How to Pick a Topic
Strategies to Find Sources
Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
Citation Resources
Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D. The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review? A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
Identify a problem in a field of research

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews . Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

A research paper assigned in a course
A thesis or dissertation
A grant proposal
An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework: 10.1177/08948453211037398

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review: 10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis: 10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts . Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis: 10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
<< Previous: Getting Started
Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

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Review Article
Open access
Published: 02 April 2024

How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature review using a computational linguistic approach

Lara Fontanella ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5441-0035 1 ,
Berta Chulvi 2 , 3 ,
Elisa Ignazzi 4 ,
Annalina Sarra 5 &
Alice Tontodimamma 1

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11 , Article number: 478 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Cultural and media studies

Nowadays, despite centuries of striving for equality, women still face higher levels of discrimination compared to men in nearly every aspect of life. Recently, this systemic inequality has manifested in cyberspace through the proliferation of abusive content that is even more aggressive than what one would expect in the 21st century. Various research disciplines are now attempting to characterise this new manifestation of misogyny. The endeavour to comprehend this phenomenon has resulted in a significant increase in publications from several fields, including Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Psychology, and Computer Science. This paper presents a systematic review of multidisciplinary research on misogyny from the years 1990 to 2022, encompassing a total of 2830 articles retrieved from the Scopus database as of December 31, 2022. The literature is thoroughly analysed using three approaches: bibliometric analysis, topic detection, and qualitative analysis of the documents. The findings suggest that the analysis of online misogyny has been the primary driver behind the exponential growth in publications in this field. Additionally, the results of the topic analysis and topic interaction reveal a limited connection between the areas of knowledge that are necessary to fully grasp this complex phenomenon.

The old-new epistemology of digital journalism: how algorithms and filter bubbles are (re)creating modern metanarratives

Luca Serafini

The dark web privacy dilemma: linguistic diversity, talkativeness, and user engagement on the cryptomarket forums

Zhicong Chen, Xiang Meng & Cheng-Jun Wang

Community and authority in ROAR Magazine

Introduction.

Nowadays, regardless of centuries of fighting for equality, women continue to face a disproportionate amount of discrimination compared to men across various contexts. Women and girls encounter prejudice, sexist attitudes, open discrimination, and violence throughout their lives, while the extent of these experiences varies by location, identity, and culture. Disgust, intolerance, or entrenched prejudice, serving to legitimise women’s oppression, persist even in countries often alleged to be post-patriarchal, like the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Manne, 2017 ). The all-pervasive form of hostility and aversion against women and girls is referred to as misogyny, a term derived from the Ancient Greek word “mĩsoguniã”, which means hatred of women. According to Allen ( 2021 ), misogyny has a disputed definition. Some authors offer a definition of misogyny that, in some respects, overlaps with the concept of sexism. For example, Code ( 2000 ) defines misogyny as any of the following acts or feelings: sexual and physical violence against women, exclusion of women, promotion of patriarchy, belittlement, and marginalisation of women. In this approach, the promotion of patriarchy, broadly conceptualised as a system or systems producing and reproducing gendered and intersectional inequalities, is clearly the spread of a sexist mentality. Here, sexism is linked to the acceptance of sex-role stereotypes and can manifest at various levels: individual, organisational, institutional, and cultural (VandenBos, 2015 ). In the same line of reasoning, Jukes ( 1993 ) states that misogyny can be obvious and explicit at times, but it can also be subtle and insidious. However, the subtle expression of misogyny is more linked to sexist attitudes than to the expression of hate. Other authors, such as Manne ( 2017 ), set out a clear distinction between sexism and misogyny. In her book, “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny”, Kate Manne ( 2017 ) describes misogyny as the patriarchal order’s “law enforcement” branch, which rewards “good” women who adhere to social norms while punishing those who disobey. Sexism, on the other hand, is viewed as the “justificatory” branch, which rationalises and justifies male dominance through beliefs, theories, stereotypes, and cultural narratives that portray women as naturally inferior. This conceptual debate is due to two reasons. First, the fact that misogyny is strictly linked to the concepts of patriarchy and sexism, and second, the evidence that our societies are facing new ways of conveying misogynistic content in the form of open denigration of women.

Focusing on the link between concepts that describe women’s discrimination, it is evident that the powerful dynamics of a patriarchal society contribute to the development of a sexist culture, and this leads to the oppression of women both in their personal lives and within societal institutions (Millet, 1970 ). Additionally, hostile and benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske, 1997 ) functions to preserve patriarchy and conventional gender norms. Benevolent sexism manifests through subjectively positive attitudes towards women in traditional roles, encompassing protective paternalism, idealisation, and a desire for intimacy. On the other hand, hostile sexism is expressed in a blatant and resentful way toward women who violate traditional roles and includes the negative equivalents of each dimension of benevolent sexism: dominant paternalism, derogatory beliefs, and heterosexual hostility. The aforementioned patriarchal culture legitimises openly misogynistic expressions, which represent the most extreme manifestation of aggression against women.

In this complex dynamic, studies from different disciplines tend to use different terminology when examining hostility towards women. Specifically, research in psychology is more inclined to use terms related to sexism, especially in distinguishing between hostile and benevolent sexism, and the notion of patriarchy is extensively examined in social science, particularly in sociological studies. The concept of misogyny is more commonly used in communication studies and computational science. The findings reported in the Supplementary Material provide evidence of the emphasis of different disciplines on different concepts.

Regarding the emergence of new ways of transmitting misogynistic content, the rise of interactive social media has been widely considered (Moloney and Love, 2018 ; Rubio Martìn and Gordo Lòpez, 2021 ; Tranchese and Sugiura, 2021 ).

Misogyny on the internet is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, legislation pertaining to women’s online safety dates back to the Beijing Declaration in 1995. However, it was not until the events of Gamergate Footnote 1 (Massanari, 2020 ) in August 2014 that the mainstream media and academic research took notice. In fact, in the gaming community, 2014 saw the emergence of the controversy and online movement known as “Gamergate”. It started out as a reaction to questions about ethics in video game journalism, but it soon turned into a harassment campaign directed at female journalists. The movement brought attention to misogyny, sexism, and the need for diversity in the gaming industry.

With the development of social networks, the historical aversion to women has become articulated through new modes of communication and social interaction. While digital spaces have amplified female voices, online platforms have notoriously facilitated the spread of misogynistic content: women’s systematic inequality and discrimination have been replicated in cyberspace in the form of abusive content much more aggressive than we would have expected in the 21st century (Bates, 2021 ). The online realm provides ample opportunities for misogyny to be linguistically expressed in various ways, ranging from subtle forms such as social exclusion and discrimination to more severe forms like sexual objectification and violent threats (Anzovino et al., 2018 ). Studies examining online misogynistic discourse have employed different terminology, such as “gender cyber hatred” (Jane, 2017 ), “cyber harassment” (Citron, 2014 ), “technological violence” (Ostini and Hopkins, 2015 ), “gender trolling” (Mantilla, 2013 ), “e-bile”, and “gender hate speech” (Jane, 2015 ). Other scholars (see, for instance, Ging and Siapera, 2018 ) chose to use a broader definition of misogyny which almost always results in some form of harm, either directly, in the form of psychological, professional, or physical harm, or indirectly, making the internet a less equal, less safe, or less inclusive space for women and girls.

Our study aims to investigate the current state of research on misogyny. For this purpose, we focus on the scientific literature on this subject during the period between 1990 and 2022. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first systematic review on misogyny which combines three approaches: bibliometrics, topic detection, and qualitative analysis of the documents.

For the bibliometric research, we first analyse the existing literature extracted from the Scopus database within the misogyny research field by exploiting bibliometric tools. Bibliometric analysis provides a systematic, transparent, and replicable manner to investigate extant literature in a given field and discover the progress of disciplinary research from a macro perspective, supporting future research directions. Using bibliometric methods, we explore the main lines of research in the scientific literature on misogyny and offer a summary of the research activity in terms of the volume of work and evolution over time, as well as in terms of the social, intellectual and conceptual structures of this research area.

Although bibliometric tools provide a broad overview of current research, they cannot deliver detailed insights into studies in the literature based on semantic content analysis. In order to conduct an in-depth semantic analysis, it is necessary to supplement bibliometric methods with text-mining techniques (Hu et al., 2014 ). In accordance, our work employs topic analysis based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation method (LDA; Blei et al., 2003 ) in order to identify the most prevalent latent themes in misogyny literature. LDA is gaining popularity among scholars in diverse fields (Alghamdi and Alfalqi, 2015 ). Two important findings emerge from a topic model: a list of topics (i.e., clusters of words that appear frequently together) and a list of documents that are strongly associated with each topic. As a result, this method offers a probabilistic quantification of relevance for both the identification of topics and the classification of documents, making it useful for locating interpretable topics with semantic meaning and assigning these topics to literature documents (Tontodimamma et al., 2021 ). According to Suominen and Toivanen ( 2016 ), the main innovation of topic modelling in categorising scientific knowledge is that it essentially eliminates the need to fit knowledge that is brand-new to the world into definitions that are already well-established.

Finally, we complement the study with a qualitative analysis aimed to discover the sociological perspective of the literature on online misogyny, on the one hand, and the computational aspects, on the other hand.

