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Getting Started with this Guide
This guide was created for students in Fall 2024 ENGL 2599 class taught by Arselyne Chery. This page includes resources to help get you started with your research on your chosen text and topic. Need more help? Contact Sherri.
See the Books and Ebooks tab for examples of ebooks and print books of criticism that discuss authors and works you have read/will read in class.
See the grammar, style, and citation tab for general grammar and style guides and resources for help creating citations and bibliographies.
The Tools for Access tab includes several tools to help you access library content from anywhere in the world.
Preparing for Research
In preparation for your second essay you've hopefully begun thinking about possible questions/topics of interest related to the text you have chosen.
You will also want to spend some time thinking about how you will conduct your research.
- Fine-tune your searches.
Think broadly when brainstorming search terms. What synonyms or related terms could stand in for your key search terms?
You can combine search terms using AND ("Incidents in the Life" AND virtue) and look for synonyms using OR (motherhood OR motherliness OR maternity OR parenting). Place terms you want to be searched as a phrase in quotation marks " ".
In many databases, the asterisk (*) is a truncation or "wildcard" symbol that will match all possible endings for a word stem. For example, ethic* will match ethics, ethical, ethically, ethicist, etc.
Most databases have filters or facets that allow you to narrow your results by subject, date range, etc. Limit your searches to help you find the sources you need.
- Think about where you might find the type of information you are seeking.
Will you find the research you need in an e-book? An article? A newspaper? A documentary? An interview? For this assignment, you will likely be mostly looking for journal articles and/or essays/chapters from books. In general, though, when conducting research, cast a wide net when looking for the types of resources that could help answer your research question or support an argument you are making.
- Know the difference between academic and non-academic sources, and when it's appropriate to use them.
Most databases allow you to limit results to academic/scholarly/peer-reviewed sources. Be mindful of your assignment and what you're being asked to provide. Need a refresher? Watch the short video Peer Review in 3 Minutes.
- When you find a good source, use it to find other good sources.
Use the subject terms and keywords associated with an item to find other items on similar topics. Scholarly books and articles will have works cited, bibliographies, or footnotes you can mine for additional resources.
Need help? Ask a librarian.
Finding scholarly articles
The UVA Library has access to over 1000 databases. Below are a few that might be useful for researching your text, author, and topic of interest.
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 article @ UVa Libraries,” or look up the journal title in Virgo, the library catalog.
ProQuest One Literature is for scholars who want to engage with an exhaustive and diverse set of scholarly resources around a given literary topic for research. It contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theater performances, and author readings.
Humanities International Complete Indexes over 2000 journals with full text for over 700 and for books and other publications. Topics covered include archaeology, art, dance, drama, ethnic and women's studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, religion.
JSTOR provides access to millions of journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Good for content that is more than 3-5 years old.
Project MUSE hosts more than 800 journals and more than 90,000 books covering the humanities and social sciences from nearly 400 leading university presses, scholarly societies, and related publishers.
Finding books & articles 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 - a regular search will provide tabs for books, articles, and other materials. You can also use the Filter tools on the left to limit your results by author, format, publication date, and more.
Example books and ebooks of possible interest include:
The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9781350239944Publication Date: 2023he most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women's writing. The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison's writing within today's currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison's "trilogy" of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos' USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of "influence" that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner.
Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler: Slaves, Aliens, and Vampires by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780739137871Publication Date: 2010Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler: Slaves, Aliens, and Vampires is a timely text that critically situates Butler's fiction in several fields of study including American, African-American, gender, and science fiction studies. The study asserts that Butler's fiction transforms the way the body is imagined with reference to race and gender. This text examines how Butler's fiction is able to cross several genre boundaries while simultaneously reshaping the genre of science fiction. This book makes the claim that Butler's fiction is crucial for contemporary and future investigations of identity formation. Discussions of race, class, and sex are reoccurring topic that are inextricable to any understanding of body politics and theory. This book is filled with exciting and insightful discussions that raise questions about what constitutes humanity in Butler's fiction and in the real world. Ultimately, the purpose of the text is to add to the scholarship surrounding Butler and to bring her to the attention of audiences that might otherwise overlook her work. This book is an invitation for readers inside and outside of the academy to discover the fiction of Octavia Butler.
Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780511570414Publication Date: 1996Harriet Jacobs, today perhaps the single-most read and studied black American woman of the nineteenth century, has not until recently enjoyed sustained, scholarly analysis. This anthology presents a far-ranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship which will take its place as the primary resource for students and teachers of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The essays take on a variety of subjects in Incidents, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles.
