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ENGL 2500: Queerpocalypse! Or, the Gay Nineties

Research guide for students in Sarah Berkowitz's Fall 2020 ENGL2500 class

This guide was created to help students in Sarah Berkowitz's Fall 2020 ENGL 2500 class prepare for their second paper and as a general guide to resources related to the texts & films you have read/watched this semester.

Research Using Library Databases

The UVA Library subscribes to hundreds of databases that contain scholarly resources not available on the free web. Access to most of these databases is restricted to current members of the UVA community. When you are accessing materials from off Grounds, you will be prompted to sign in with NetBadge when using these resources. For some resources, you may need to use the VPN - see tab on left side menu (also see the Off-Grounds Access link for more information).

The best way to connect to the library's databases is through the research portal. This guide provides a  list of recommended databases, print books, and ebooks to find articles and chapters or essays for your assignment. There are many more resources available that might be useful. Need a refresher on the difference between academic and non-academic sources? Watch the short video Peer Review in 3 Minutes.

If you would like research help, please email me your questions, or I am available for meetings virtually using Zoom. You can schedule an appointment with me by clicking the button in my information box to the left, by selecting a day/time on my Make an Appointment page, or by contacting me directly at slb4kt@virginia.edu. When you make an appointment, I will send you a Zoom link for us to meet. If Zoom will not work for you, please email me and we will find another option for meeting. Need help right away? Please contact a librarian using one of our Ask a Librarian options. ​

Databases for Finding Articles about Literature, Film, or Television

Think broadly when brainstorming terms to use when searching databases.

  • What synonyms or related terms could stand in for your key search terms? 
  • You can combine search terms using AND (Dracula AND identity) and OR (border OR boundary OR edge). 
  • In many databases, the asterisk (*) is a truncation or "wildcard" symbol that will match all possible endings for a word stem. For example, sex* will match sex, sexism, sexual, sexuality, etc. 
  • Place terms in quotation marks to search them as a phrase. For example, "British identity" or "national identity."
  • Most databases have filters or facets that allow you to narrow your results by subject, date range, etc. You can also often limit your results to peer-reviewed sources. Limit your searches to help you find the sources you need. 
The MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB) indexes the broadest range of resources about literature in all languages, as well as film, television, and popular culture, including over 4,000 journals as well as books and dissertations.For articles not available full-text in MLA, click on “Find@UVA” or look up the journal title in Virgo.
 

ProQuest One Literature contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, and dissertations. It also includes more than 500,000 primary works. 

Gale LiteratureAn integrated research experience, Gale Literature brings together Gale's premier literary databases in a new digital environment that allows researchers, faculty and students to search across these resources to discover and analyze content in entirely new ways. Included are biographical resources, literary criticism, reviews, and more. Some criticism, reviews, and biographies related to film and television here as well. 

 
Film & Television Literature Index includes reviews of films and articles on theory, preservation and restoration, writing, production, cinematography, and technical aspects of both film and television in the U.S. and internationally.
 
Humanities International Complete indexes over 2000 journals as well as books and other publications. Topics covered include archaeology, art, dance, drama, ethnic and women's history, literaturemusic, philosophy, poetry, religion. 

JSTOR 
includes older issues of scholarly journals, from the start to 3-5 years ago.
 
Project Muse provides full-text searching of recent articles from major scholarly journals, including roughly 120 journals about literature. Like JSTOR, Project Muse is not as comprehensive as the MLAIB, but offers the advantages of full-text searching and instant access to PDFs.
 
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics. 

Database for Finding Articles for LGBTQ+ Studies

LGBTQ+ Source is the definitive database for LGBTQ+ studies. It provides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines and newspapers. It also includes a specialized LGBTQ+ thesaurus containing thousands of terms.

Recommended E-Book Collection

The Cambridge Companions Complete Collection includes several hundred books. Each Companion is a collection of introductory essays on aspects of a writer, artist, philosopher, religious thinker, cultural topic, or period. You can also find individual titles using the library's catalog, Virgo. Below are some examples of works included in this collection. 

Finding items using Virgo

Virgo, the UVA Library’s primary search tool, contains catalog records for books, print journals, DVDs, maps, and digitized materials, as well as links to online articles from our rich array of subscription journals. You can search catalog materials and articles together, or view those results separately, using the facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more. To find online content, use Filter Results By (on the left) and choose Online.

Although the stacks in the UVA Libraries are closed for the semester, you can still request print items and have them held for you at Clemons or Brown Library for pick up. Simply choose the Request Item option in the Virgo record, fill out any needed information, and submit. You will be emailed when the item is available for you to retrieve. If you only need one or two essays or chapters from a book, you might consider using the Request a Scan option, where you can ask for a short portion of a print item to be scanned and made available for you digitally. 

Example E-Books of Interest

Below are just a few examples of ebooks available that discuss some of the texts or topics you might focus on for your paper. Try searching for a particular work, for an author, or using keyword terms based on your research interest to get started searching in Virgo for relevant materials. Limit your format to Online to find books available for online reading. Most ebooks have a search feature and/or index that will help you find sections relevant to your research topic.