Bibliometric analyses

Bibliographic dataset.

For the analysis, we use a bibliometric dataset covering the period 1990–2022, retrieved from the Scopus database on 31 December 2022. Since we focus on the broad spectrum of scientific research on misogyny, the bibliographic dataset was extracted by looking for publications containing terms related to the generic query “misogyn*” in the content of the title, abstract, and keywords. All types of publications were included in the search, and 2830 documents were retrieved. The top publication fields include Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Psychology, and Computer Science.

Information about document distribution by research field is given in the Supplementary Material , along with the document distribution by source and the ranking of the most productive countries and authors.

Research activity

The evolution over time of the number of published documents shows remarkable growth (see Fig. 1 ). We found out that the number of published documents has increased dramatically over time. Since 1992, it has been possible to distinguish two distinct phases. A gradual increase in publications occurred during the first phase, which lasted from 1990 to 2010. The second phase, from 2010 to 2022, has a higher growth rate, indicating increased interest. This finding aligns with the three-stage development theory (Price, 1963 ) of productivity on a particular subject. Small increments in the scientific literature are documented during the precursor period when some scholars begin publishing research on a new topic. The number of papers increases exponentially in the second phase as the topic expands and draws a growing number of scientists, as many facets of the subject remain unexplored. Finally, in the third phase, the curve aspect shifts from exponential to logistic, testifying to a stabilisation in production and a consolidation of the body of knowledge.

Number of publications on misogyny per year: observed and expected temporal evolution according to exponential growth.

To verify the rapid increase, we fit an exponential growth curve to the data. The yearly rate of change in this model is 13.1%, demonstrating how research on misogyny might be cast in the second phase of development: although more research is being released, there is still space for improvement in many areas.

It is noteworthy to highlight that, as shown in the Supplementary Material , the research on misogyny from 1990 to 2002 follows a similar trend as sexism and has a slightly higher yearly growth rate compared to patriarchy. However, when considering only the five years prior to 2022, a more noticeable rise in the volume of published research on misogyny becomes evident, with a twofold increase in the number of published documents.

Social Structure of research on misogyny: collaboration network

To capture the essential characteristics of the misogyny research field, with a specific emphasis on collaborative efforts among different authors, we construct the authors’ collaboration network. We used the Bibliometrix R package, for performing network analysis and visualisation (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). Within the collaboration network, researchers act as nodes, and the connections between them (edges) represent co-authorships on articles. The node size is indicative of the authors’ productivity, measured in terms of the number of manuscripts authored or co-authored. The edges are weighted according to the frequency of co-authorship. Figure 2 visually illustrates the collaboration network among authors, highlighting the most significant cliques, each distinguished by different colours. The term “clique” is commonly employed to identify highly interconnected groups of elements, such as nodes or vertices, within a network. In our context, a “clique” signifies a group of authors who closely and frequently collaborate with one another compared to their counterparts, thereby creating a densely interconnected structure within the network. The most central scholars, with the highest number of connections, are Elisabetta Fersini, Paolo Rosso, Bilal Ghanem and Viviana Patti, who are also among the most proficient authors in the field of research on misogyny, as shown in the Supplementary Material . The noteworthy aspect is that the densest subgraphs link authors whose research falls under the computer science category.

Authors’ collaboration network.

Intellectual Structure of research on misogyny: citation analysis

The top five documents with the highest number of citations are: “Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures” (Massanari, 2017 ), “Down girl: The logic of misogyny” (Manne, 2017 ), “Attitudinal antecedents of rape myth acceptance: A theoretical and empirical re-examination” (Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1995 ), “Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times” (Gill, 2016 ) and “Beauty and Misogyny Harmful Cultural Practices in the West” (Jeffreys, 2005 ). These works investigate misogyny from various angles.

Manne’s book explores the logic of misogyny, which “primarily targets women because they are women in a man’s world ” (Manne, 2017 , p. 64). Manne argues that misogyny still exists in alleged post-patriarchal cultures and has taken different forms since legal equality, requiring women to be moral “givers” and validating a sense of entitlement among privileged men. Misogyny often takes the form of taking from women what they supposedly owe men and preventing women from competing for positions of power and authority traditionally held by men. In addition, Manne examines various examples of rape culture, including online harassment.

Considering attitudes toward sexual violence, Lonsway and Fitzgerald investigate the relationship between misogyny and rape myth acceptance. Here, rape myths can be defined as “attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women” (Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1994 , pag. 134).

From a feminist perspective, Jeffreys argues that some Western beauty practices (e.g., makeup, high-heeled shoes, breast implants) should be included in the United Nations’ definition of harmful traditional/cultural practices due to the damaging effects they have on women’s health, the creation of sexual difference, and the enforcement of female deference. Gill’s article contends that it is crucial to examine how the media portrays feminism and to delve into the complexities of a cultural moment that seems to be characterised by a range of feminist ideologies (both contemporary and traditional), as well as a resurgence of anti-feminist attitudes and prevalent misogyny.

Massanari’s research centres on online misogyny and is based on a long-term participant-observation and ethnographic study of Reddit’s culture and community. The research specifically focuses on the #Gamergate and The Fappening cases. The Fappening involved the illegal distribution of nude photos of celebrities via anonymous image-board 4chan and Reddit, while #Gamergate was ostensibly about ethics in gaming journalism but became a campaign of harassment against female and minority game developers, journalists, and critics. The study highlights how Reddit’s design, algorithm, and platform politics implicitly support toxic technocultures, providing a fertile ground for anti-feminist and misogynistic movements to flourish. Online misogyny is also discussed in the papers with the highest number of local citations (i.e., citations from other documents within our bibliographic dataset): “#MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, structure, and networked misogyny” (Banet-Weiser and Miltner, 2016 ), “Back to the kitchen, cunt: Speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny” (Jane, 2014 ), and “Drinking male tears: language, the Manosphere, and networked harassment” (Marwick and Caplan, 2018 ).

Conceptual Structure of research on misogyny

To understand the conceptual structure of the research on misogyny, we initially performed an exploratory analysis of the textual content of the keywords chosen by the authors.

Figure 3 shows the most used keywords, after removing the term “misogyny”. Besides the extensive terms gender, feminism and sexism, we find keywords related to the phenomenon of violence against women, to the emerging theme of the Manosphere and to the classical theme of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. It is also worth noting the presence of several keywords strictly linked to the online diffusion of misogynistic content.

Most used keywords.

To deepen the analysis, a conceptual structure map (see Fig. 4 ) of the literature on misogyny was created using the Bibliometrix R package (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ), which enables performing multiple correspondence analysis (MCA, Greenacre and Blasius, 2006 ) and hierarchical clustering. MCA, in particular, allows the generation of a low-dimensional Euclidean representation of the original data matrix by performing a homogeneity analysis of the “documents by keywords” indicator matrix, which is constructed by taking into account a dummy variable for each keyword. The words are plotted on a two-dimensional plane, where closer words have a more consistent distribution across the documents.

Conceptual map of research on misogyny.

The two dimensions of the maps that emerged from the MCA can be interpreted as follows. The first dimension separates keywords emphasising the problem of misogyny in general and on social media platforms (on the right) from those related to the methodological aspects of the automatic detection of misogynistic language (on the left). The second dimension separates keywords emphasising the problem of misogyny from a general point of view (on the upper) from those related to the Manosphere and Incels ( involuntary celibates ) and their presence on the Reddit platform (on the bottom). Figure 4 also displays the results obtained through a hierarchical cluster analysis carried out adopting the method of average linkage on the factorial coordinates obtained through MCA. Five clusters emerge from the conceptual structure map. The orange cluster refers to publications related to the automatic detection of misogynistic content through machine learning and deep learning techniques. The green cluster displays the connection between misogyny and hate speech and the exploitation of Natural Language Processing (NLP) methodologies to investigate these phenomena. The blue cluster refers to the intersectionality of research on misogyny. The red cluster is strictly linked to studies of the presence of misogynistic content on social media. Finally, the purple cluster is related to publications dealing with the topics of the Manosphere and the Incel phenomenon.

Research themes in misogyny literature

A topic modelling approach is exploited to investigate the textual content of title, abstract and authors’ keywords to give extra insight into multiple latent themes emerging from the literature on misogyny. To reveal the themes, research interests and trends of studies in the existing misogyny literature, we rely on the LDA model.

Topic analysis: LDA model

LDA is an unsupervised machine-learning-based algorithm allowing to discovery of latent (unobserved) “topics” in large unstructured text datasets (Blei et al., 2003 ). Previous research applied LDA to bibliometrics as an efficient tool for understanding a field’s rich underlying topical structure (see, among others, Suominen and Toivanen, 2016 , Tontodimamma et al., 2021 ). The idea behind LDA is that documents contain multiple topics, and each topic is represented as a probability distribution over terms in a fixed vocabulary, with different topics represented by different probabilities of words in the vocabulary. LDA generative process specifies a joint distribution of hidden and observed variables. The algorithm aims to estimate the posterior distribution of the hidden variables given the observed data, but exact inference is intractable, requiring approximate inference algorithms like sampling-based and variational algorithms (Blei et al., 2003 ; Steyvers and Griffiths, 2006 ). To employ LDA, the user needs to specify the number of latent topics in the corpus and two hyperparameters that control how documents and words contribute to topics. A detailed explanation of the LDA algorithm can be found in the studies by Blei ( 2012 ) and Steyvers and Griffiths ( 2006 ).

