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Getting Started with this Guide
This guide was created for students in the ENWR 1510 section Writing About Joy. This page includes resources to help you conduct research once you have chosen an author and work for your annotated bibliography and research essay. Need more help? Contact Haley or Sherri.
Still looking for an author/work to focus on for your assignment? See the Additional Authors & Works about Joy tab to the left for more ideas.
See the grammar, style, and citation tab for general grammar and style guides and assistance in creating citations and bibliographies. The Tools for Access tab includes several tools to help you access library content from anywhere in the world.
Library Research
Both your annotated bibliography and resulting research essay will require research. In preparation, you will want to start thinking about possible questions/topics of interest related to the author and work you have chosen. You will want to find out what others have said about your author and their work. You will also want to spend some time thinking about how you will conduct your research when the time comes.
- 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 ("Black Joy" AND resistance) and look for synonyms using OR (activism OR advocacy OR action)
In many databases, the asterisk (*) is a truncation or "wildcard" symbol that will match all possible endings for a word stem. For example, hero* will match hero, heroes, heroism, heroics, heroin, 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.
- Or broaden your search, if needed!
Depending on what you've chosen, may find that there is not a whole lot of commentary on your exact work. Be ready to expand your search - if you're not finding commentary on your chosen essay (or story or poem), look for reviews or criticism on the larger collection in which it was originally published. Look for interviews with the author about their works or their thoughts on joy. Try searching for the name of your author and joy. Even pieces that do not talk directly about your chosen work could be helpful when you're making an argument. Sometimes, an article that doesn't seems to focus on one work includes commentary on many other works as well.
- Think about where you might find the type of information you are seeking.
Will you find the research you need in a print book or e-book? A journal article? A magazine? A newspaper? 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.
- Get help understanding UVA Library's many resources and how to navigate them.
If you are new to using UVA Library (or any academic library), or could use a refresher, access tutorials and tips on our How do I . . .? page, which allows you to watch short videos and run through tutorials on a variety of topics related to libraries and research.
- When you find a good source, use it to find other good sources.
Use the subject terms and keywords associated with an article or essay to find other articles and essays on similar topics. Scholarly essays and journal articles will have works cited, bibliographies, or footnotes you can mine for additional resources.
Need help? Ask a librarian.
Finding articles about your author and work
Use library databases (and Virgo) to search for articles and book reviews about your author and their work. Note that some databases, like the MLA International Bibliography, focus mainly on peer reviewed articles, while a more general database like Academic Search Complete or a collection of databases like ProQuest will provide more magazine and newspaper content that may be 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.
Academic Search Complete is a large general database of articles from scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers on many topics.
ProQuest offers UVa faculty, staff, and students access to over 50 separate databases, covering numerous fields and including books, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and trade journals, and more.
Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature is an index to the most popular and important periodicals. Covering subjects such as art, business, education and entertainment, it is an ideal general reference database for students.
Google Scholar is useful for finding scholarly articles, books, and websites. It can also be useful for seeing who has cited an article or essay after it was published.
Finding articles & essays in books 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 by searching everything, or view those results separately. You can also use various facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more.
Below are a few examples of print books and ebooks of criticism related to some of the authors and themes you have been/will be reading in class.
A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks by Call Number: Shannon PS3503 .R7244 Z685 2017ISBN: 9780807025048Publication Date: 2017A look back at the cultural and political force of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, in celebration of her hundredth birthday.In A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun, fellow Chicagoan and award-winning writer Angela Jacks delves deep into the rich fabric of Brooks's work and world. Granted unprecedented access to Brooks's family, personal papers, and writing community, Jackson traces the literary arc of this artist's long career and gives context for the world in which Brooks wrote and published her work. It is a powerfully intimate look at a once-in-a-lifetime talent up close, using forty-three of Brooks's most soul-stirring poems as a guide.
Towards Post-Blackness: A Critical Study of Rita Dove's Poetry by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781433196102Publication Date: 2023The book is a detailed introduction to Post-Blackness as a literary aesthetic, tracing its emergence to the philosophical movement that defined itself in the visual arts towards the end of the twentieth century. Roy traces how Dove deconstructs history, myth, and music to arrive at a moment that is both post-racial and post-historical.
To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780691219059Publication Date: 2023An incisive portrait of how the new Black politics can forge a future centered on collective action, community, and care When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, the hashtag turned rallying cry is but one expression of a radical reorientation toward Black politics, protest, and political thought. To Build a Black Future examines the spirit and significance of this insurgency, offering a revelatory account of a new political culture--responsive to pain, suffused with joy, and premised on care--emerging from the centuries-long arc of Black rebellion, a tradition that traces back to the Black slave. Drawing on his own experiences as an activist and organizer, Christopher Paul Harris takes readers inside the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) to chart the propulsive trajectory of Black politics and thought from the Middle Passage to the present historical moment. Carefully attending to the social forces that produce Black struggle and the contradictions that arise within it, Harris illustrates how M4BL gives voice to an abolitionist praxis that bridges the past, present, and future, outlining a political project at once directed inward to the Black community while issuing an outward challenge to the world. Essential reading for the age of #BlackLivesMatter, this visionary and provocative book reveals how the radical politics of joy, pain, and care, in sharp contrast to liberal political thought, can build a Black future that transcends ideology and pushes the boundaries of our political imagination.
The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects by Call Number: Shannon HQ76.25 .R88 2017ISBN: 9780231180900Publication Date: 2017In The Ethics of Opting Out, Mari Ruti provides an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the ideological divisions that have animated queer theory during the last decade, paying particular attention to the field's rejection of dominant neoliberal narratives of success, cheerfulness, and self-actualization. More specifically, she focuses on queer negativity in the work of Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, and Lynne Huffer, and on the rhetoric of bad feelings found in the work of Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, David Eng, Heather Love, and José Muñoz. Ruti highlights the ways in which queer theory's desire to opt out of normative society rewrites ethical theory and practice in genuinely innovative ways at the same time as she resists turning antinormativity into a new norm. This wide-ranging and thoughtful book maps the parameters of contemporary queer theory in order to rethink the foundational assumptions of the field.
