Teaching & Learning Librarian
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Teaching & Learning Librarian
Helpful URLs
- Ask a LibrarianQuestions? Ask us! Chat, call, text, or email anytime.
- Interlibrary LoanNeed a book or article we don't own? Request a copy through Interlibrary Loan borrowing.
- Purchase RecommendationsIs there an item you think the UVA Library should own but doesn't? Make a purchase recommendation.
Preparing for Research
Once you have a general topic in mind for your paper, 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 (television AND "science fiction" AND gender) and OR (hero OR protagonist).
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 a 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.
Finding articles
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. It is not a full-text resource, meaning that you can only search the description of an article, rather than the text of the article. To get the full text of an article, click on “Find article @ UVa Libraries”, or look up the journal title in VIRGO.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database Lists articles from scholarly and popular periodicals covering dance, film, television, theater, opera, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling and more. Some journals include full text.
Communications & Mass Media Complete provides coverage of journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study. It provides indexing and abstracts for more than 570 journals, and selected coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of more than 770 titles. Furthermore, this database includes full text for over 450 journals.
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics. Updated daily, it can be the best source for resources about very current topics.
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 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 includes older issues of scholarly journals in many disciplines, 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.
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 content, use the Filter Results By option and choose Online.
Example subject terms:
- Science Fiction Television
- Fantasy Television
- Identity (Psychology) and Mass Media
- Sex Roles on Television
- African Americans on Television
- People With Disabilities on Television
- Gender Identity on Television
- Homosexuality on Television
Possible Books of Interest
- Liverpool Science Fiction Studies Online This link opens in a new windowThis resource includes e-access to books in the Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies and Constellations series.
Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes by Call Number: PR9192.6 .S34 C37 2019ISBN: 3030156842Publication Date: 2019Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes exposes the limitations of the solitudes concept so often applied uncritically to the Canadian experience. This volume examines Canadian and Québécois literature of the fantastic across its genres--such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, indigenous futurism, and others--and considers how its interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, race, and gender works to bridge multiple solitudes. Utilizing a transnational lens, this volume reveals how the fantastic is ready-made for exploring, in non-literal terms, the complex and problematic nature of intercultural engagement.
Difficult Women on Television Drama by Call Number: EBook - access using link from VirgoISBN: 9781003031598Publication Date: 2021Difficult Women on Television Drama analyses select case studies from international TV dramas to examine the unresolved feminist issues they raise or address: equal labor force participation, the demand for sexual pleasure and freedom, opposition to sexual and domestic violence, and the need for intersectional approaches. Drawing on examples from The Killing, Orange is the New Black, Big Little Lies, Wentworth, Outlander, Westworld, Being Mary Jane, Queen Sugar, Vida, and other television dramas with a focus on complex female characters, this book illustrates how female creative control in key production roles (direct authorship) together with industrial imperatives and a conducive cultural context (indirect authorship) are necessary to produce feminist texts.
Disability and Digital Television Cultures by Call Number: E-book: Use link in Virgo record to accessISBN: 9781317627845Publication Date: 2019Disability and Digital Television Cultures offers an important addition to scholarly studies at the intersection of disability and media, examining disability in the context of digital television access, representation and reception. Television, as a central medium of communication, has marginalized people with disability through both representation on screen and the lack of accessibility to this medium. With accessibility options becoming available as television is switched to digital transmissions, audience research into television representations must include a corresponding consideration of access. This book provides a comprehensive and critical study of the way people with disability access and watch digital TV. International case studies and media reports are complimented by findings of a user-focused study into accessibility and representation captured during the Australian digital television switchover in 2013-2014. This book will provide a reliable, independent guide to fundamental shifts in media access while also offering insight from the disability community.
Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television by Call Number: PN1992.8 .W6 F36 2000ISBN: 0847698343Publication Date: 2000A new collection on women in American television in the 90s uncovers a cultural obsession with tough yet sexy heroines in mythical pasts, the 'girl power' present, and utopic futures. Xena, Buffy, Sabrina, and a host of other characters have become household words, as well as icons of pop culture 'feminism.' Their popularity makes for successful programming, however, how much does this trend truly represent a contemporary feminist breakthrough? And what does it mean for feminism in the next few decades? Fantasy Girls: Navigating the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television seeks to explore as well as challenge the power and the promises of this recent media phenomenon. Such TV programming offers the exciting opportunity to rethink established gender norms, but how far is it really pushing the limits of the status quo? Amidst the exuberant optimism of fanzines and doting fan websites, the contributors to this volume endeavor to provide us with a much needed critical analysis of this contemporary trend. These essays explore the contradictions and limitations inherent in the genre, forcing readers to take a fresh and critical look through a variety of lenses including girl power, postfeminism, cyborg feminism, disability politics, queer studies, and much more. Programs covered are Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Disney's Cinderella, Lois and Clark, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Star Trek: Voyager, The X-Files, Third Rock from the Sun, and Xena: Warrior Princess.
Gender, Race, and American Science Fiction: Reflections on Fantastic Identities by Call Number: Ebook - Acces online using link in Virgo (also available as print book)ISBN: 9781317574231Publication Date: 2015This book focuses on the interplay of gender, race, and their representation in American science fiction, from the nineteenth-century through to the twenty-first, and across a number of forms including literature and film. Haslam explores the reasons why SF provides such a rich medium for both the preservation of and challenges to dominant mythologies of gender and race. Defining SF linguistically and culturally, the study argues that this mode is not only able to illuminate the cultural and social histories of gender and race, but so too can it intervene in those histories, and highlight the ruptures present within them. The volume moves between material history and the linguistic nature of SF fantasies, from the specifics of race and gender at different points in American history to larger analyses of the socio-cultural functions of such identity categories. SF has already become central to discussions of humanity in the global capitalist age, and is increasingly the focus of feminist and critical race studies; in combining these earlier approaches, this book goes further, to demonstrate why SF must become central to our discussions of identity writ large, of the possibilities and failings of the human --past, present, and future.