In our analysis, we use LDA to model a corpus with each document consisting of the publication title, abstract, and keywords. LDA analysis was performed through the Fitlda Matlab routine, available in the Text Analytics Toolbox (MATLAB, 2022 ).

Topic interpretation

The themes generated by LDA are hidden variables that require proper interpretation, typically done by examining the top keywords associated with each topic (Steyvers and Griffiths, 2006 ). To this end, Figs. 5 and 6 show the most important words for each topic, with importance determined by normalising the posterior word probabilities for each topic by the geometric mean of the posterior probabilities for the word across all topics. The topics are ranked based on their estimated likelihood of being observed in the entire dataset. Section 2 of the Supplementary Material contains the list of the most significant terms and their relevance measurements. The twelve selected topics address crucial areas of research on misogyny and can be summarised as follows.

Word clouds for topics 1–6.

Word clouds for topics 7–12.

Topic 1 revolves around a comprehensive discussion on the feminist perspective of the misogyny phenomenon and addresses the root causes of misogyny and gender-based discrimination. The primary focus is on patriarchal male gender privilege and its role in perpetuating misogyny. This topic covers a range of issues related to gender inequality, such as the leadership gap between men and women, women’s rights, and the intersection of misogyny with other forms of oppression.

Topic 2 focuses on how misogyny is expressed in literary works from the early and medieval periods to the modern era. Overall, this topic highlights the role of novels, prose, tales, and fiction in shaping societal attitudes and beliefs about gender and how this has influenced the treatment of women throughout history.

Along similar lines, Topic 3 centres on the study of misogyny in relation to the representation of women in films and on how it influences the portrayal of women on visual media.

Topic 4 is focused on the study of misogyny within the realm of politics and examines how misogyny can be perpetuated within political systems and movements. In particular, the inclusion of terms like “American”, “white”, and “altright” suggests that research included in this topic might focus on the ways in which misogyny is manifested in American politics, particularly within white nationalist and alternative-right movements.

Topic 5 is centred on the study of masculinity and how it relates to misogyny. In particular, the word “hegemonic” suggests that this topic may focus on how dominant forms of masculinity reinforce misogyny and gender-based discrimination.

Topic 6 pertains to the research on women’s rights, including reproductive rights, family law, and access to healthcare, particularly within legal and political systems and on how these systems can either promote or hinder gender equality.

The latent theme of Topic 7 seems to refer to a broad subject area that encompasses issues related to education, sexuality, and sexual identity. Additionally, the related terms suggest a focus on the ways in which sexuality is addressed within educational institutions, including schools and universities.

Topic 8 is a subject area that focuses on the study of digital misogyny, which refers to the ways in which sexism and gender-based discrimination are perpetuated through online and digital media platforms.

The set of words linked to Topic 9 clearly indicates studies focusing on the subject of sexual violence and harassment.

Research included in Topic 10 is related to the investigation of misogyny in the context of music and religion.

Topic 11 appears to be focused on the intersection of misogyny and racism, particularly as it relates to the misogynoir phenomenon.

Finally, Topic 12 deals with the identification and classification of online misogyny.

Topic interactions

By modelling each document as a mixture of several topics and each topic as a combination of words, the LDA technique assigns topics to documents. In our analysis, we awarded the top three document-topic probabilities to each document in this study as long as the probabilities are greater than 0.2. We developed a topic relationship network by considering the topic co-occurrence matrix. The topic network is depicted in Fig. 7 , along with node centrality measures. The nodes are coloured according to their degree, and the edges are weighted depending on co-occurrences. The stronger the link, the thicker the line. Edges with weights less than the average number of co-occurrences have been omitted. The investigation of the linkages reveals relationships between research fronts, emphasising the multidisciplinary character of research on misogyny. The highest degrees are associated with the first three topics, which encompass broader themes dealing with the feminist perspectives of patriarchal society (Topic 1) and the representation of women in literary works (Topic 2) and cinema (Topic 3). Moreover, the latter two topics show the strongest interconnection. Lower degrees are associated with more specialistic research fronts related to the presence of misogyny in music and religion, the misogynoir phenomenon, and the recent field of misogyny detection in computational sciences. In particular, the theme of automatic identification of misogynistic content (Topic 12) is only linked to the research dealing with digital misogyny (Topic 8). A high betweenness, measuring the extent to which the node is part of paths that connect an arbitrary pair of nodes in the network, is associated with Topics 5 and 6, dealing with the study of masculinity and how it relates to misogyny and to research on women rights, respectively. These findings suggest that those research areas are more effective and accessible in the network and form the densest bridges with other nodes.

Topic co-occurence network for the publications on misogyny and nodes’ centrality measures.

Topic temporal evolution

The temporal evolution of the scientific productivity for each topic can be captured through Fig. 8 . The temporal trend of most topics agrees with exponential growth. However, looking at Topic 2, related to studies of misogyny in literary works, we notice how the number of publications in the last period falls below the number expected according to the exponential law. Conversely, the number of published documents for Topics 8 and 12 shows a sudden rise starting from 2018. This trend testifies to the increasing interest in the study of online misogyny and the related techniques for automatic detection and identification. A relatively more contained rise in the size of publications is recorded for Topics 10 related to the investigation of misogyny in the context of music and religions.

Number of publications on misogyny for each topic: observed and expected distributions according to exponential growth.

The appearance and development of new fields of interest and innovative ideas in the research activity on misogyny are confirmed by the heatmaps provided in the Supplementary Material , which show the number of documents, by years, assigned to the identified topics.

Sociological research on online misogyny

To improve our comprehension of the ongoing research on the online dissemination of misogynistic content, we utilised a more specific selection query in our search of the original set of documents, which targeted terms associated with the online environment. We limited our search to articles published in journals categorised under the Social Science subject area. After analysing 277 articles, we identified 187 that were suitable for our study.

Among these documents, four articles provide a review of the literature on online misogyny from different perspectives. Moloney and Love ( 2018 ) review the way online misogyny is conceptualised in the social scientific literature within feminist media studies. The authors identify four different terms that are used to describe different types of online misogyny: online sexual harassment, gendertrolling, e-bile, and disciplinary rhetoric. They also examine the sociological perspective and introduce the concept of “virtual manhood acts” (VMAs), which is situated within the broader context of critical gender theory. VMAs are examples of technologically facilitated misogyny that occur in online social spaces: textual and visual cues are exploited to signal a masculine self, enforce traditional gender norms, oppress women, and restrict men to predefined gender roles. Bosch and Gil-Juarez ( 2021 ) conducted both a systematic review of 33 articles found in Web of Science and a traditional review of academic, institutional, and feminist-activist publications. Their findings show that the majority of aggressors in online gender-based violence are cis-hetero-patriarchal men, who are mostly known to the victims and are often partners or ex-partners. The types of violence range from sexual insults and threats to sexual and high-tech violence. Rubio Martìn and Gordo Lòpez ( 2021 ) provide an overview of the most recent academic literature within the feminist technosocial literature, specifically related to sexual and gender-based violence in digital environments. In addition to discussing the contemporary antecedents of this perspective and presenting current positions and the most representative studies on topics related to online misogyny, the authors demonstrate the potential of the feminist technosocial approach for analysing digital environments and their designs. The main conclusion drawn is that both the values of a misogynistic culture and the possibilities for its reproduction and dissemination are embedded in the design and architecture of digital platforms. The article also highlights the increasing relevance of hybrid realities that result from the synergies between the physical and digital realms, as they enable amplified discourses and actions of online misogyny. Faith ( 2022 ) investigates how gender, technology, and development are interconnected by analysing various works from different fields, including feminist technology studies, gender and development, feminist criminology, and ICT for development. The study also draws data from sources such as civil society, news reports, and international organisations, like the UN, to examine online violence. The author argues for a critical research approach to better understand the complex and opaque power dynamics that shape the digital economy and how it affects gender and development goals.

The articles on online misogyny, which were found in the Social Science category, underwent a manual annotation process to extract various pieces of information. Regarding the different methodologies and techniques used to investigate online misogyny, our findings indicate that discourse analysis and content analysis are the primary methodologies employed in social science literature. Several studies utilise in-depth interviews and surveys to examine the individuals targeted by and responsible for online misogyny. Additionally, digital ethnography, corpus linguistics, and network analysis are also employed. The most analysed social media platforms include Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. Further details on the methodological approaches and the social networks are provided in the Supplementary Material . The subsequent sections delve into details regarding target victims, misogynistic groups, and potential measures to counteract online misogyny.

Targets of online misogyny

Scholars studying online misogyny have identified various target groups that are particularly vulnerable to misogynistic content. These groups include female politicians, journalists, celebrities, influencers, musicians, gamers and developers, YouTubers, university students, and women who have been sexually assaulted. By focusing on specific target groups, research helps in achieving a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which online misogyny manifests and the specific harms that it causes.

