Documentation: Preparing the List of Works Cited

Citing, Annotating, and Writing Inclusively

A Reading Task Blog on MLA Style, Annotated Bibliography, and Inclusive Language in Research

Research Methodology  |  MLA Style  |  Citation Studies  |  Postcolonial Literature

This blog is prepared as part of a research methodology assignment comprising four reading tasks: (1) a note on the differences between MLA 7th and 8th editions, (2) a short note on MLA Style, (3) an annotated bibliography on Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things containing eight varied qualitative source types, and (4) an analysis of the introductory section of a research article on queer poets against the principles of inclusive language as outlined in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition. Together, these tasks build a foundational understanding of academic citation, source documentation, and ethical scholarly writing.

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Reading Task 1

Difference Between MLA 7th and 8th Edition

The Modern Language Association has periodically revised its citation handbook to keep pace with changing scholarly practices and the rapidly expanding landscape of digital publication. The shift from the 7th edition (2009) to the 8th edition (2016) was one of the most significant overhauls in the handbook's history, representing not merely a refinement of existing rules but a fundamental rethinking of how citation should work. Where the 7th edition required a different citation format for every different source type — a book, a website, a journal article, a film — the 8th edition replaced this multiplicity with a single, universal format built around nine core elements applicable to any source. This shift was grounded in a practical insight: in a digital environment where the same content might be accessed via a library database, a publisher's website, or a printed volume, a rigid source-specific format becomes unworkable. Flexibility, rather than exhaustive prescription, became the new principle.

The following table summarizes the most significant differences between the two editions across key citation elements:

Element	MLA 7th Edition (2009)	MLA 8th Edition (2016)
Citation Format	Different format for every source type (book, article, website, film, etc.)	One universal format using nine core elements for all source types
Publication Medium	Required: Print, Web, DVD, etc. must be declared	Eliminated entirely — medium no longer required
Place of Publication	Required for books (e.g., New York: Oxford UP)	Omitted, except for books published before 1900 or differing by country
URLs / DOIs	URLs required for online sources; DOIs optional	URLs and DOIs recommended; omit http:// and https:// from URLs
Container Concept	Not present — no formal "container" structure	Introduced — sources may sit within containers (e.g., article in journal, episode on Netflix)
Multiple Authors	et al. used for sources with four or more authors	et al. used for sources with three or more authors
Author Names	Real names only	Online pseudonyms, handles, and screen names permitted
Page Numbers	No prefix required for page numbers in Works Cited	Page numbers preceded by p. (single) or pp. (multiple) in Works Cited
Volume/Issue Numbers	Written as combined notation: e.g., 24.2	Written separately with labels: e.g., vol. 24, no. 2
Date Format for Journals	Year only in parentheses: (2001)	Month/season included alongside year, without parentheses: Spring 2001
Contributor Roles	Abbreviated: ed., trans., dir.	Written in full: editor, translated by, directed by
Unknown Information	Placeholders required: n.d., n.p., n.pag.	Placeholders omitted entirely — simply skip unavailable elements
Access Dates	Required for all online sources	Optional — include only when publication date is unavailable or when source is unstable
Handbook Length	292 pages	144 pages — significantly condensed by design

Illustrative Examples: Book and Journal Article

Book Citation — 7th Edition:
Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things": A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002. Print.

Book Citation — 8th Edition:
Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things": A Reader's Guide. Continuum, 2002.

Journal Article — 7th Edition:
Tickell, Alex. "The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy's Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 38.1 (2003): 73–89. Print.

Journal Article — 8th Edition:
Tickell, Alex. "The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy's Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 38, no. 1, 2003, pp. 73–89.

The differences are immediately apparent: the 8th edition removes the place of publication, the medium designation, the parentheses around the date, and the combined volume-issue notation. What remains is streamlined, flexible, and consistent across source types. The core elements — author, title, container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location — are assembled in the same order and punctuated the same way regardless of whether the source is a book, a tweet, a documentary, or a database entry. This universality is the 8th edition's defining innovation and its most practical contribution to scholarly writing in the digital age (Modern Language Association, 8th ed. 3–4).

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Reading Task 2

Short Note on MLA Style

MLA Style is a system of academic documentation developed and maintained by the Modern Language Association of America, first published in 1951 and now in its ninth edition (2021). It is the preferred citation and formatting style across the humanities disciplines — most prominently literature, languages, cultural studies, film studies, philosophy, and the arts — and is used widely at secondary and tertiary levels of education worldwide. Unlike citation systems designed primarily for the social and natural sciences, such as APA (which emphasizes the date of publication as a primary element, reflecting the premium placed on recency in scientific fields), MLA Style is designed for disciplines in which the text itself — its language, structure, and interpretation — is the primary object of study. Its citation conventions reflect this orientation: the in-text citation foregrounds the author's name and the specific page location of a passage, directing the reader to the precise site of engagement in the source text.