Indian Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction: First Nations' Voices Speak Out by Call Number: PN1992.8 .I64 A32 2005ISBN: 029270612XPublication Date: 2005According to an early 1990s study, 95 percent of what college students know about Native Americans was acquired through the media, leading to widespread misunderstandings of First Nations peoples. Sierra Adare contends that negative "Indian" stereotypes do physical, mental, emotional, and financial harm to First Nations individuals. At its core, this book is a social study whose purpose is to explore the responses of First Nations peoples to representative "Indian" stereotypes portrayed within the TV science fiction genre. Participants in Adare's study viewed episodes from My Favorite Martian, Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager, Quantum Leap, The Adventures of Superman, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Reactions by viewers range from optimism to a deep-rooted sadness. The strongest responses came after viewing a Superman episode's depiction of an "evil medicine man" who uses a ceremonial pipe to kill a warrior. The significance of First Nations peoples' responses and reactions are both surprising and profound. After publication of "Indian" Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction, ignorance can no longer be used as an excuse for Hollywood's irresponsible depiction of First Nations peoples' culture, traditions, elders, religious beliefs, and sacred objects.
Masculinity and Popular Television by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in Virgo.ISBN: 0748627987Publication Date: 2009This book is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the key debates concerning the representation of masculinities in a wide range of popular television genres. The volume looks at the depiction of public masculinity in the soap opera, homosexuality in the situation comedy, theportrayal of fatherhood in prime-time animation, emerging manhood in the supernatural teen text, alternative gender roles in science fiction, male authority in the police series, masculine anxieties in the hospital drama, violence and aggression in sports coverage, ordinariness and emotionalconnectedness in the reality game show, and domesticity in lifestyle television.Masculinity and Popular Television examines the ways in which masculinities are being constructed, circulated and interrogated in contemporary British and American programming, and considers the ways in which such images can be understood in relation to the 'common sense' model of the hegemonic male that is said to dominate the cultural landscape.
Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction by Call Number: E-Book (also available in print - search Virgo)ISBN: 9781781388174Publication Date: 2008Contestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The essays in Queer Universes investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. Queer Universes opens with Wendy Pearson's award-winning essay on reading sf queerly and goes on to include discussions about 'sextrapolation' in New Wave science fiction, 'stray penetration' in William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ.
Social Issues in Television Fiction by Call Number: E-Book: Access using link in Virgo catalog.ISBN: 9780748625314Publication Date: 2007Why are some controversial issues covered in TV soaps and dramas and not others? How are decisions really made 'behind the scenes'? How do programme makers push boundaries without losing viewers? What do audiences take away from their viewing experience? Does TV fiction have a greater impact on public understandings than TV news? This exciting new book draws on unique empirical data to examine the relationship between popular television fiction and wider society.The book gives lively and engaging insights into how and why socially sensitive story lines were taken up by different TV programs from the late 1980s to the 2000s. Drawing on a series of case studies of medicine, health, illness and social problems including breast cancer, mental distress,sexual abuse and violence it comprehensively traces the path of storylines from initial conception through to audience reception and uses contemporary examples to link practice to theory. For the first time, this book addresses production and reception processes across a range of programmes andclearly demonstrates the ways in which television fiction plays a vital and powerful role in reflecting and shaping socio-cultural attitudes.
Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by Call Number: PS374 .N4 C37 2016ISBN: 0816678960Publication Date: 2016In Speculative Blackness, André M. Carrington analyzes the highly racialized genre of speculative fiction--including science fiction, fantasy, and utopian works, along with their fan cultures--to illustrate the relationship between genre conventions in media and the meanings ascribed to blackness in the popular imagination.Carrington's argument about authorship, fandom, and race in a genre that has been both marginalized and celebrated offers a black perspective on iconic works of science fiction. He examines the career of actor Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed the character Uhura in the original Star Trek television series and later became a recruiter for NASA, and the spin-off series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, set on a space station commanded by a black captain. He recovers a pivotal but overlooked moment in 1950s science fiction fandom in which readers and writers of fanzines confronted issues of race by dealing with a fictitious black fan writer and questioning the relevance of race to his ostensible contributions to the 'zines. Carrington mines the productions of Marvel comics and the black-owned comics publisher Milestone Media, particularly the representations of black sexuality in its flagship title, Icon. He also interrogates online fan fiction about black British women in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and theHarry Potter series. Throughout this nuanced analysis, Carrington theorizes the relationship between race and genre in cultural production, revealing new understandings of the significance of blackness in twentieth-century American literature and culture.
Television and the Self: Knowledge, Identity, and Media Representation by Call Number: E-Book: Access using link in Virgo catalog. Also available in printISBN: 9780739179574Publication Date: 2013Sitting prominently at the hearth of our homes, television serves as a voice of our modern time. Given our media-saturated society and television's prominent voice and place in the home, it is likely we learn about our society and selves through these stories. These narratives are not simply entertainment, but powerful socializing agents that shape and reflect the world and our role in it. Television and the Self: Knowledge, Identity, and Media Representation brings together a diverse group of scholars to investigate the role television plays in shaping our understanding of self and family. This edited collection's rich and diverse research demonstrates how television plays an important role in negotiating self, and goes far beyond the treacly "very special" episodes found in family sit-coms in the 1980s. Instead, the authors show how television reflects our reality and helps us to sort out what it means to be a twenty-first-century man or woman.