Studies on online misogyny directed towards female politicians have concentrated on analysing the experiences of women from various countries, examining the types of misogynistic content directed towards them and the platforms on which it is disseminated. Silva-Paredes and Ibarra Herrera ( 2022 ), using a corpus-based critical discourse analysis, explore abuse received by a Chilean right-wing female politician. Phipps and Montgomery ( 2022 ) conducted an investigation into the portrayal of Nancy Pelosi as the monstrous feminine in the deeply misogynistic attack advertisements of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential re-election campaign. In light of the prevalent misogynistic and anti-feminist depictions of Senator Hillary Clinton across all types of media, Ritchie ( 2013 ) examines how online media continues to have the power to create harmful representations of female politicians and the consequences for the political campaigns of women and for the democratic process as a whole. Focusing on Canadian politicians, Wagner ( 2022 ) discusses how online harassment is a gendered phenomenon. The study, drawing upon interviews with 101 people from diverse genders, racial/ethnic identities, sexual orientations, and partisan affiliations, shows that women are more aware of online harassment than men and how it succeeds in making women feel they are in a hostile political environment. Saluja and Thilaka ( 2021 ), analysing the Twitter discourse referring to three well-known female politicians in India, reveal similar findings, emphasising how female politicians are subjected to a different and distinct pattern of reception compared to their male counterparts. Instances of misogynistic or sexist hate speech and abusive language against female politicians in Japan are investigated in Fuchs and Schäfer ( 2021 ).

The research conducted by Chen et al. ( 2020 ) through in-depth interviews with 75 female journalists from Germany, India, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the USA revealed that those journalists frequently encounter online gendered harassment. The harassment, which includes sexist comments that criticise, attack, marginalise, stereotype, or threaten them based on their gender or sexuality, has led to some female journalists being subjected to misogynistic attacks and even threats of sexual violence. The study suggests that this kind of harassment limits their level of interaction with their audience without being attacked or sexually undermined.

By examining the findings of the qualitative in-depth interview of 48 female journalists, Similar findings are reported by Koirala ( 2020 ), whose study, based on the qualitative in-depth interview of 48 female journalists in Nepal, highlights how some of them tolerate harassment by being ‘strong like a man’, while many avoid social media platforms to keep free of such abusive behaviour. Along the same lines, Rego ( 2018 ) analyses Twitter conversations with Indian journalists and argues that social media platforms constitute convenient havens of harassment against assertive women.

Ghaffari ( 2022 ), analysing user-generated comments on the Instagram profile of a female American celebrity, shows how women are required to suppress their feelings and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. The research conducted by Döring and Mohseni ( 2019 ) supports these findings, focusing on video producers on YouTube. Their study found that female video producers are more likely to receive negative comments compared to male producers, but only if they display their sexuality or address feminist topics. However, if they conform to traditional gender role expectations, they do not experience this kind of negative feedback.

The emergence of female gamers in video game communities has led to a rise in misogynistic attacks against those who challenge the traditional hypermasculine culture of gaming. The 2014 #gamergate incident is a prime example of this, where a group of gamers opposed “Social Justice Warriors” who highlighted discrimination and exclusion in the gaming industry. Female gamers were subject to death threats, rape threats, and doxxing, where their private information was shared online (Tomkinson and Harper, 2015 ). The video gaming community has a long history of gender-based attacks on women, which serve to create a toxic environment for them when making and playing video games. According to Jenson and De Castell ( 2021 ), who approach the subject from a feminist perspective, video games have been predominantly masculine and gendered spaces. Repeated displays of aggression, referred to as “shock and awe”, perpetuate and legitimise gendered hostility. These displays also help to preserve exclusionary media practices designed to maintain the status quo.

The Manosphere

Numerous articles on online misogyny examine the Manosphere, a collection of websites and social media groups that endorse misogynistic beliefs. These networks are not uniform but consist of multiple misogynistic groups with differing perspectives and degrees of violence, which are associated with far-right, homophobic, and racist ideologies (Dickel and Evolvi, 2022 ). Despite their variations, all these groups portray feminism as innately discriminatory and threatening to men (Farci and Righetti, 2019 ). The Manosphere adheres to the beliefs of a ‘gynocentric order’ and the Red Pill ideology, a metaphor derived from the movie The Matrix, in which the protagonist’s eyes are opened to reality upon taking the “red pill”. Although these groups may have distinct beliefs, many members use the term misandry, referring to the hate against men, which has ideological and community-building functions. It reinforces a misogynistic belief system that portrays feminism as a movement that hates men and boys (Marwick and Caplan, 2018 ). The use of misandry caters to both extremist misogynistic subcultures and moderate men’s rights groups. It enables these groups to adopt the language of identity politics, positioning men as the silenced victims of reverse discrimination in all aspects of political, economic, and social life and solidifying their sense of entitlement (Farci and Righetti, 2019 ).

Men’s rights activists employ a personal action frame to construct a plausible but fictional narrative of men’s oppression (Carian, 2022 ). The movement against feminism revolves around advocating for men’s rights while denying that gendered violence exists (Garcìa-Mingo et al., 2022 ). The Manosphere engages in a crucial ideological effort that normalises, trivialises, and legitimises sexual violence against women in various forms (Garcìa-Mingo et al. 2022 ). Some of the primary themes of this ideology are: criticising and verbally abusing women, downplaying or not taking seriously accusations or reports of rape, depicting #MeToo as a feminist plot, portraying men as victims, and advocating for the restoration of patriarchal values (Dickel and Evolvi, 2022 ). Hopton and Langer ( 2022 ), analysing Twitter content to understand how the Manosphere constructs masculinity and femininity, identify three discursive strategies: co-opting discourses of oppression, naming power, and disavowal by disaggregation. These strategies are used to position men as victims, portray women as monstrous others, and re-establish gendered power hierarchies through continuous references to rape in their discourse.

One of the main groups in the Manosphere, the Incels, believes in a hetero-patriarchal racial hierarchy and justifies their lack of sexual activity through ideas rooted in biological determinism and victimisation by women and feminism (Lindsay, 2022 ). Scotto di Carlo’s analysis of Incels (Scotto di Carlo, 2023 ) reveals a conflation of apparently sarcastic metaphors, dark humour, and misogyny to describe women, as well as unique self-representations of forum participants that do not conform to typical ‘us vs them’ identity pattern (van Dijk, 1998 ): instead of highlighting the positive qualities of their in-group, the Incels describe themselves in a derogatory manner, leading to a spiral of self-pity and self-contempt that can foster a sense of brotherhood within the community. These findings stem from a content-discourse analysis of posts from threads specifically discussing women on an incel forum and from the study of nominations and predications of self-representations used in the ‘Introductions’ thread of the same forum. Halpin ( 2022 ), drawing on a qualitative analysis of comments made on a popular Incel discussion board, demonstrates how the group uses its perceived subordinate status to justify their misogyny and legitimise its degradation of women. Conducting an ethnographic content analysis of incel-identified subreddits and using femmephobia as a lens, Menzie ( 2022 ) examines how Incels employ heteropatriarchal conceptions of femininity to devalue women and to describe the social conditions that force them to remain celibate. The study focuses on the symbolic actors constructed by Incels, namely Stacy, who represents the most attractive women, Becky, who represents women of ordinary or moderate attractiveness, and Chad, who represents dominant alpha males. Five themes emerge from the analysis. First, Incels use these symbolic gendered actors to describe a sex deficit most men suffer, implying their own undesirability. Second, Incels’ femmephobia towards hyper-feminine women for not fitting heteropatriarchal requirements is evident in “Stacy”.Third, “Becky” shows a more flexible femmephobia towards women of different appearances who uphold “unrealistic standards” and date men more attractive than themselves or rely on feminism to cope with not attracting the same men as Stacy. Through “Chad”, the fourth topic examines the idea of masculinity, incorporating feelings of jealousy and recognition of victimisation under societal conditions that allow women to exploit men financially or emotionally. Finally, the analysis reveals how Incels prioritise partner display as a symbol of wealth. Along the same lines, Koller and Heritage ( 2020 ) analysed a textual corpus created from threads posted and commented on by Incels. The study examined keywords, word frequencies, and concordance lines to explore the representation of gendered social actors. The findings suggest that Incels position different groups of men in a hierarchy in which conventionally attractive men occupy the top position. Female social actors are not placed in a similar hierarchy. Furthermore, an additional appraisal analysis of the most frequently occurring male and female social actors reveals that men are judged as unable to function, while women are viewed as immoral, dishonest, and capable of causing harm to men.

