How to Cite Material Used in Your Essays

You do not need to give full citations for materials from the course, but you do need to give us a precise notion of where these materials may be found. Here are some examples of how this should be done. And remember that you need to cite any material that shaped your ideas, not just direct quotations.

Citing a lecture

After the material in your essay that is borrowed from the lecture add the date of the lecture in parentheses ("Lecture on Artaud," Feb.13)

If you wrote, "The Surrealists often made fitting their paintings into any kind of narrative story purposely difficult," you would add: (lecture, 2.4.03).

Citing a text (i.e. written material) from the course web site

Provide the shortened web address of the material

If you wrote in your essay "Artaud once expressed his explosiveness by writing 'You will see my present body/ fly into a thousand pieces'," you would add in parenthesis: (Week5/artaudpoem.htm).

Citing an image from the course web site

Provide the title of the work and the name of its creator (if these are available), the week, and the title of the web page on which this work appears

If you wrote in your essay "To cause tension between his painting and its title, Magritte juxtaposes the title "Pleasure" with an image of a girl gnawing on a bloody, dead bird," you would add (Magritte, "Pleasure," Week 5, "Violence and the Avant Garde").

Citing material from the course reader.

Provide the page number from the reader.

If you were writing, "Tzara characterized the mission of the Dada in part as 'preparing the great spectacle of disaster, fire, decomposition'," you would add: (Course reader. p.12).

Citing material from outside the course

Sources from outside the course should have full MLA-style citations. It is particularly important to provide clear and explicit references.

See http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=337 for information about MLA citations.