The structural logic of MLA Style rests on two complementary components. The first is the parenthetical in-text citation, which is inserted immediately after a quotation or paraphrase and contains, in its simplest form, the author's last name and the relevant page number: (Roy 56). This brief reference tethers the reader to the second component, the Works Cited list, which appears at the end of the paper and provides full bibliographic information for every source referenced in the text. Together, in-text citation and Works Cited list form a verifiable chain of attribution — every claim is traceable to its source, every source is fully identified, and the reader can locate the original material independently. This transparency is not merely procedural; it is the ethical foundation of academic writing, protecting against plagiarism and establishing the scholarly conversation within which any new argument is situated (Purdue OWL, "MLA Formatting").

The 8th and 9th editions of the MLA Handbook have oriented the style around a flexible, principles-based approach rather than a rigid rule-for-every-source-type system. The nine core elements — author, title of source, title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, and location — provide a universal template that can be applied to any source regardless of medium or format. This approach acknowledges the reality of contemporary research, in which sources are encountered across print, digital, audio, visual, and hybrid platforms, often in multiple simultaneous versions. Additionally, the 9th edition introduced expanded guidance on inclusive language, annotated bibliographies, and the ethics of citation — recognizing that documentation is not merely technical but political, shaped by decisions about whose work is cited, how identities are described, and how knowledge is attributed. MLA Style, in this sense, is not just a formatting convention; it is a framework for responsible scholarly engagement with the work of others (Modern Language Association, 9th ed. 1–8).

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Reading Task 3

Annotated Bibliography: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

The following annotated bibliography contains eight source entries of varied qualitative types pertaining to Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (1997). Each entry is formatted in MLA 8th edition style and accompanied by an annotation of 50–100 words describing the source's content, argument, and scholarly relevance.

Journal Article

Tickell, Alex. "The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy's Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 38, no. 1, 2003, pp. 73–89. SAGE Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989404381007.

Tickell examines Roy's novel through the lens of postcolonial cosmopolitanism, arguing that the text negotiates between local specificity and global cultural circulation in ways that both challenge and reproduce unequal literary market structures. He situates the novel's Booker Prize success within the politics of postcolonial visibility, showing how cosmopolitan appeal can simultaneously amplify and commodify subaltern voices. An essential article for understanding the novel's reception and its complex ideological positioning between Indian specificity and Western legibility.

Book

Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things": A Reader's Guide. Continuum, 2002.

Mullaney's reader's guide situates The God of Small Things in its political, social, and literary contexts, providing accessible yet analytically rigorous coverage of its major themes — caste discrimination, gendered violence, colonial history, and narrative form. Written as part of the Continuum Contemporaries series, it covers the novel's critical reception and its key scholarly debates, making it an ideal entry point for students approaching the text for the first time while also offering frameworks useful for advanced analysis.

Book Chapter

Bose, Brinda. "In Desire and Death: Eroticism as Politics in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Arundhati Roy: Critical Perspectives, edited by Murari Prasad, Pencraft International, 2006, pp. 90–115.

Bose's chapter offers a sophisticated reading of erotic desire in the novel as a site of political transgression. She argues that the relationship between Ammu and Velutha enacts a defiance of caste, class, and gender hierarchies simultaneously, rendering the erotic act politically explosive within the social order of Ayemenem. Bose's analysis is grounded in feminist and postcolonial theory and makes a compelling case for reading Roy's treatment of sexuality not as incidental but as structurally central to the novel's political critique.

News Article

"A Dazzling First Novel." The New York Times, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com.

This review from the New York Times, published upon the novel's release, describes The God of Small Things as extraordinary and morally strenuous while also imaginatively supple. As a primary reception document, it provides evidence of how Western literary journalism positioned the novel for anglophone readers at the moment of its debut — useful for any analysis of the novel's entry into global literary culture and the role of prestige media in legitimizing postcolonial fiction for international audiences.

Encyclopedia / Reference Entry

"The God of Small Things." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_Small_Things.

The Wikipedia entry on The God of Small Things provides a reliable overview of the novel's plot, publication history, critical reception, and cultural impact, including its Booker Prize win and the controversy it generated in India over its depictions of sexuality and caste. While not a scholarly source, it serves a useful orienting function and aggregates links to primary and secondary materials. It is cited here as a freely accessible reference entry suitable for initial contextual research, with the caveat that its claims require verification against primary scholarly sources.

Journal Article

Kunhi, Rukhaya M., and Zeenath Mohamed Kunhi. "An Ecocritical Perspective of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." SAGE Open, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017712767.