Chang ( 2022 ), analysing the discourses circulating on a Reddit forum for self-proclaimed Incels, explores the perceptions created by the term “femoid”, a derogatory term generated by Incels to refer to women, constructing them as an abject “monstrous-feminine”, serving a dehumanising function and thus justifying the violence enacted upon them. Tranchese and Sugiura ( 2021 ) focus on the similarities between the language used in pornography and that of Incels, arguing that both are different manifestations of the same misogyny. Their study involves a linguistic analysis that compares a collection of posts from an Incel subreddit community with a reference collection of posts from 688 subreddits covering other subjects. From a different perspective, Byerly ( 2020 ) investigated news media language in the coverage of Incel behaviour associated with sexual aggression. The study employs qualitative textual analysis on a sample of 70 articles obtained using keyword combinations ‘incels and violence’, ‘incels and social media’, and ‘incels and sexism’ from 29 distinct news sources across 6 countries throughout the years 2018 and 2019. Research findings indicate that news stories emphasise the role of social media in helping Incels find each other and form online communities. Additionally, specific social media sites served as locations to amplify misogynistic attitudes and to boast about their murders. Speckhard et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a study that involved gathering information on Incels’ social and personal lives, adherence to incel ideology, opinions on incel-related violence, support for violent actions, and beliefs regarding the classification of Incels as violent extremists. The data was collected through a Google Forms survey that was distributed to active adult members of a prominent Incel forum. The final sample under analysis comprises 272 respondents who self-identify as Incels. The findings demonstrate that while most of them do not advocate violence and are non-violent, those who strongly hold misogynistic beliefs are more likely to endorse violent actions. Participation in Incel online forums, which validate their viewpoints, could also lead to an increase in their misogyny. O’Donnell and Shor ( 2022 ) investigated how misogynistic Incels discuss mass violence committed by their peers. Through qualitative content analysis of comments related to the 2018 Toronto van attack, in which self-declared Incel Alek Minassian drove a van into pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 16, they found that a large majority of self-proclaimed Incels expressed support for such violence, as well as violence in general. Incels believed that mass violence was a means to achieve four main goals: gaining more attention, seeking revenge, reinforcing traditional masculinity, and bringing about political change.

MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), a separatist group within the Manosphere, also promotes a misogynistic agenda. Unlike Men’s Rights Activists and Incels, MGTOWs focus on individualistic and self-empowering actions, encouraging men to lead a self-sufficient life away from women. Jones et al. ( 2020 ), using content and thematic analyses of a corpus of tweets from three of the most active MGTOW users on Twitter, have linked the MGTOW ideology with toxic masculinity, showing that the online harassment it generates is deeply misogynistic and upholds heterosexual and hegemonic masculinity. The authors note that, although misogyny and violence produced by MGTOW are not extreme, the group’s appeals to rational thinking make them appear to be common sense. Wright et al. ( 2020 ) delve deeper into the structural underpinnings and nature of MGTOW debate within their discussion forums, including leadership, moderation, in-group dynamics, and the discursive form of debates, and how this contributes to the propagation of misogyny and different calls to action. The authors conducted a content analysis of comments in the official MGTOW website’s forum and a digital ethnographic approach. Their findings showed that discussions primarily revolve around women and the MGTOW community. When discussing women, users did so in an openly misogynistic way. When discussing MGTOW, conversations sought to define and rationalise it as an ideology, both for individuals and the collective. The authors also note that the communicative form was mainly communitarian, with strong group bonding, ties, and engagement.

Countering online misogyny

Strategies and tactics used by women to cope with and address gender violence online are diverse and sometimes activated simultaneously. Some of these strategies prioritise self-care and protection, while others focus on resistance and challenging such violence. From a self-care perspective, it is crucial to adopt mitigation measures that reduce harm and minimise risks, such as assessing online identities, adopting pseudonyms or collective identities, using masks, strengthening accounts, creating distance, silencing or erasing sensitive content (Bosch and Gil-Juarez, 2021 ). In the research by Chen et al. ( 2020 ), it is shown how female journalists have developed multiple strategies for coping with abuse, including modifying their social media postings, altering their reporting subjects, and utilising technological tools to prevent offensive comments on their public pages.

Merely prioritising self-care is insufficient; an active approach should be taken to resist and transform the current state of online misogyny. This involves engaging in actions that challenge the status quo and strive for meaningful change, with the ultimate goal of repoliticising the internet and social media with, for, and from a feminist perspective (Bosch and Gil-Juarez, 2021 ). From this standpoint, social media platforms can give space to the promotion of gender-based harassment but can also serve as crucial spaces for feminist education and activism and for the formation of a feminist counter-public that directly contests a misogynistic culture (Sills et al. 2016 ). In this perspective, Kurasawa et al. ( 2021 ) discuss a new form of feminist activism called evidentiary activism, which uses evidence of gender-based online violence (GBOV). Evidentiary activism engages with existing formal evidentiary cultures by advocating for legislative and regulatory reforms to address GBOV, promoting platform-based technological solutions, and challenging conventional notions of user privacy and anonymity. In addition, it involves contributing to and embracing informal evidentiary cultures, which use evidence as a tool for cultural and political mobilisation against GBOV. Strategies used include publicising instances of GBOV, highlighting the moral implications of such violence, and fostering feminist digital citizenship. As an example of online feminist activism, Kim ( 2017 ) explored the role of the 2015 hashtag #iamafeminist in promoting feminist identification and activism against misogyny in South Korea. The hashtag persisted for three months by addressing current gender issues and promoting activism both online and offline. The article by Shesterina and Fedosova ( 2021 ) examines the methods used by female bloggers to promote feminist ideas on Instagram. The authors found that while many posts are logically argued, female bloggers often use emotional manipulation and persuasion techniques to promote their ideas. The study identifies both the main topics in support of feminism, such as domestic violence and gender stereotypes, victim blaming, and the most common attitudes that female bloggers challenge in their posts (e.g., “gender roles are determined by nature”, “a woman must obey a man”, “female intelligence is worse than male”, “all women are hysterical”). The authors also describe the lexical means and rhetorical techniques commonly used in female blogs, such as metaphors, allusions, appeals, and rhetorical questions. The language used is generally colloquial, making texts easier to read, but it also includes harsh criticism and increased emotionality compared to traditional journalistic texts.

However, according to Jane ( 2016 ), taking matters into one’s own hands when faced with online harassment may have limited effectiveness and is not a sufficient solution to the problem of gendered cyber-hate. This approach shifts the responsibility from the perpetrators to the targets and the private sphere rather than addressing the broader social issue. The author suggests that a combination of feminist activism efforts, including a revised approach to collectivism, is needed to enact the necessary legislative and corporate changes to combat gendered online hate. The study by Davis and Santillana ( 2019 ) examines the potential and limitations of digital media activism in raising awareness about gender-based harassment using the case study of Las Morras, a Mexico City-based feminist media group. The study demonstrates the paradoxical role of networked digital media as an activist tool. While it rapidly circulated a critique of misogyny, it also attracted negative attention, leading to the group’s eventual demise due to doxing, trolling, and personal threats directed at its members.

Megalians, a cyberfeminist community in South Korea, utilised the technique of “mirroring” to combat online misogyny (Jeong and Lee, 2018 , Moon et al., 2022 , Yang and Lee, 2022 ). This practice involved mimicking the language of misogynistic online communities and reversing the roles of perpetrators and victims. Megalians also used parodies to subvert the humour and power dynamic that men often used to make fun of women. By appropriating and using the language of misogynists, they aimed to strip men of their ability to use misogynistic speech for their own entertainment. This approach also exposed the absurdity and ridiculousness of the misogynistic rhetoric. However, the success of mirroring is not clear-cut. In fact, while Megalians’ voices were heard in society, the strong message and crude language proved divisive and polarising (Kim, 2021 ).

An alternative strategy for addressing misogyny is to use social re-norming and appeal to the empathy of those engaging in harassing behaviour. The goal of re-norming is to challenge cultural attitudes and beliefs that tolerate or encourage violence against women and to promote new standards of behaviour that prioritise respect, equality, and safety for all individuals. One example of this approach is the experiment conducted by Whiley et al. ( 2023 ) on Twitter. Their experiment aimed to inform misogynistic offenders that their sexist language was disapproved of by the majority of people. However, this intervention did not result in a reduction in the number or frequency of sexist Tweets or users, nor did it affect the tone or emotional intensity of subsequent tweets. In contrast, research has demonstrated the efficacy of creative humour, such as that used by the IncelTears subreddit to ridicule Incels, in promoting (dis)affiliative and informative functions (Dynel, 2020 ).

Computational science research on online misogyny

In this section, we focus on documents on misogyny classified by Scopus in the “Computer Science” subject area. A total of 196 documents were found; 30 documents were excluded as they were off-topic. Two surveys were identified in the retrieved documents, which centre on the automated detection of online misogyny. In one survey, Shushkevich and Cardiff ( 2019 ) present an examination of techniques for identifying misogyny in social media through automation. Meanwhile, Sultana et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a systematic literature review of prior research to reveal different aspects of misogyny and sexist humour and to create a codebook for annotation purposes.

Automatic detection of misogyny

Manual classification of the retrieved articles reveals a wealth of valuable information regarding the automatic detection of misogyny. This includes details about the social networks that are being analysed, the primary techniques employed, and the availability of datasets.

