FYSP 176: Black Women’s Narratives on Page, Stage and Screen

This guide provides resources that may be useful for your critical essay assignments for this course. It begins with some guidance on how to use library resources effectively, then moves into particular search tools that will be useful for different stages of the assignment. 

Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:

• Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
• Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.  
• Use Search.Libraries to find books and reference sources.  These sources will:
  • provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
  • REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
  • help you FOCUS your topic and
  • provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
• Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
• You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet.  This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.

Visit Search.Libraries to find books, journal articles, scores, audio, video, and more—all from a single integrated starting point. 

Talk given for Oberlin Heritage Center, February 21, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-e08dVWHA

Africana Studies

Comparative American Studies

Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

History, American

Politics, American

Sociology

Other possibilities...