LibGuides: Academic Writing Intensive: Getting Started

About This Guide

In this guide, you'll find resources to help you with your research for Academic Writing Intensive.

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

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

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

To search across a range of reference sources that we have access to, try a CLIO Articles search with the keyword/key phrase you are looking up. Limit your search results to "Reference" using the "Content Type" box.

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.
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.