In line with research in the social science area (see Section 4), Twitter (with 95 publications) and Reddit (with 46 publications) continue to be the most commonly used sources, even in the area of computational science. The number of studies dealing with Facebook and Instagram is very limited. Researchers frequently prioritise the study of Twitter (now rebranded X) and Reddit above other social media platforms due to their historically liberal provision of Application Programming Interface (API) access. Furthermore, Reddit, which has been described as ’a community of communities’ (Massanari, 2017 , p. 331), has a diverse array of subreddits that cater to different interests, some of which foster misogynistic beliefs. However, the new pricing plans for using the Twitter API, introduced in March 2023, are expected to significantly affect research. A survey conducted by the Coalition for Independent Technology Research Footnote 2 outlines the potential consequences of discontinuing free and affordable API access. These drawbacks include the disruption of research on the dissemination of harmful content. A similar survey on the impact of Reddit’s recent API changes Footnote 3 emphasises how researchers are concerned about interruptions in their research resulting from API modifications. It is worth noting that only one study (Semenzin and Bainotti, 2020 ) reports the results of research on Telegram, which, in fact, has become a widely used platform for the dissemination of abusive and misogynistic content due to its high degree of anonymity and limited content-moderation policies (Guhl and Davey, 2020 ).

The automatic detection of misogyny typically utilises various techniques, with pre-trained deep-learning models and multimodal models being the most commonly employed. Other techniques include machine learning algorithms such as SVM, Naïve Bayes, or Random Forest. Additionally, some documents rely on convolutional neural network models. More details on the published documents employing the different techniques are provided in the Supplementary Material .

Four articles employ the use of lexicons for automatic detection of misogyny. Attanasio and Pastor ( 2020 ) propose misogyny lexicons for automatic misogyny identification in order to improve sentence embedding similarity. Hurtlex (Bassignana et al. 2018 ), which is a lexicon of offensive, aggressive, and hateful words in more than 50 languages, is exploited for misogyny identification in the studies by Chiril et al. ( 2022 ) and Pamungkas et al. ( 2018 ). Kwarteng et al. ( 2022 ) created a specific lexicon around misogynoir.

Taxonomies and guidelines

When releasing annotated datasets, a crucial aspect is to clearly outline the guidelines for categorising misogynistic language. Four articles in the retrieved documents address this issue (Anzovino et al., 2018 , Guest et al., 2021 , Sultana et al., 2021 , Zeinert et al., 2021 ).

Sultana et al. ( 2021 ) proposed eleven categories to classify misogynistic remarks: Discredit (slurring over women with no other larger intention), Stereotyping (description of women’s physical appeal and/or comparisons to narrow standards), Sexual harassment (to physically assert power over women), Threats of violence (intent to physically assert power over women or to intimidate and silence women through threats of violence), Dominance (to preserve male control, protect male interest and exclude women from the conversation), Derailing (to justify abuse, reject male responsibility, and attempt to disrupt the conversation in order to refocus it), Victim blaming (blaming the victims for the problems they are facing), Mixed bias (gender bias might be mixed with other kinds of biases like religious or racial), Sexual objectification (evoke sexual imagery), and Damning (contains prayers to hurt women). Regarding the expression of misogyny using humour, this research proposes eight categories of jokes: Devaluation of personal characteristics, Women’s place in the private sphere, Violence against women, Feminist backlash, Sexual objectification, Excluding and/or objectifying humour, Transphobic Jokes and Cruel or Humiliation. All the categories proposed in Anzovino et al. ( 2018 ) are included in Sultana et al. ( 2021 ). The same occurs with categories proposed by Zeinert et al. ( 2021 ), except for the interesting concept of neosexism. Neosexism is a concept defined in Francine Tougas et al. ( 1999 ), and presents as the belief that women have already achieved equality and that discrimination of women does not exist. Neosexism was the most common form of misogyny present in the dataset of Zeinert et al. ( 2021 ). Guest et al. ( 2021 ) define four categories of misogynistic content: misogynistic pejoratives, descriptions of misogynistic treatment, acts of misogynistic derogation and gendered personal attacks against women.

Evaluation campaigns

A number of the documents on misogyny that fall within the Computer Science subject area were produced in connection with various evaluation campaigns. These campaigns include EVALITA (Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian), IberLEF (Iberian Languages Evaluation Forum), SemEval (International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation), and FIRE (Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation). The EVALITA campaign includes the Automatic Misogyny Identification (AMI) task (Fersini et al. 2018 ). The IberLEF annual campaign features the EXIST task, which is sEXism Identification in Social neTworks (Rodrìguez-Sanchez et al. 2021 ). SemEval has a task called MAMI, which is Multimedia Automatic Misogyny Identification (Fersini et al., 2022 ). Lastly, FIRE includes the Arabic Misogyny Identification (ArMI) task (Mulki and Ghanem, 2022 ).

Thanks to these evaluation campaigns, datasets for automatic misogyny detection in multiple languages are now available. Specifically, the AMI task made available two datasets, in English and Italian, downloaded from Twitter. The EXIST task provided datasets of tweets in both English and Spanish. The dataset released for the MAMI challenge comprises memes that were downloaded from popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as from websites dedicated to meme creation and sharing. Lastly, the ArMI task provided a dataset of tweets written in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and various Arabic dialects.

The bibliometric analysis reveals that research on misogyny has witnessed exponential growth from 2010 to 2022. This growth can be attributed to various areas of research, but one prominent factor contributing to this trend is the increased attention given to the online dissemination of hate towards women. Several findings support this initial conclusion.

Firstly, the analysis indicates that the most productive authors in the field of misogyny research come from the area of computer science. This suggests that experts in this field have been actively investigating and publishing on the topic, further driving the growth of research in this area.

Moreover, examining the topics covered in the analysed documents provides additional evidence for the influence of online misogyny. Topic 8, which is related to digital misogyny, and Topic 12, which focuses on the automatic identification of misogyny in social media, have experienced significantly higher growth compared to the broader field of misogyny research (as depicted in Fig. 8 ). This finding indicates that the study of misogyny in online platforms and the development of methods to detect misogyny in social media have gained considerable attention within the research community.

The major role that online misogyny plays in the development of the area supports the idea that the research seeks to delineate the contours of a new face of misogyny, the latest manifestation of hate towards women which is expressed more crudely and more openly on social networks because they facilitate anonymity and a greater distance from the victims.

Another conclusion drawn from the analysis of the conceptual structure of misogyny research (Fig. 4) and the interactions between topics (Fig. 7 ) is that the research focused on the automatic detection of misogyny in online platforms (Topic 12) exhibits weak connections with other conceptual areas that address different aspects of the phenomenon. This area of research only demonstrates some conceptual relation to the broader study of online misogyny (Topic 8). This presents a significant challenge, considering that qualitative analysis of sociological research emphasises the growing relevance of hybrid realities resulting from the synergies between the physical and digital realms, not just in violence against women but also in specific domains such as politics. Moreover, the lack of relationship between Topic 12, which focuses on the automatic detection of misogyny, and Topic 9, which explores violence against women and the concept of Manosphere (primarily a digital phenomenon), is particularly noteworthy. This suggests that research in the computational science domain may not be adequately addressing the most extreme manifestations of online misogyny. Furthermore, it also indicates that the tools offered by computational linguistics are underutilised in social science-led research.

In general, the absence of stronger connections between certain topics that attract the attention of various disciplines could be seen as a sign of the practical challenges encountered in interdisciplinary research. For instance, Topic 6, which focuses on the study of women’s rights within legal and political systems, exhibits very weak relationships with Topics 8 and 12, despite qualitative sociological research emphasising the need to consider the new dynamics emerging in virtual spaces. Another illustration can be found in the qualitative review of computational science literature. It becomes apparent that this research area relies on the definition of taxonomies that would benefit from clarification through collaboration with social science research. For instance, the inclusion of stereotypes against women as part of the types of misogyny raises the question of whether the concept of misogyny should be reserved for the most extreme forms of hatred or should encompass the wide range of sexist attitudes and gender symbolic constructions derived from a patriarchal culture.

The main conclusion drawn from this work is that research across different disciplines is addressing a new facet of misogyny, a revitalised version of outdated beliefs about women’s inferiority that circulate in novel forms within the online realm. Understanding the characteristics and functions of this new expression of misogyny poses a challenge that necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, leveraging the strengths of different areas of knowledge to effectively address it.

The above-mentioned lack of collaboration between different areas prevents the establishment of connections that would enrich the analysis of the way misogyny is disseminated today in both the virtual and real world. For example, social science knowledge in combination with computational discourse analysis or NLP technologies could be used to study the connections and similarities between agents disseminating misogyny online and mainstream social actors such as political parties or religious organisations. In the same way, the similarity between misogynist discourses and those of left-leaning feminists in open battle against other fractions of the feminist movement could also be monitored and would allow for a more complex view of the phenomenon. For both approaches, it is necessary that social science knowledge strongly rooted in the study of social relations be combined with the new methodologies that computer science offers for the analysis of discourse produced naturally in digital or real communicative exchanges, such as in parliaments, rallies or interviews.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this research, as no data were generated. The analysed data were retrieved from the commercial Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus databases, following the search procedure detailed in the Supplementary Material .

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken as part of the ICOMIC (Identifying and Counteracting Online Misogyny in Cyberspace) Project funded by EU Next Generation, MUR-Fondo Promozione e Sviluppo-DM 737/2021

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Fontanella, L., Chulvi, B., Ignazzi, E. et al. How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature review using a computational linguistic approach. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 478 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02978-7

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African Literature Research Paper Topics

This article provides a comprehensive guide to African literature research paper topics , showcasing the intricate blend of stories, cultures, and historical epochs from the African continent. From the lyrical oral traditions predating colonization to the vibrant modern narratives addressing current global issues, African literature offers a treasure trove of research avenues. Engaging with these topics allows students to deepen their literary analysis skills while broadening their global perspective.

