Textbook used for class is
Jurmain et al., 2014. Introduction to Physical Anthropology (2013-2014 edition)

Critical Review Instructions
CRITICAL REVIEWS

For these assignments you are asked to provide a critical review of an article. When a writer offers a critical review, she lets the reader know whether the work under review is good or bad and most importantly tells the reader why she thinks it is good or bad. Remember, a critical review does not have to be negative.

Assignment requirements: These assignments need to be at least 2 pages long and must be type written, double-spaced. What you need to do is tell the reader whether you think that the author does a good job in the article. You need to support your statements with concepts that have been presented in class and in the book. In other words, support your statements with data. Submit the critical review in the drop-box provided.

Things to look for:

What are the authors’ main point or points? Clearly state in your review what you think are the authors’ main points.

Are the authors’ statements consistent with current thoughts and hypotheses?

How well do they support their statements? Is their conclusion consistent with the data they have presented?

Are there other possible explanations or conclusions that the authors do not discuss?

What do you think of the article?

For the article review exercises in this class I am asking you to do two basic things: be a good college-level reader and to be a good critical thinker. Below I have provided you with some general statements about what each means.

What is a college-level reader?

College-level readers actively take charge of their reading. They assess the nature of the reading they are assigned, estimate the difficulty of that reading, determine the purpose for which they are to read, strategies for best comprehending the assigned “text”, and adjust their rate of reading to insure maximum comprehension. College-level readers:

Cognitively process written information via thought clusters and/or ideas, rather than via single words.
Sort main ideas from subordinate ideas by describing the relative relationship of the whole (or, the main idea) to the parts (or, the details) in the entire reading passage.
Recognize the author’s purpose for writing a given selection and identify the author’s strategies for communicating that purpose to readers.
Distinguish objective, factual data from the author’s option and the reader’s personal opinion
Decode unfamiliar academic vocabulary by using contextual analysis, root word analysis, and or the dictionary.

College level readers need to develop facility reading both literally and inferentially. Generally, the higher the reading level of written material, the more inferential reading ability a reader must bring to the process.

A student comprehends the literal meaning of a passage when he/she remembers the specifically stated information; the who, what, where, how, etc. He/she can return to the printed page and find the “right” answer to a literal question.

A student comprehends the inferential meaning of a passage when he/she can use the information he/she has read in order to make judgments, predict outcomes, supply logical detail. The right answer is the result of the student’s reasoning process, not a specifically stated fact or detail which can be located on the printed page. Inferential questions are generally WHY questions, They comprise the bulk of the college-level work where readers must sort, categorize, compare, contrast, and evaluate in order to get meaning from written text. (From: http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/readinglab/reading_skills_info.htm)

What is critical thinking?

Thinking critically is the ability to examine purposes, goals and problems, to make observations and examine facts, data, evidence, assumptions, opinions, and points of view with appropriate carte, to make reasonable correlational and cause/effect relationships, to draw thoughtful inferences, theories, conclusions, hypotheses and interpretations.

The first critical review is by Matt Cartmill, a paleoanthropologist who has some interesting observations about the evolution vs. nonscientific origins debate. The article is over 15 years old, but I think it is still relevant. One suggestion, many students focus on his critique of the religious right, but he actually has critiques of some on the academic left and even many scientists involved in this debate. Don’t forget to include these observations into your critical review.