FYWB 1155: Identity and Theory in American Literature (Davis)

Identity and Theory in American Literature

Here you will find resources to help you with your research. Use the side navigation to find:

• Resources for background information on your topic
• Places to find books in print and online
• Databases for locating scholarly and peer reviewed journal articles
• Resources for citing your sources and writing
• Remote library services for accessing materials away from Barnard

You can book an appointment with me using my calendar: https://barnard.libcal.com/appointments/mwisner.

Choosing a topic

Choosing a topic often feels like an impossible first step. It can be helpful to keep your initial topic ideas broad, and then begin honing in on your research question as you encounter new research materials. It is often through the process of research itself that one discovers a research topic.

There is no correct way to do research, but the following guidelines might be useful to keep in mind as you begin:

• Pick a text that interests you and a theme or idea that you want write about
• Come up with a preliminary question, but keep it loose
• Brainstorm some keywords to help you begin your research

Finding background information

• Use web resources like Wikipedia and Google searches to brainstorm and identify additional keywords for your topic
• For authoritative reference resources (like scholarly encyclopedias) see the Reference Resources page. These resources:
  • Are written by scholars in their fields, so you can trust the information they provide
  • Give you an overview of your topic,  background information, and help define terms you aren't familiar with
  • Contain bibliographies to help you find more information related to your topic
  • Can help you find more keywords, phrases, people and ideas to further your research

Refining your topic

After gathering your background information, refine your initial topic and question based off of what you learned. A good rule of thumb: if there is an entire book on your topic, it is too broad for a research paper. On the other hand, if the topic can be discussed in a few paragraphs, then it is too narrow.

Example: "The role of women in the plays of Shakespeare" is too broad because hundreds of books and articles have been written on this topic; "The symbolism of Ariel's costume in the Tempest" is likely too narrow because there are not enough books and articles discussing this specific detail.

Remember, don't worry if refining your topic happens more than once!

Using Keywords or Key Terms

Keywords are terms that describe the topic you are researching. Keywords can be a people, places, things, ideas, or concepts. We need keywords to effectively search in library academic databases (like CLIO or Jstor). Unlike internet browsers, which have developed to understand full questions written in natural language, academic databases use keywords to locate resources. 

There are no perfect searches when using keywords, which is why it's useful to brainstorm lots of related terms and/or synonyms to locate what you are looking for. For example, we might use the word "teenager" to describe a particular population, but the term "youth" might be used in a database instead.  You can also find new keywords once you begin searching in the content section and subject sections of a catalog entry.

Searching in Academic Databases using Boolean Operators and Modifiers

Academic databases work most effectively when using AND, OR, and NOT or including "quotation marks" or asterisks * in your searching. The videos below do a wonderful job unpacking how these tools work.

Catalog search tips:

• If you know exactly what book (journal, video, etc.) you are looking for, you can search by Title, Author, ISBN, etc.
• To find items about a specific topic, first try a keyword search in All Fields.
• Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase: "The Thief and the Dogs".
• Use * for truncation (to find variant spellings and endings of a word): parent* will find parent, parents, parental, parenthood, etc.; wom*n will find woman, women, womyn, etc.
• For more complex search, use AND and OR (note that AND and OR must be in ALL CAPS for this to work correctly in CLIO):
  • AND finds records which have ALL the search terms you entered.
  • OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.
  • For more help with using AND and OR, check our guide to advanced/Boolean keyword searching.
• Use parentheses ( ) to group terms:  Frankenstein* AND (parent* OR father*)