100 African Literature Research Paper Topics

African literature, with its diverse languages, cultures, and historical contexts, offers a wide spectrum of potential research topics. This literature reflects not just the socio-political and economic realities of the African continent but also the hopes, dreams, and rich oral traditions of its people. The following list divides the extensive range of African literature research paper topics into ten categories, providing students with a structured starting point for their research endeavors.

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1. Pre-Colonial Oral Traditions

The role of the griot in West African societies.
Exploration of African myths and legends.
Folktales as moral and social guides in African societies.
The significance of storytelling under the African moonlight.
The art of African epic poetry and its heroes.
Proverbs and their functions in traditional African societies.
Song and dance: Transmitting history and cultural values.
African riddles and their role in developing wisdom.
The importance of animal tales in African oral traditions.
The evolution of oral narratives: From mouth to manuscript.

2. Colonial and Post-Colonial Narratives

Representation of colonialism in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”.
Language and identity in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s works.
Post-colonial African cities in literature.
The aftermath of colonialism: Cultural identity and conflict.
Literature as resistance: Anti-colonial sentiments in African writings.
Assimilation and alienation: African writers during the colonial period.
The effects of missionary education on African literature.
Portrayal of traditional leaders in post-colonial African literature.
Feminist voices in post-colonial African narratives.
Independence and disillusionment in post-independence African novels.

3. Contemporary African Literature

Migration and diaspora in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels.
Urbanism and modernity in Teju Cole’s “Every Day is for the Thief”.
The emergence of Afrofuturism in contemporary African literature.
Depicting urbanization and its challenges in contemporary African literature.
Literature and the post-apartheid era in South Africa.
The role of magical realism in African literary settings.
Language and post-colonial identity in the works of Alain Mabanckou.
The challenges of globalization in contemporary African novels.
Crime fiction in contemporary African literature.
The rise of speculative fiction in modern African literature.

4. African Women Writers

Femininity and tradition in Buchi Emecheta’s works.
Dambudzo Marechera and the exploration of women’s independence.
Motherhood and womanhood in the novels of Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Female empowerment and resilience in Ama Ata Aidoo’s short stories.
Womanist perspectives in African literature.
Women, war, and survival in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun”.
The portrayal of domestic violence in African women’s literature.
Feminine perspectives on colonial and post-colonial Africa.
Sexuality and agency in the works of Lola Shoneyin.
The role of women in preserving African oral traditions.

5. African Literature in Francophone Countries

Léopold Sédar Senghor and the concept of ‘Negritude’.
Exploration of identity in Camara Laye’s “The Dark Child”.
Post-colonial cities in the works of Alain Mabanckou.
Alienation and assimilation in Ahmadou Kourouma’s novels.
The influence of French literary structures on Francophone African writers.
Memory and trauma in Patrick Chamoiseau’s “Texaco”.
The quest for identity in Assia Djebar’s writings.
Language politics in Francophone African literature.
Cultural fusion and duality in the works of Maryse Condé.
Gender and politics in the works of Calixthe Beyala.

6. Poetry in African Literature

Exploring Wole Soyinka’s poetic landscapes.
The role of poetry during the anti-apartheid movement.
The fusion of traditional and modern themes in Kofi Awoonor’s poems.
Love, loss, and identity: A deep dive into Warsan Shire’s verses.
The influence of nature in the poetry of Okot p’Bitek.
Political activism and poetry: The case of Chenjerai Hove.
Poetic expressions of Diaspora and longing in the works of Kwame Dawes.
The interplay of music and poetry in African oral traditions.
Gabriel Okara’s exploration of cultural duality through poetry.
The evolving form and content of modern African poetry.

7. Theatre and Drama in African Context

Wole Soyinka’s plays and the critique of post-colonial African governments.
Ritual and drama: The fusion in traditional African theater.
Athol Fugard and the theater of the apartheid era.
Exploring gender roles in the plays of Efua Sutherland.
Political satire in African theater: A study of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s plays.
The influence of traditional dance and music in African theater.
Post-colonial identity and cultural dialogues in the plays of Bode Sowande.
The themes of corruption and power in Femi Osofisan’s dramas.
Interpreting African history through the plays of Ama Ata Aidoo.
Modern adaptations of traditional African myths in contemporary theater.

8. Literary Magazines and their Role in Shaping African Literature

The impact of Transition Magazine on post-colonial African literature.
Chimurenga : Chronicling contemporary African thought and its global resonance.
The role of Drum Magazine in highlighting apartheid-era narratives.
The emergence and influence of Kwani? in East African literary circles.
Literary magazines as platforms for feminist voices in Africa.
The pan-African vision of Bakwa Magazine .
Promoting African fantasy and science fiction: A look at Omenana Magazine .
Jalada Africa : Pushing linguistic and geographical boundaries.
Saraba Magazine and its commitment to simplicity and provocation.
The journey and contributions of The Kalahari Review to African literary discourse.

9. African Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Themes of identity and growing up in African children’s literature.
Representation of African folktales in modern children’s books.
Addressing conflict and trauma: Children’s literature in post-war African countries.
Exploration of family and community in Nnedi Okorafor’s young adult novels.
The role of children’s literature in preserving indigenous African languages.
Coming-of-age narratives in African young adult literature.
The portrayal of African history and heroes for young readers.
Fantasy and realism: The diverse worlds of African young adult fiction.
The educational significance of African children’s literature in the global context.
Contemporary challenges and future prospects of African children’s and young adult literature.

10. African Literature and the Global Context

Translations and their role in globalizing African narratives.
The portrayal of Africa in global literature: Stereotypes and realities.
The reception and critique of African literature in Western academia.
African literature in global literary festivals and awards.
Exploring the African diaspora: Literature from African writers outside the continent.
Post-colonial literature: Drawing parallels between African and South Asian narratives.
Global publishing and its impact on African authors and readership.
African literature in global curriculums: Representation and interpretation.
Collaboration and exchange: African writers in global writer residencies and workshops.
The future of African literature in the age of globalization and digital revolution.

In conclusion, African literature, both ancient and contemporary, offers a vast landscape for literary exploration. African literature research paper topics listed above merely scratch the surface but provide a foundational starting point for students seeking to delve into the diverse narratives that the continent has to offer.

The Range of African Literature Research Paper Topics

African literature is an expansive and rich domain that encompasses the voices of many nations, cultures, and histories. From the oral traditions that echo the continent’s ancient roots to the vibrant modern narratives confronting contemporary issues, African literature offers an astounding range of topics for research and exploration. This article dives deep into the heart of African literature, illuminating its vast expanse and highlighting the numerous research paper topics it presents.

Historical Roots and Oral Traditions

The African continent, often referred to as the cradle of humankind, has a literary tradition that predates written records. Long before colonization and the introduction of the Latin alphabet, stories, values, beliefs, and histories were passed down orally from one generation to the next. These oral traditions, which include proverbs, myths, legends, and songs, form an integral part of the continent’s cultural fabric. African literature research paper topics could delve into how these oral narratives have influenced modern African literature, or how they have been adapted and translated into written form.

Colonial and Post-colonial Narratives

Colonization, a significant chapter in African history, has left an indelible mark on its literature. Writers from various African nations have used their works to comment on, critique, and confront the horrors of colonial rule. Post-colonial literature, in particular, offers insights into the struggles of nations grappling with the legacies of colonization, including issues of identity, cultural erosion, and the search for post-independence national narratives. Exploring the differences and commonalities in post-colonial narratives across different African countries can provide a deeper understanding of the continent’s shared and diverse histories.

The Power of Language

One of the striking aspects of African literature is its linguistic diversity. With over 2000 languages spoken across the continent, African writers often grapple with the choice of language for their narratives. While many choose to write in colonial languages like English, French, or Portuguese, others opt for indigenous languages, ensuring the preservation and elevation of local dialects. This linguistic diversity can be a focal point for research, exploring African literature research paper topics like the politics of language, the influence of bilingualism on narrative techniques, and the challenges and opportunities of translating African works for global audiences.

Thematic Evolution in Contemporary Narratives

Modern African literature reflects the rapidly changing socio-political landscape of the continent. Themes that were once taboo, such as urbanization, environmental concerns, and technological advancements, are now finding their way into the narratives. These themes present fresh avenues for research, allowing scholars to investigate how African literature is evolving to encompass a broader range of human experiences and concerns.

Women in African Literature

The voices of African women, once marginalized, have come to the forefront in recent decades. Authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Mariama Bâ, among others, have illuminated the specific struggles, triumphs, and daily lives of African women. Their narratives challenge patriarchal norms, explore intersectional identities, and redefine feminism in an African context. Given the pivotal role that these authors play in reshaping African literature, numerous African literature research paper topics can center on the portrayal of women, the themes they address, and the stylistic innovations they bring to the table.

