A 'Biography of an Idea' Instead of a Pile of Sources

A writing instructor describes an activity called a 'Biography of an Idea,' built on JSTOR, meant to change how students see research. Rather than assembling a stack of citations, students take a single scholarly article and follow one idea backward and forward through the literature — tracing where it came from, how other scholars have altered or disputed it, and what becomes of it as it passes from one source to the next. The exercise turns the paper into a conversation rather than a container. It is a small reframing with a real effect: a citation stops being a finished object to be collected and becomes a position with a history, an author, and critics.