English 510: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
Bibliographies and General Guides to Research
Bibliography of Black Music. Dominique-René De Lerma. 3 vols.
Ref. [q.] ML128.B45 D44
Literary Research Guide : An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. James L. Harner.
Ref. Z2011 .H34 2002
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students : English and American Literature. Nancy L. Baker and Nancy Huling.
Ref. PR56 .B34 2000
Selected Black American, African, and Caribbean Authors : A Bio-Bibliography.
Ref. Z1229.N39 P34 1985
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Introductory and Background Information
Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940.
Ref. [q.] PS221 .D5 v.51
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia. Bruce Murphy, ed.
Ref. PN41 .B4 1996
Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Ref. PN771 .C59 v. 1-173
Selected material from volumes 95 on are available on the Web as CLC Select
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory : Approaches, Scholars, Terms.
Irene R. Makaryk, general editor and compiler.
PN81 .E63 1993
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.
Ref. [q.] PS153.N5 A24 2003
The Harlem Renaissance : An Annotated Reference Guide for Student Research
Available online on the Lawrence campus.
The Harlem Renaissance : An Historical Dictionary for the Era.
Ref. NX511.N4 H37 1984
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond : Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900-1950.
Ref. PS153.N5 R65 1990
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Michael
Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, eds.
Ref. PN81 .J554 2005
The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.
Ref. PS153.N5 O96 1997
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. 1978- .
Ref. PN94 .T83
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Biographical Information
American National Biography. 24 vols.
The standard reference for biographical information on people in American history.
Ref. CT213 .A68 1999
Biography and Genealogy Master
Index.
"A comprehensive index to nearly 12 million biographical sketches in more than 2700 volumes and editions of current and retrospective reference books, covering both contemporary and historical figures throughout the world." Available electronically for Lawrence campus researchers.
Contemporary Authors.
"Provides complete biographical and bibliographical references for more than 90,000 authors in the U.S. and around the world. Available electronically for Lawrence campus researchers.
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA, for the person as using the Subject begins with option. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests. Be alert when searching non-western names or names of rulers, as you may need to use varying forms of these names. Many times, LUCIA has cross-references for these.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as Author. Be sure to consult the library's guide on Biographical Information for further ideas and information.
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Historical Context
The African-American Mosaic : A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture.
Gov Docs LC 1.6/4: AF 8
Black/White Relations in American History : An Annotated Bibliography.
Z1361.N39 T57 1998
Dictionary of American History. 10 vols.
Ref. E174 .D52 2003
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. 5 vols.
Ref. [q.] E185 .E54 1996
Historical Dictionary of the New Deal : From Inauguration to Preparation for War.
Ref. E806 .H58 1985
Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890-1920.
Ref. E661 .H6 1988
The People's Chronology : A Year-by-Year Record of Human Events from Prehistory to the Present. James Trager.
Ref. D11 .T83 1994
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Finding Books
Search LUCIA to find books owned by our library. To find secondary sources on your topic, try a Subject begins with search, for example, harlem renaissance or american literature afro american authors. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try a Keyword Anywhere search. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search like harlem and literature or afr* american and literature. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with afr: african, afro, etc. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH, or target your keyword search by using the Subject Keyword option. This tells LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records only.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system that organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options, as only a few are listed below. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. In addition to the titles listed here, see also the list of databases for Humanities available from the library.
Essential: these should be among your starting points for finding advanced materials.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. 1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
General and Multidisciplinary Indexes: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current reviews and news articles.
EBSCOhost.
Follow the link for EBSCOhost Web. Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. EBSCOhost provides a single Web source for multiple databases; you might want to select the Academic Search Elite or American Humanities Index. Use the Go or Back button on your browser after exiting EBSCOhost to leave the system.
Expanded Academic ASAP.
Broad coverage of academic periodicals. Includes full text of some articles.
Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
The essential indexes to the scholarly literature of history, in books and proceedings as well as journals. Include short summaries of the works indexed. For research on the Harlem Renaissance, consult America: History and Life.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, look in LUCIA for the title of the journal or newspaper to see if the library owns it. You should also search BESS, an automated search of the library's full-text databases, for electronic copies of articles.
Lawrence resources:
Internet Resources for English
Selected by the librarians here at Lawrence.
Internet Resources for Gender Studies
Another list of sources selected by the librarians.
Resources elsewhere:
Harlem 1900-1940: An African-American
Community
From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has many materials on African American history and literature. Among them are
The African-American Mosaic,
African American Odyssey, and American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
Voice of the Shuttle
One of the leading web pages for research in the humanities. In particular, you might want to look at the list of resources on
Minority Literatures.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.Top
Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research on the Harlem Renaissance
Material related to the topic of this course will be drawn from many fields besides literary studies, you may also want to consider searching for material from other fields, like art, music, and history, just to name a few. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Your sources must be fully documented in any written work you produce. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the required documentation at hand when you need it. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Direct links are provided to Internet resources and searchable databases, as well as links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at guides on related topics from the Library Research Guides page.
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready Reference, shelved behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and M class scores; at end of classes in other collections
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