Afrofuturism and Speculative Fiction

The rise of Afrofuturism has been one of the most exciting developments in African literature. By imagining future landscapes and blending African mythologies with speculative elements, writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Tade Thompson offer fresh perspectives on the continent’s past, present, and future. This genre, with its unique blend of traditional and futuristic narratives, offers fertile ground for research, inviting explorations into how African authors envision the continent’s future and how they integrate indigenous myths into futuristic settings.

African literature, with its rich tapestry of voices, themes, and narratives, is a treasure trove for literary researchers. Whether one is interested in historical narratives, linguistic explorations, thematic studies, or genre analyses, the continent’s literature offers an array of topics waiting to be uncovered. As this article highlights, the scope of research in African literature is vast and ever-expanding, reflecting the dynamism and diversity of the continent itself.

How to Choose African Literature Research Paper Topics

African literature is vast, diverse, and deeply rooted in the historical and cultural fabric of the continent. Given the plethora of narratives, themes, and voices it offers, choosing a research paper topic can be both exciting and daunting. However, with a structured approach and an understanding of one’s own interests, it’s possible to narrow down and select a topic that’s both engaging and academically enriching. Here’s a guide to help you navigate this process.

Understand Your Passion: Begin by introspecting and understanding what truly intrigues you about African literature. Are you drawn to historical narratives, contemporary themes, specific regions, or particular authors? Identifying your passion can act as a compass, guiding your research in a direction that keeps you engaged.
Delve into Preliminary Reading: Before zeroing in on a topic, immerse yourself in a broad range of African literary works. This will not only expose you to various themes and styles but also help identify gaps in existing research or areas that particularly pique your interest.
Consider Cultural and Regional Specificities: African literature is not monolithic. The experiences of North Africans can vastly differ from those in Sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, East African narratives might diverge from West African tales. Consider narrowing your focus to a specific region or culture to add depth to your research.
Engage with Critical Analysis: Reading critical analyses and literary critiques can offer insights into prevailing interpretations and highlight contentious issues within specific texts or themes. This can be a goldmine for identifying areas of debate or fresh perspectives.
Explore Interdisciplinary Angles: African literature intersects with history, sociology, anthropology, and many other disciplines. Consider exploring interdisciplinary angles – for instance, the portrayal of post-colonial identity, the impact of urbanization on narrative structures, or the influence of traditional oral narratives on modern fiction.
Reflect on Contemporary Relevance: Some of the most impactful research draws parallels between literary themes and contemporary societal issues. Consider how themes from African literature resonate with current global or local events or challenges.
Consult Professors and Peers: Engage in discussions with your professors, advisors, or classmates. They can offer valuable feedback, suggest resources, or provide a fresh perspective that might help refine your topic.
Ensure Availability of Resources: While an obscure topic might seem enticing, it’s essential to ensure that adequate resources, primary texts, and secondary references are available to support your research.
Set Clear Boundaries: Given the vastness of African literature, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Once you’ve chosen a broad topic, set clear boundaries. For instance, if you’re exploring feminism in African literature, you might narrow it down to a specific region, time period, or set of authors.
Stay Open to Evolution: As you delve deeper into your research, be open to the evolution of your topic. Sometimes, the research journey might lead you to more specific, nuanced, or slightly altered research questions that are more compelling or feasible.

Choosing a research paper topic, especially in a field as expansive as African literature, requires a blend of introspection, exploration, and consultation. By aligning your interests, understanding the breadth and depth of the literature, and being open to guidance and evolution, you can select a topic that not only adds value to the academic community but also offers a fulfilling research experience.

How to Write an African Literature Research Paper

Writing a research paper on African literature is a journey that can be immensely rewarding. It provides an opportunity to engage deeply with diverse narratives, cultural perspectives, and historical contexts. However, to truly encapsulate the essence of such a multifaceted topic, it’s imperative to approach the writing process with diligence, structure, and a deep sense of curiosity. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you navigate this process and produce a compelling research paper.

Start with a Robust Introduction: Your introduction should provide a brief overview of your chosen topic, its significance within African literature, and the broader global or cultural context. End your introduction with a clear thesis statement, which succinctly presents the main argument or focus of your paper.
Comprehensive Literature Review: Dedicate a section to reviewing existing literature on your chosen topic. This serves two main purposes: it showcases your thorough research and understanding of the topic, and it helps identify gaps or areas that your research aims to address or shed light on.
Maintain a Clear Structure: A well-organized paper follows a logical flow of ideas. Outline your paper into clear sections, starting from the introduction, literature review, methodology (if primary research is involved), discussion, and conclusion.
Dive into Primary Text Analysis: Engage deeply with the primary texts from African literature that you’re analyzing. Use quotations judiciously and ensure you provide your own interpretation and analysis. Discuss literary techniques, thematic elements, character development, and any other relevant aspects.
Incorporate Diverse Perspectives: Given the richness of African literature, it’s essential to consider various cultural, historical, and regional perspectives. Engage with critical essays, analyses, and scholarly discussions that provide different viewpoints on your chosen texts or themes.
Engage with Context: African literature is deeply intertwined with the continent’s historical, political, and social narratives. Be sure to discuss relevant historical events, socio-political contexts, or cultural nuances that influence or are reflected in the literary works you’re studying.
Ensure a Balanced Argument: While it’s natural to have a personal viewpoint or interpretation, ensure your paper presents a balanced discussion. This means acknowledging counterarguments, discussing varying interpretations, and grounding your conclusions in evidence and sound reasoning.
Use Citations Appropriately: Given the academic nature of the research paper, ensure that every claim, statement, or piece of information taken from external sources is appropriately cited. Familiarize yourself with the specific citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, Harvard) required for your paper.
Draft Multiple Versions: Writing is a process of iteration. Start with a rough draft, then revise multiple times, refining your arguments, improving the flow, and ensuring clarity. Each revision should bring your paper closer to its final, polished version.
Seek Feedback: Before finalizing your paper, seek feedback from peers, professors, or academic advisors. They might provide insights, point out overlooked errors, or suggest areas for further improvement.

Writing a research paper on African literature is both a challenge and an opportunity. It requires meticulous research, a deep understanding of the literary and cultural landscape, and a commitment to academic rigor. By approaching the task with enthusiasm, organization, and a genuine desire to contribute to the discourse on African literature, you’ll not only produce a noteworthy paper but also enrich your own understanding of this magnificent literary tradition.

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American Literature Topics. Some teachers ask students to choose American literature research topics for certain reasons. If asked to write on such topics, here are some of the American literature research paper topics to consider. Analyze key aspects of American ideology, particularly in the literature written before the 20th century.
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Ancient Literature Research Topics. Delve into the origins of storytelling and literary research topics for your literary research paper. These literary research topics will allow you to investigate various themes, genres, and styles across different time periods, ultimately enhancing your appreciation for the transformative power of storytelling.
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A comparison/contrast of the choices different authors or characters make in a work. A reading of a work based on an outside philosophical perspective (Ex. how would a Freudian read Hamlet ?) A study of the sources or historical events that occasioned a particular work (Ex. comparing G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion with the original Greek myth of ...
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29 Jul 2021. A literature review is an account of the scholarly works published on a topic. It is different from an annotated bibliography - and far more interesting at that. Instead of being just a list of summaries, a literature review synthesizes the information from all available sources in an overall relationship to your guiding concept.
Research Topics in English Literature
Ideas for Writing English Papers. Research topics on English literature initially start off broad and then narrow down and you come up with your thesis. Using any of the research topics listed (gender, comparisons, historical background, politics, and religion) can take you almost anywhere. Choose your general topic based on the literature ...
221 Literary Research Paper Topics To Inspire You
Literary topics are diverse. This can make it hectic to choose an appropriate one for your research paper. Discuss the most important work of Shakespeare. Describe the gothic novel's gender representation. The effect of social media language on learners. The travails of the African woman.
Literary Analysis Research Paper Topics
When students engage with literary analysis research paper topics, they not only learn about literature but also embark on a journey to understand the multi-faceted nature of human existence. At the core of literary analysis lies the art of interpretation. Unlike mere reading, analysis demands a more meticulous, structured, and critical approach.
Literature and Literary Research
Choosing a topic can be one of the hardest parts of writing a paper. There are so many possible things to write about, and even if you have a general idea, it can be hard to know whether your topic is a good one. Writing a literature paper is different from writing many other kinds of papers.
What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research. There are five key steps to writing a literature review: Search for relevant literature. Evaluate sources. Identify themes, debates and gaps.
Literature Reviews
In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions. ... Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the ...
World Literature Research Paper Topics
100 World Literature Research Paper Topics. Exploring the vast array of world literature research paper topics is pivotal for students and scholars to gain a comprehensive understanding of the diverse cultural, social, and philosophical narratives that have shaped the world. World literature serves as a reflection of the experiences, struggles ...
Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
What kinds of literature reviews are written? Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified.
How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature
This paper presents a systematic review of multidisciplinary research on misogyny from the years 1990 to 2022, encompassing a total of 2830 articles retrieved from the Scopus database as of ...
African Literature Research Paper Topics
100 African Literature Research Paper Topics. African literature, with its diverse languages, cultures, and historical contexts, offers a wide spectrum of potential research topics. This literature reflects not just the socio-political and economic realities of the African continent but also the hopes, dreams, and rich oral traditions of its ...

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