Where to Find Background Sources
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The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion
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ISBN: 9781003222491Publication Date: 2021-11-29"This substantially revised second edition […] remains the only comprehensive survey in English of methods and methodology in the discipline. Designed for non-specialists and upper undergraduate-/graduate-level students, it discusses the range of methods currently available to stimulate interest in unfamiliar methods and enable students and scholars to evaluate methodological issues in research." -
Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies
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ISBN: 3110571609Publication Date: 2021-02-22"This volume provides practical, but provocative, case studies of exemplary projects that apply digital technology or methods to the study of religion. An introduction and 16 essays are organized by the kinds of sources digital humanities scholars use - texts, images, and places - with a final section on the professional and pedagogical issues digital scholarship raises for the study of religion." -
Faithful Measures: New Methods in the Measurement of Religion
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ISBN: 9781479875214Publication Date: 2017-10-10"Faithful Measures pushes the study of religion into the 21st century by evaluating new and existing measures of religion and introducing new methods for tapping into religious behaviors and beliefs. Covers technology including mobile applications, "Google Ngrams, crowdsourcing data, and Amazon buying networks." -
Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion
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ISBN: 9004309160Publication Date: 2016-02-18"The volume provides an overview of current debates in the field [of discursive study of religion], extends and improves upon contemporary theories and methodologies, and contributes to the discipline more broadly by flagging the importance of this emerging field of research." -
New Methods in the Sociology of Religion (Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, v.3)
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ISBN: 9004176039Publication Date: 2012-07-25"This volume points to methodological innovations in social research and their potential for social scientific studies of religion." This includes "[c]omputerization […] for both quantitative and qualitative systematic analysis", and "the epistemological discourse after Positivism".
The following are the top databases for finding background sources related to Religion. For a full list of databases, check out our Databases A-Z.
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Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window
Authoritative guide to reliable peer-reviewed resources and scholarship in African Studies, Buddhism, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American Studies, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Political Science, and Renaissance and Reformation. Bibliographies are selectively curated and annotated by expert academics and offer high-level overviews that provide non-experts with a point of entry into unfamiliar areas of study.
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Oxford Research Encyclopedias This link opens in a new window
Designed to be an authoritative resource of reference content in a wide array of academic fields, including the humanities, social sciences, and science.
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Very Short Introductions This link opens in a new window
Provides concise introductions to a diverse range of subjects, written by experts in the field who combine facts, analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make challenging topics highly readable. Subject categories include: Arts and Humanities, Law, Medicine and Health, Science and Mathematics, and Social Sciences.
The B in BEAM: What is a Background Source?
In his paper introducing the BEAM model of source description, Jospeh Bizup explains:
I use the terms background and background source to refer to materials whose claims a writer accepts as fact, whether these "facts" are taken as general information or deployed as evidence to support the writer's own assertions. Writers regard their background sources as authoritative and expect their readers to do the same. Because writers sometimes treat information gleaned from their background sources as "common knowledge," they may sometimes leave these sources uncited.
(Bizup 2008, 75)
Bizup, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27, no. 1 (2008): 72–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20176824.
To learn more about BEAM and other source evaluation models and techniques, refer to the following research guide: