LibGuides: English: Getting Started

About This Guide

In this guide, you'll find resources to support research in English, including:

Resources to research background and contextual information on your topic and the approaches you might be bringing to your research (see links below)
Places to find books in print and online
Databases for locating articles, including scholarly and peer-reviewed articles
Approaches to finding primary sources
Resources for citing your sources and for writing
Guidelines for getting required course texts for free via the Library

Please feel free to book an appointment with me on my calendar page, for further support with your research.

Image: Shankbone, David (2008). Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Loisaida section of New York City. Via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0

Reference Sources

The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 by Simon Gikandi; Evan Mwangi
ISBN: 9780231125208
Publication Date: 2007
Includes a chronology of key historical events and an overview of the emergence and transformation of literary culture in East Africa, as well as an alphabetical list of major writers and brief descriptions of their concerns and achievements. Separate entries within this list describe thematic concerns, such as colonialism, decolonization, the Black aesthetic, the growth of genres like autobiography and popular literature; important movements like cultural nationalism and feminism; and the impact of major forces such as AIDS/HIV, Christian missions, and urbanization.
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics by ed. Michael Kelly
Publication Date: 2014
Scholarly resource for the conceptual side of the arts, excellent for backgrounds & theory. A comprehensive survey of major concepts, thinkers, and debates about the meaning, uses, and value of all the arts—from painting and sculpture to literature, music, theater, dance, television, film, and popular culture.The second edition includes increased coverage of international aesthetics, modern aesthetics, new media like computer art, and areas like neuroaesthetics that were not thoroughly covered in the first edition.
The Encyclopedia of African-American Writing by Grey House Publishing Staff
ISBN: 9781682177181
Publication Date: 2018
Covers the role and influence of African American cultural leaders, from all walks of life, from the 18th century to the present. Considers what inspired various Black writers to create poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, opinion pieces and numerous other works, and how those writings contributed to culture in America today.
Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory by Michael Ryan (General Editor); Gregory Castle (Volume Editor); Robert Eaglestone (Volume Editor); M. Keith Booker (Volume Editor)
ISBN: 9781405183123
Publication Date: 2011
Covers theory across three volumes: Literary theory 1900 to 1966,Literary Theory from 1966 to 2011, and Cultural Theory. Entries cover the important concepts, theorists and trends in post-1900 literary and cultural theory, with explanations of complex terms and important theoretical concepts, and summaries of the work and ideas of key figures.
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English by Eugene Benson (Editor); L. W. Conolly (Editor)
ISBN: 9780415278850
Publication Date: 2005
This Encyclopedia documents the history and development of postcolonial literature in English and includes original research relating to the literatures of over 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries, some of them biographical, conceptual, and thematic and written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, the encyclopedia explores the effect of the colonial and postcolonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.

Merriam-Webster Unabridged
Offers access to the following unabridged versions of Merriam Webster reference titles: Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary, Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, Merriam-Webster's collegiate thesaurus,Merriam-Webster's concise encyclopedia,
Merriam-Webster's medical dictionary,
Merriam-Webster's Spanish-English dictionary, and
Merriam-Webster's French-English dictionary.

Oxford English dictionary online (OED)
A browseable and searchable guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from Dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.