In-Class Worksheets
Links to the materials we will be using in class:
Librarian
Undergraduate Student Success Librarian
Research Librarian for English
Biography & Biocritical Databases
Gale Literature includes the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) which traces the lives and careers of selected authors, critics, screenwriters, journalists, scholars, and publishers from all eras and genres, with lists of recommended books and articles. Search for the author you want and choose the Biographies tab. The link above will take you to Gale Literature, a larger collection where you can also find criticism, reviews, and more.
Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Interacting with these materials creates a dynamic inquiry from any number of perspectives into centuries of women's writing.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) provides articles on the lives of British persons from the earliest times to the end of the 20th century. Note: We only have limited access so please close your browser when finished with this resource.
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.
The Cambridge Companion to American Poets by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo (also available in print)ISBN: 9781107560789Publication Date: 2015Includes chapter on Phillis Wheatley.
The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory by
Feminism has dramatically influenced the way literary texts are read, taught and evaluated. Feminist literary theory has deliberately transgressed traditional boundaries between literature, philosophy and the social sciences in order to understand how gender has been constructed and represented through language. This lively and thought-provoking Companion presents a range of approaches to the field. Some of the essays demonstrate feminist critical principles at work in analysing texts, while others take a step back to trace the development of a particular feminist literary method. The essays draw on a range of primary material from the medieval period to postmodernism and from several countries, disciplines and genres. Each essay suggests further reading to explore this field further. This is the most accessible guide available both for students of literature new to this developing field, and for students of gender studies and readers interested in the interactions of feminism, literary criticism and literature.
Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to accessISBN: 9780521807067Publication Date: 2006
The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft by
Once viewed solely in relation to the history of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft is now recognised as a writer of formidable talent across a range of genres, including journalism, letters and travel writing, and is increasingly understood as an heir to eighteenth-century literary and political traditions as well as a forebear of romanticism. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft addresses all aspects of Wollstonecraft's momentous and tragically brief career. The diverse and searching essays commissioned for this volume do justice to Wollstonecraft's pivotal importance in her own time and since, paying attention not only to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but also to the full range of her work across disciplinary boundaries separating philosophy, letters, education, advice, politics, history, religion, sexuality, and feminism itself. A chronology and bibliography offer further essential information for scholars and students of this remarkable writer.
Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to accessISBN: 9780521783439Publication Date: 2002
The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing by
Providing an overview of the history of writing by women in the period, this 2001 Companion establishes the context in which this writing emerged, and traces the origin of the terms which have traditionally defined the debate. It includes essays on topics of recent concern, such as women and war, erotic violence, the liberating and disciplinary effects of religion, and examines the work of a variety of women writers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rebecca Harding Davis and Louisa May Alcott. The volume plots new directions for the study of American literary history, and provides several valuable tools for students, including a chronology of works and suggestions for further reading.
Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to accessISBN: 9780521660037Publication Date: 2001
The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf (2nd ed) by
Virginia Woolf's writing has generated passion and controversy for the best part of a century. Her novels - challenging, moving, and always deeply intelligent - remain as popular with readers as they are with students and academics. The highly successful Cambridge Companion has been fully revised to take account of new departures in scholarship since it first appeared. The second edition includes new chapters on race, nation and empire, sexuality, aesthetics, visual culture and the public sphere. The remaining chapters, as well as the guide to further reading, have all been fully updated. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf remains the first port of call for students new to Woolf's work, with its informative, readable style, chronology and authoritative information about secondary sources.a
Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to accessISBN: 0521721679Publication Date: 2010
Questions? Ask us!
Preparing for Research
This guide was created to help you prepare for your second essay research for ENWR 1510 and as a general guide to resources related to feminism, diversity, and community engagement.
In preparation for your research paper you hopefully have thought some about possible questions to start your research. 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 ("The Yellow Wallpaper" AND feminism) and OR (woman OR female OR lady OR girl).
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 sexism, sexual, sexuality, sexualize, 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? 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.
Databases for Finding Articles about Literature
Databases for Researching Literature (See an A-Z list of all databases)
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.
JSTOR includes older issues of scholarly journals in many disciplines including literature, from the start to 3-5 years ago.
Project Muse offers searchable full text of nearly 600 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, mostly from North American university presses. Older volumes are often available from JSTOR.
Databases for finding Articles and Primary Sources for Broader Context
Women's Studies International allows you to find journal articles, books, conference proceedings, reports, theses & dissertations, documents and other materials on all aspects of women's studies.
Race Relations Abstracts focuses on the relationship between and among races. This resource includes abstracting for the top academic journals, books, periodicals and newspapers in the field.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 is a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection includes 108 document projects and archives with almost 4,300 documents and more than 150,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by more than 2,200 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Women and Social Movements International, 1840 to Present is a collection of primary materials. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.
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 studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, religion.
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics. Also includes reference books, biographies, speeches, images, and other primary source documents.
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, or view those results separately, using the facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more. To find online, set the Availability filter to Online to limit your catalog search results.
Example subject terms
- Feminism and Literature
- Feminist Literary Criticism
- Sex Roles in Literature
- Women and Literature
- Women in Mass Media
- Women's Rights in Literature
Example Ebooks of Interest
Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out by Call Number: EBook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9780813519913Publication Date: 1993Although this is an older work (1993), it includes interviews with many important women authors, including Joanna Russ and Maxine Hong Kingston.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9780877456964Publication Date: 1999Although she is now best known as a writer of novels and short stories, Gilman was known to her contemporaries as an advocate of reform on social, economic and religious fronts. These essays seek to remind the reader that the main purpose of her writing was reform.