This ecofeminist study reads Roy's novel through the dual lens of ecology and feminism, analyzing how the Meenachal River functions as a site of both natural and feminine suppression. The authors apply muted group theory to argue that Roy apostrophizes nature to blur the culture/nature binary, using flora, fauna, and the river as registers of subaltern resistance. The article connects the novel's environmental dimensions to Roy's later activism on the Narmada dam issue, illuminating the continuity between her fiction and her political commitments.

Video

Roy, Arundhati. "Arundhati Roy on Writing, Resistance, and The God of Small Things." YouTube, uploaded by various literary channels, 1997–2023. Search: "Arundhati Roy God of Small Things interview."

Multiple recorded interviews with Arundhati Roy are available across YouTube channels, in which she discusses the origins of The God of Small Things, its semi-autobiographical dimensions, her architectural approach to structuring the narrative, and its relationship to her political activism. These primary source materials are invaluable for understanding the author's own intentions and interpretive frameworks. Scholars should verify specific uploads before citing; Roy's interview at the 1997 Salon gives particularly detailed commentary on the novel's design and its social critique.

Research Article

Purushottam, K., and Varsha Saraswat. "Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Social Activism." ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts, vol. 5, no. 6, 2024, pp. 2423–2427, https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v5.i6.2024.5571.

This recent article examines the novel as a vehicle of social activism, arguing that Roy deploys personal narrative to mount a powerful critique of caste discrimination, gender subjugation, and class conflict in Indian society. The authors trace Roy's role as a defender of subaltern causes — Dalits, environmental victims of the Narmada dam — and position the novel within her broader activist career. The piece is useful for understanding the relationship between the literary text and its social functions, and for contextualizing Roy within the tradition of politically committed Indian writing.

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Reading Task 4

Inclusive Language in a Research Article on a Queer Poet: Ocean Vuong

The Article Under Study

The article chosen for this task is Jeffrey Gibbons's "Queer and Refugee Positionalities in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous," published in AmLit: American Literatures, vol. 5, no. 1 (2025). Gibbons is affiliated with the United States Military Academy at West Point. The article examines the representations of positionality in Vuong's autofictional narrative through the combined lenses of trauma studies, queer theory, and refugee studies. The introductory section establishes the argument that Little Dog's queer Vietnamese American refugee identity presents multiple, intersecting forms of marginalization, and that the text offers a path toward healing rather than merely documenting suffering.

The Seven Principles of Inclusive Language (MLA Handbook, 9th Ed.)

The 9th edition of the MLA Handbook dedicates a section to inclusive language, outlining seven guiding principles for ethical and respectful academic writing. These principles are: (1) use relevant references — include demographic descriptors only when necessary; (2) be specific — use precise, preferred terms rather than broad generalizations; (3) avoid perpetuating stereotypes or conflating traditions; (4) be consistent and thoughtful in capitalizing identity terms; (5) minimize pronoun exclusion — use gender-neutral language and the singular "they" where appropriate; (6) avoid quotation marks or italics around identity terms, which suggest unfamiliarity or dismissiveness; and (7) use the language and preferences of the community being written about (MLA Handbook, 9th ed., chapter on Inclusive Language; SJSU Writing Center, "Inclusive Writing in MLA").

The Introductory Section — Relevant Excerpt

"This article examines the representations of positionality in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Published in 2019, Vuong centers his narrative around the narrator, Little Dog — a queer Vietnamese American refugee struggling not only to understand his mother's and his family's traumas from war, displacement, and abuse, but also contending with his own path as a queer person of color and as a writer hindered by the inadequacy of language to adequately reflect his thoughts and emotions. While On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous undoubtedly challenges readers to examine individual responses to trauma, displacement, and loss, the text's conclusion ultimately emphasizes that the characters' struggles do not define them — instead their abilities to find comfort and understanding in each other afford them paths toward long-term healing. Accordingly, by employing lenses offered by trauma studies, queer theory, and refugee studies, I argue that Little Dog's narrative illuminates both the obstacles presented by his myriad positionalities, as well as the ways that we might read his and his family's refugee narrative through a more redemptive and transformative perspective." (Gibbons, Abstract)

Analysis: Adherence to Inclusive Language Principles

Gibbons's introduction adheres to several of the MLA 9th edition's principles of inclusive language with notable care, and the analysis below identifies the specific principles at work.

Principle 1 — Use Relevant References: The author identifies Vuong as "queer," "Vietnamese American," and a "refugee" — all three designators are directly and necessarily relevant to the article's argument. Queerness is central to the analysis via queer theory; Vietnamese American identity is relevant through the refugee and displacement framework; refugee status is the explicit subject of the article's second analytical lens. These are not incidental biographical details deployed decoratively; they are the structural categories the argument depends on. This adherence to relevance is exemplary: demographic identity is referenced because the text and the analysis require it, not as background colour.

