Literature 450: Comparative American Ethnic Literature (Cucinella)
The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with sources in the library and on the internet useful for literary and literature research as you create your annotated bibliographies and analytical essays.
Getting Started
What do you need?
The Annotated Bibliography requires TEN full length sources (minimum):
- These can be books, book chapters, scholarly journal articles
- THREE must be from print sources rather than online
Papers #1 and 2 require research on these aspects:
- Biographical material
- Place in literary history
- Discussion of major themes
- Overview of critical reception
IMPORTANT! You need to search beyond the author and title of your chosen work! Look for questions that arise from your reading. Think about the author of your work: why did they write this book, what were culture and society like during the time this was written, what were others writing at the same time and how has time regarded this work?
Look for alternate terms for genres, cultures and ways of thinking as well as personal names in your notes and readings. There is a large body of literature and research to explore, so you need to be able to focus on a particular aspect (and all its pseudonyms) of the work you are reading and writing about in order to have a focused thesis. As it is advisable to do some beginning research on your proposed ideas to be sure appropriate and sufficient resources are available before committing much time or effort on a topic, consider your bibliographies the means to do this exploration.
Books
Any well researched project uses books to support your thinking and writing. To find them, either do:
- KEYWORD searches using terms from your class readings and notes,
- TITLE searches for specific works by their exact title,
- AUTHOR searches for those who have been identified as authorities on a topic, or
- SUBJECT searches on your author, another person, or
topic. (Subject headings can be tricky, so feel free to
ask for help.) Some possible subject searches:
- Toomer, Jean, 1894-1967 (Note last name, first name order when searching a person)
- Ellison, Ralph -- Criticism And Interpretation (analysis of this particular author's body of work)
- Ellison, Ralph -- Invisible Man (analysis of an author's specific work)
- Larsen, Nella -- Political And Social Views (specific analysis of one aspect of author's work)
- Mexican Americans -- California -- Los Angeles -- Social Conditions -- 20th Century (culture study)
- Ethnicity In Literature (study of the genre or literature as a group, rather than one specific work)
- American Literature -- Minority Authors (authors as a ethnic, cultural or other group)
Reference Books (in library use)
These are works like
encyclopedias, directories, and collections of reviews
that do not circulate from the library. They may be quick
overviews or in-depth studies and are frequently useful
for short facts or overviews, birthdates, statistics and
bibliographies of sources. There are a number of useful
resources mentioned in Baker and Huling's Research
Guide for Undergraduate Students which is held at CSUSM. Some additional useful sources are:
- The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature (REF PS153.M56 G74 2005)
- Twentieth Century Literary Criticism* (at REF PN 771 .G27, use the last volume's index to determine where your author is included in the set. This covers authors who died between 1900 and 1999.)
- Contemporary Literary Criticism* (at REF PN 771 .C59, use the last volume's index to determine where your author is included in the set. Authors are living or died since 1959.)
-
Dictionary of Literary Biography* (this set is broken up in the reference stacks by author type such as 'British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1960' or 'Holocaust Novelists'.)
- American Writers (REF PS 129 .A55) contains entries on a variety of American writers, check the index of the final supplement as there can be entries in several volumes.
*Note: Gale, the publisher for these series and others, has placed a free comprehensive index to all their sets on the web. See this page for author, title or custom search. Once you know the series title and volume number, you can check our catalog for the location. Keep in mind, CSUSM does not own all the series indexed, but we do have the major sets.
Book Search
Do a KEYWORD search on the topic by typing the word or phrase in the search box. Since keywords can have multiple definitions and therefore, uses, once you locate a useful title, examine the SUBJECTS for precise 'labels' to identify your topic. While looking at each item, note authors who are writing on your topic and the call number for browsing the stacks. Check to see that they have bibliographies (listing of the research sources used) to substantiate the book's claims. A scholarly publisher is helpful also!
Other Options
Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.
WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Book will be delivered to Library for pickup.
Journal Articles
Literature journals include some of the latest research in
the field and can be very helpful in your project. They
are a good source for finding very
detailed information on your topic. To
find articles, you need to start with a research
database and
preferably one that indexes scholarly sources as they are
based on careful research and peer-reviewed prior to
publishing. NOTE: most databases do not
cover material published prior to the early 1980's, so you
may need to use print resources. Some databases do not offer
full text of the articles. Use the
button
to check our other resources for full text.
Interlibrary Loan is available for documents that we
don't own.
Most Useful
MLA
(AKA Bibliography of the Modern Language Association.) Includes abstracts of articles from critical literary and language journals. THE source for literature criticism and analysis.
JSTOR
Full-text. Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others. This collection offers articles published since the late 1800's.
Project MUSE
Full text. Scholarly article collection supplementing the holdings on many titles in JSTOR by offering more currently published materials.
Contemporary Authors
Biographies and bibliographies of 90,000 authors in the U.S. and around the world.
Also Useful
America: History & Life
Abstracts of journal articles covering American & Canadian history, from pre-history to the present.
HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index
Indexes journals from 1970 on providing information about
Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean and
Hispanics in the United States.
Oxford English Dictionary
A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It includes etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Academic Search Premier (via EbscoHost)
Full-text. A multi-disciplinary database offering full text for nearly 1,850 scholarly journals, including more than 1,250 peer-reviewed titles. Use peer-reviewed limiter to focus on more scholarly materials.
WorldCat
The world's most comprehensive bibliography, with 40 million records representing 400 languages. Covers mostly books, showing the libraries that own each individual title.
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
Informative introduction to major people and ideas in the world of literary theory and criticism.
Online Resources
There are ways to search the
internet quickly and effectively. Use Advanced or Expert Search whenever possible to focus your results and eliminate sites
you can't use like those in languages you cannot read.
- Limit your searches to high quality domains: .edu (university servers), or .org (museums and associations)
- Use appropriate language to accurately describe your topic.
- Spell names or phrases accurately--be aware of alternate spellings used in different translations.
- Look for bibliographies or references to the works used for the site's contents.
- Know your topic!
- Carefully evaluate what you find for bias, conflicting, or incomplete information.
Some of the better sources on the internet:
- Ethnic Literature (BUBL)
- HAPI Online (Database of Latin American Journal Articles)
- HLAS (Handbook of Latin American Studies) Bibliography of scholarly materials on Latin America and related subjects
- PAL: Perspectives in American Literature (Paul Reubens at CSU Stanislaus)
- Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color (University of Minnesota)
- Library of Congress Classification Outline (where are your subject areas in the CSUSM library?)
Style Guides
As you write your paper, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found. In order to cite your resources properly, you need to follow the style guide used by for this class, the MLA Handbook.
Sites with examples of in-text citations and works cited pages.
MLA Quick
Summary
of Bibliography 
In-text citing and works cites examples.
Citing in Your Paper
Examples of including the citation pointers in your text.
KnightCite (Citation generator, use with caution)
Diana Hacker's Guide to MLA (this librarian's personal favorite!)
It is highly recommended that you have your own copy of the MLA Handbook, as the library's copies are often checked out.
 |
MLA handbook for writers of research papers. 6th ed. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2003. |