Fictional Feminism: How American Bestsellers Affect the Movement for Women's Equality by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 0415968062Publication Date: 2004This book focuses on the ways in which second-wave feminism has been represented in American popular culture, and on the effects that these representations have had on feminism as a political movement. Kim Loudermilk provides close readings of four best-selling novels and their film adaptations. According to Loudermilk, each of these novels contains explicitly feminist characters and themes, yet each presents a curiously ambivalent picture of feminism; these texts at once take feminism seriously and subtly undercut its most central tenets. This book argues that these texts create a kind of "fictional feminism" that recuperates feminism's radical potential, thereby lessening the threat it presents to the status quo.
Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinkers by Call Number: EBook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9780415681353Publication Date: 2016The feminist thinkers in this collection are the designated "fifty-one key feminist thinkers," historical and contemporary, and also the authors of the entries. Collected here are fifty-one key thinkers and fifty-one authors, recognizing that women are fifty-one percent of the population. There are actually one hundred and two thinkers collected in these pages, as each author is a feminist thinker, too: scholars, writers, poets, and activists, well-established and emerging, old and young and in-between. These feminists speak the languages of art, politics, literature, education, classics, gender studies, film, queer theory, global affairs, political theory, science fiction, African American studies, sociology, American studies, geography, history, philosophy, poetry, and psychoanalysis. Speaking in all these diverse tongues, conversations made possible by feminist thinking are introduced and engaged.
Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory by Call Number: EBook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9781107126084Publication Date: 2015Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory offers an insightful look at the development of feminist theory through a literary lens. Chapters include:
"'Original spirit': Literary translations and transnational literature in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft;" "Progressive portraits: Literature in feminisms of Charlotte Perkins Gilman & Olive Schreiner;" & "Woolf and women's work: Literary invention in an obscure hat factory."
Maxine Hong Kingston: A Critical Companion by Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to access (sign in to Hathi for access)ISBN: 9780313308772Publication Date: 2001Maxine Hong Kingston's first book, Woman Warrior gained instant popularity and critical success, winning top national literary awards as well as a place on the best seller list. Readers recognized in China Men, a follow up memoir, and Tripmaster Monkey, a genre-defying novel, the same beguiling narrative voice and panoramic prose. This critical study provides an introduction to Kingston's works with in-depth literary analysis of her three long narratives. It helps students understand the important thematic concerns, such as the immigrant acculturalization process and the literary innovations such as the talk story narrative mode introduced by Kingston. Taking readers beyond these works, this volume offers a guided tour through the Asian immigrant experience, and the history of Asian American Literature. This study examines the tremendous cross-over appeal of Kingston's works with readers of all ages, genders, ethnic and national backgrounds. Readers are introduced to Maxine Hong Kingston with a fascinating biographical chapter. A literary heritage chapter examines not only how Kingston fits into the Asian American literary tradition, but also how her exuberant books helped shape and redefine this important area of literature. A full chapter is devoted to each work, covering all literary components; plot and narrative construction, character development, symbolism, historical context and themes. An alternate critical approach is also given for each work. An extensive bibliography covers works by and about Kingston.
Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity by Call Number: Ebook -Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9780199364985Publication Date: 2015Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity interweaves classical and contemporary writings from the social sciences and the humanities to represent feminist thought from the late eighteenth century to the present. The editors pay close attention to the multiplicity and diversity of feminist voices, visions, and vantage points by race, class, gender, sexuality, and global location. Along with more conventional forms of theorizing, this anthology points to multiple sites of theory production--both inside and outside of the academy--and includes personal narratives, poems, short stories, zines, and even music lyrics. Offering a truly global perspective, the book devotes three chapters and more than thirty readings to the topics of colonialism, imperialism and globalization. It also provides extensive coverage of third-wave feminism, poststructuralism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminisms.
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 1138845116Publication Date: 2019Feminism as a method, a movement, a critique, and an identity has been the subject of debates, contestations and revisions in recent years, yet contemporary global developments and political upheavals have again refocused feminism's collective force. What is feminism now? How do scholars and activists employ contemporary feminism? What feminist traditions endure? Which are no longer relevant in addressing contemporary global conditions. In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars reflect on how contemporary feminism has shaped their thinking and their field as they interrogate its uses, limits, and reinventions. Organized as a set of questions over definition, everyday life, critical intervention, and political activism, the Handbook takes on a broad set of issues and points of view to consider what feminism is today and what current forces shape its future development. It also includes an extended conversation among major feminist thinkers about the future of feminist scholarship and activism. The scholars gathered here address a wide variety of topics and contexts: activism from post-Soviet collectives to the Arab spring, to the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment, feminist art, film and digital culture, education, technology, policy, sexual practices and gender identity.
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo record.ISBN: 9780465018505Publication Date: 2003In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer -- a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to build an extraordinary body of literature in their efforts to prove him wrong. In The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson played in shaping the black literary tradition. Writing with all the lyricism and critical skill that place him at the forefront of American letters, Gates brings to life the characters, debates, and controversy that surrounded Wheatley in her day and ours.
