LibGuides: ENGL 3204: World Literature Revisited I: Getting Started

About this guide

Welcome! In this guide, you'll find resources and strategies you can use as you create your own syllabus of world literature, for ENGL BC3204, World Literature Revisited (Professor Akbari).

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 texts of world literatures, with a focus on digitally available texts
Databases for locating secondary sources, including book reviews and literary historical and critical sources
Resources for citing your sources
Updated information on remote library services available via Barnard, Columbia, and other libraries
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: Hunt, Richard. Spiral Odyssey (sculpture installed at Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte, North Carolina). Photograph by Aidan Hunt. Via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 (public domain).

Finding Search Terms

LINK TO OUR GROUP KEYWORD CLOUD

Here are some tips for finding search terms. It's a great idea to start thinking about these before you search in catalogs, databases, and other search tools.

Write down keywords and key phrases that relate to your topic(s) and can lead you to the texts you are seeking. Think of alternative terms. If you want to visualize them spatially, start a concept map, or mind map. Some types of terms you might want to list for yourself:
- Regions/parts of the world from where you are looking for texts
- Source languages
- Themes that interest you
- Literary forms or genres that interest you
- When known, names of authors and/or specific texts
Research backgrounds and contexts, if you would like (see Reference Sources for some reference sources that can help with this). Reference sources can give you additional ideas for key words and phrases to try in your searches.
Make room for alternate spellings of terms, or names. especially ones translated/transliterated from languages other than English. (Example: Sunjata or Sundiata).
Use the words and phrases on your concept map in your searches across catalogs and databases. Try out different combinations!

Keyword Concept Map
A diagram you can use to create a concept map, which you can use to develop search terms (via Claremont College Libraries)

Reference Sources

Credo
Credo brings together digital versions of reference sources, including dictionaries and specialized encyclopedias, across a range of disciplines and research areas. Look out for the mind-map feature, which allows you to view a map of terms related to a keyword or phrase.

Encyclopedia Iranica
dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. This academic reference work will eventually cover all aspects of Iranian history and culture as well as all Iranian languages and literatures, facilitating the whole range of Iranian studies research from archeology to political sciences.

Encyclopedia of African Literature by Gianna Moscardo
ISBN: 9780203361269
Publication Date: 2003
covers key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts. While the greatest proportion of literary work in Africa has been a product of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia also covers the literature back to the earliest eras of story-telling and oral transmission, making this a unique and valuable resource for those studying social sciences as well as humanities. This work includes cross-references, suggestions for further reading, and a comprehensive index.

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures
covers Mesoamerica before, during, and after colonialism, with Mesoamerica defined as the lands stretching from Mexico to the southern tip of Central America. With more than 600 articles, it is invaluable for those interested in civilizations of the pre-Columbian era (including the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya peoples) up through the colonial and postcolonial periods, as well as art, archaeology, religious studies, anthropology, history, and historiography of the region. With fully cross-referenced, signed articles by leading scholars in the discipline.
Oxford English dictionary online (OED)
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers information on 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. In the OED, along with present-day meanings, you will 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.