LibGuides: First Year Writing: Queer/Migrant Section 1 (Spring 2020): Getting Started

About This Guide

In this guide, you'll find resources to help you with your research for First Year Writing: Legacy of the Mediterranean.

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
Resources for citing your sources and writing
Guidelines for getting required course texts for free via the Library
New information on remote library services

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

Image:"Queer Feminists Against Borders," photographed by aesthetics of crisis. Stencil artist unknown. Athens, Psirri, Greece. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/aestheticsofcrisis/28713268217. Accessed 10/13/19.

Choosing a Topic

It may feel really overwhelming to choose a research topic. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Choose a text and/or concept or problem that interests you. This can be your starting place---be prepared for this to change a bit as you develop your research!
Write down keywords and key phrases that relate to your topic. Think of alternative terms. If you want to visualize them spatially, start a concept map, or mind map.
Research backgrounds and contexts, if you would like (see below for some reference sources that can help with this).
Use the words and phrases on your concept map in your searches across catalogs and databases. Try out different combinations!
As you begin to review the sources you have found, think about how you might want to develop the shape of your topic---by maknig it more specific, or broadening it, or approaching it differently than you did when you started.

Keyword Concept Map
A diagram you can use to create a concept map (via Claremont College Libraries)

Reference Sources

Below are some examples of reference sources that you can browse and search digitally, to find working definitions, backgrounds, contexts, and overviews. To look up a term or concept across a range of reference sources we have access to, you can also try a CLIO Articles Search, and then limit the results by Content Type to Reference.

The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory by Ellen Rooney (Editor)
ISBN: 9780521807067
Publication Date: 2006-07-06
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. The 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.
The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin by Michele Elam (Editor)
ISBN: 9781107043039
Publication Date: 2015
Individual essays examine Baldwin's classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the 'post-race' transnational twenty-first century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assume new urgency.
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration by Immanuel Ness (Editor-In-Chief)
ISBN: 9781444334890
Publication Date: 2013
Explores themes, events, and theoretical underpinnings of the movements of human populations from prehistory to the present day, comprising over 500 A-Z entries, and a prehistory section featuring over 50 thematic essays Includes contributions from a global and multi-disciplinary author team, from historians and anthropologists, to political scientists, economists, and geneticists. Features illustrations, images, charts, and 50 maps in 5 Volumes
Global encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history
ISBN: 9780684325545
Publication Date: 2019
This encyclopedia covers LGBTQ topics in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, as well as North America, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, using film, literature, human rights, politics, landmark legislation, activism, the arts, language, sports, and historical events as points of entry into the content.
Oxford African American Studies Center
Comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with precise search and browse capabilities. Features over 7,500 articles from Oxford's reference works, approximately 100 primary sources with specially written commentaries, over 1,000 images, over 100 maps, over 200 charts and tables, timelines to guide researchers through the history of African Americans and over 6,000 biographies. The core content includes: Africana, which presents an account of the African and African American experience in five volumes ; the Encyclopedia of African American history ; Black women in America, 2nd ed ; and the African American national biography.

Oxford Bibliographies Online
Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on specific topics in a growing range of subject areas. There are at least 50 specific topical bibliographies in each subject area. Each of these features an introduction to the topic. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable.
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed 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. The OED started life more than 150 years ago. Updates revise and extend the OED at regular intervals.

The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary by Pramod K. Nayar
ISBN: 9781118781029
Publication Date: 2015
Features 150 definitions of key terms and concepts in postcolonial theory, with a brief introduction to postcolonial theory and a list of suggested further reading that includes the texts in which many of these terms originated Each entry includes the origins of the term, where traceable; a detailed explanation of its perceived meaning; and examples of the term's use in literary-cultural texts. Incorporates terms and concepts from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, science, economics, globalization studies, politics, and philosophy.
The Routledge Research Companion to Geographies of Sex and Sexualities by Gavin Brown (Editor); Kath Browne (Editor)
ISBN: 9781472455482
Publication Date: 2016
Charts and develops geographies of sexualities, exploring sex-gender, sexuality and sexual practices. Emerging from the desire to examine differences and exclusions as a key aspect of human geographies, these geographies have engaged with heterosexual and queer, lesbian, gay, bi and trans lives. Developing thinking in this area, geographers and other social scientists have illustrated the centrality of place, space and other spatial relationships in reconstituting sexual practices, representations, desires, as well as sexed bodies and lives. This book reviews the current state of the field and offers new insights from authors located on five continents. In doing so, the book seeks to draw on and influence core debates in this field, as well as disrupt the Anglo-American hegemony in studies of sexualities, sexes and geographies.