Human Contradictions in Octavia E. Butler's Work by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9783030466251Publication Date: 2020Human Contradictions in Octavia Butler's Work continues the critical discussions of Butler's work by offering a variety of theoretical perspectives and approaches to Butler's text. This collection contains original essays that engage Butler's series (Seed to Harvest, Xenogenesis, Parables), her stand-alone novels (Kindred and Fledgling), and her short stories. The essays explore new facets of Butler's work and its relevance to philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, ethnic studies, womens studies, religious studies, American studies, and U.S. history. The volume establishes new ways of reading this seminal figure in African American literature, science fiction, feminism, and popular culture.
A Human Necklace: The African Diaspora and Paule Marshall's Fiction by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9781438444192Publication Date: 2013From Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) to The Fisher King (2000), Paule Marshall's novels, novellas, and short stories include a rich cast of unforgettable men, women, and children who forge spiritual as well as emotional and geographical paths toward their ancestors. In this, the first critical study to address all of Marshall's fiction, Moira Ferguson argues that Marshall's work collectively constitutes a multigenerational saga of the African diaspora across centuries and continents. In creating a space for her characters' interrupted lives and those of their elders and ancestors, Ferguson argues, Marshall trains a spotlight on slavery's wake and engages her fiction in the service of healing deep global wounds.
Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780826213099Publication Date: 2001Focusing on specific texts by Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Condé, and Paule Marshall, this fascinating study explores the intricate trichotomous relationship between the mother (biological or surrogate), the motherlands Africa and the Caribbean, and the mothercountry represented by England, France, and/or North America. The mother-daughter relationships in the works discussed address the complex, conflicting notions of motherhood that exist within this trichotomy. Although mothering is usually socialized as a welcoming, nurturing notion, Alexander argues that alongside this nurturing notion there exists much conflict. Specifically, she argues that the mother-daughter relationship, plagued with ambivalence, is often further conflicted by colonialism or colonial intervention from the "other," the colonial mothercountry. Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women offers an overview of Caribbean women's writings from the 1990s, focusing on the personal relationships these three authors have had with their mothers and/or motherlands to highlight links, despite social, cultural, geographical, and political differences, among Afro-Caribbean women and their writings. Alexander traces acts of resistance, which facilitate the (re)writing/righting of the literary canon and the conception of a "newly created genre" and a "womanist" tradition through fictional narratives with autobiographical components.
The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780807150665Publication Date: 2013This welcome study delivers a long-overdue analysis of the works of Ann Petry (1908-1997), a major mid-twentieth-century African American author. Primarily known as the sole female member of the "Wright School of Social Protest," Petry has been most recognized for her 1946 novel The Street, about a woman's struggle to raise her son in a hardscrabble Harlem neighborhood. Keith Clark moves beyond assessments of Petry as a sort of literary descendent of Richard Wright to acclaim her innovative approaches to gender performance, sexuality, and literary technique. Engaging a variety of disciplinary frameworks, including gothic criticism, masculinity and gender studies, queer theory, and psychoanalytic theory, Clark offers fresh readings of Petry's three novels and collection of short stories. Clark explores, for example, Petry's use of terror in The Street, where both blacks and whites appear physically and psychically monstrous.
Revising the Blueprint: Ann Petry and the Literary Left by Call Number: Shannon PS3531 .E933 Z86 2007ISBN: 9781578069712Publication Date: 2007The essayists in Revising the Blueprint: Ann Petry and the Literary Left examine Ann Petry's relationship to left-wing political circles in the years following World War II. Anthologies dedicated to African American writing, even those that consider the African American literary left, often exclude Petry (1908-1997). These essayists demonstrate how Petry's literary art, as well as her engagement in various community struggles, landed her squarely in a variety of progressive communities. Through analyses of Petry's three novels, her short fiction, and her nonfiction, scholars identify her literary forms and aesthetics, including pulp fiction, Marxist analysis, literary naturalism, and the realism Petry used to explore early Cold War racial, sexual, and class politics. Although Petry is not readily placed in leftist circles, the essays collected here show her engagement in a number of events centered in post-WWII Harlem, such as the Bronx Slave Market protest concerning treatment of African American female domestic workers and her role as contributor to Harlem's radical periodical, the People's Voice. Essays show that Petry's writing provides an important link between the Popular Front of the 1930s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s.
Toni Morrison and the Writing of Place by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9781003196099Publication Date: 2022How does Toni Morrison create and form her literary places? As one of the first studies exploring Morrison's archived drafts, notes, and manuscripts together with her published novels, this book offers fresh insights into her creative processes. It analyses the author's textual choices, her writerly strategies, and her process of writing, all combining in shaping her literary places. In a methodology combining close reading and genetic criticism, the book examines Morrison's writing--her drafting and crafting--of her fictional places. Focusing primarily on the novels Beloved (1987), Paradise (1997), and A Mercy (2008), it analyses particular instances of written places, illuminating the manifold ways in which they are formed as text, and showing the centrality of the ideas of joining in Beloved, transformation in Paradise, and articulation in A Mercy.
