When writing a dissertation, one thing that has to be included is a Literature Review.


I am currently writing mine, and it took me a while to figure out how exactly I should be going about it. I've read all the books, and I copied all the quotes and page numbers I need, but to then put everything down on paper and not go "He said this, and he said that" is quite tricky.


I got a brilliant piece of advice: Go book by book. Look at your quotes and notes, then close the book and write what you think it means, and what you noticed about it.


Once that is done, you can go back and look for themes, and mix and match your several pieces of reviews to turn it into one well-organised one.

My own, until now, goes something like this:

Photography plays a major role in what we perceive as gaze-worthy. The photos show us an “ideal” view, which we then try to find ourselves (Urry 1996: 86). These photographs help us form ideas about what a place will look like, what it is like there and what there could be to experience. Pictures are also used as proof, that a place really is as it was described. As Sontag (1979: 109) is quoted in Urry (1996: 139):

“Photography seems to be a means of transcribing reality. The images produced appear to be not statements of the world but pieces of it, or even miniature slices of reality. A photograph thus seems to furnish evidence that something did indeed happen – that someone really was there and that the mountain actually was that large. It is thought that the camera does not lie.”


I guess, depending on the amount of books you've read, it will take the better part of an afternoon or even day to write the review. But then again, it is a vital piece of the dissertation, so it shouldn't be rushed and it should be precise. You don't have to use all the quotes - you can use some in the later chapters of your dissertation, to make a point, for example.