Principle 2 — Be Specific: Gibbons uses precise, non-generic terminology throughout: "queer Vietnamese American refugee" rather than vague terms like "minority writer" or "multicultural author." The term "positionality" — drawn from intersectional and critical theory — further demonstrates specificity, signaling that identity is understood as structural, relational, and multiple rather than fixed or singular. The article's disciplinary precision (trauma studies, queer theory, refugee studies) mirrors this linguistic specificity: it names its frameworks explicitly rather than gesturing toward "cultural" or "social" approaches.

Principle 3 — Avoid Perpetuating Stereotypes: Gibbons actively works against stereotyping in a manner that deserves recognition. The introduction's final move — arguing that the text "ultimately emphasizes that the characters' struggles do not define them" and offers "paths toward long-term healing" — resists the tendency to reduce queer refugee narratives to trauma catalogues. This is a politically significant choice: it avoids the representational trap of defining marginalized subjects entirely through their suffering, which is itself a form of stereotyping. By insisting on redemptive and transformative readings, the introduction signals that queer refugee identity is not merely a site of victimhood.

Principle 5 — Minimize Pronoun Exclusion: When referring to Ocean Vuong, Gibbons uses "his" — which is consistent with Vuong's own publicly stated pronouns. This is an example of using the language of the community being written about (Principle 7), which overlaps here with Principle 5. No gender-neutral pronouns were available as an alternative since Vuong uses he/him. The article does not use gendered language where it is unnecessary or exclusionary, and the narrative character Little Dog is discussed in terms of identity and experience rather than through gendered characterizations that go beyond what the text establishes.

Principle 6 — Avoid Quotation Marks Around Identity Terms: Notably, the introduction does not place "queer" or "refugee" in quotation marks. This is significant: using scare quotes around identity terms — common in older scholarship — implies that the terms are contested or unfamiliar in ways that can signal discomfort with or distance from those identities. Gibbons uses "queer" and "queer person of color" without qualification or hedging punctuation, treating these as straightforward scholarly descriptors. This aligns precisely with the MLA 9th edition's instruction to avoid quotation marks around identity terms, which "could be interpreted as being out" of ordinary usage or dismissive of the identity itself (SJSU Writing Center).

Summary Observation

Gibbons's introductory section adheres to at least five of the seven MLA 9th edition principles of inclusive language: relevance of references, specificity of terminology, resistance to stereotyping, appropriate pronoun use, and avoidance of qualifying punctuation around identity terms. The one area where the analysis finds a partial gap is Principle 4 (consistency and thoughtfulness in capitalization of identity terms): the article capitalizes "Vietnamese American" but does not capitalize "queer" — which is consistent with current scholarly practice (where "queer" is widely left lowercase as a reclaimed, broadly used term rather than a proper noun), but which could be made more explicitly consistent. Overall, the article represents a model of inclusive scholarly writing about a queer poet: it names identity precisely, frames it analytically rather than decoratively, and resists the reduction of complex, intersectional subjectivity to a single axis of oppression.

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Works Cited

Works Cited

"A Dazzling First Novel." The New York Times, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com.

Bose, Brinda. "In Desire and Death: Eroticism as Politics in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." Arundhati Roy: Critical Perspectives, edited by Murari Prasad, Pencraft International, 2006, pp. 90–115.

Gibbons, Jeffrey. "Queer and Refugee Positionalities in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous." AmLit: American Literatures, vol. 5, no. 1, 2025, https://doi.org/10.25364/27.5:2025.1.5.

"The God of Small Things." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_Small_Things.

Kunhi, Rukhaya M., and Zeenath Mohamed Kunhi. "An Ecocritical Perspective of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things." SAGE Open, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017712767.

Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook. 8th ed., MLA, 2016.

Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook. 9th ed., MLA, 2021.

Mullaney, Julie. Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things": A Reader's Guide. Continuum, 2002.

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." Purdue Online Writing Lab, Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.

Purushottam, K., and Varsha Saraswat. "Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Social Activism." ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts, vol. 5, no. 6, 2024, pp. 2423–2427, https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v5.i6.2024.5571.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. IndiaInk / HarperCollins, 1997.

SJSU Writing Center. "Inclusive Writing in MLA." San José State University, Fall 2022, https://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Inclusive%20Writing%20in%20MLA.pdf.

Southern Connecticut State University Libraries. "What's New in MLA 8th Edition?" MLA Style Guide Eighth Edition, SCSU Hilton C. Buley Library, https://libguides.southernct.edu/mla/newmla8. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.

Tickell, Alex. "The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy's Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 38, no. 1, 2003, pp. 73–89, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989404381007.