Consult the following resources as "pre-search" to better understand the larger context surrounding your topic of inquiry. You won't necessarily end up citing and integrating these sources directly into your essay, but the information you glean from them can inform your research by helping you ask more specific questions and supplying you with fruitful key terms to use in your database queries. Ask professor Goldberg for additional background materials if you don't find what you need here.

Encyclopedias

Oxford Reference

Search lots of different subject-specific encyclopedias and handbooks. Pro tips: You can sort the results by length to get really quick or really thorough answers. Also, pay attention to the book title as well as the entry title--the entry for "identity" in A Dictionary of Film Studies will be different from the entry in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics!

LION (Literature Online) Reference Works:

Specialized for literature: search across multiple encyclopedias for in-depth discussions of genres (short story, novel, drama, poetry), periods, geographies (post-colonial literatures, African, American British) and theory. Pro tip: use the general search box and refine your results by content type "Reference Works" or "Author Pages."

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literature and Criticism

Provides excellent summaries of movements, ideas, and figures in literary criticism and theory. Try entering a word that describes a theme for Essay 3 into the search box to acquaint yourself with interpretive paradigms associated with that theme. For example: Disability Studies.

Find More Encyclopedias in HOLLIS

Add "encyclopedias OR dictionary OR handbooks" to your HOLLIS search to find specialized guidance on a time period, literary/arts movement, or writer/creator. For example: the sexual revolution, hip hop, Kubrick.

Biographies

Biographies can be useful for learning more about an author or filmmaker, to better understand their milieu. The following biographical sources are considered "critical" biographies. Critical biographies include discussion of the critical responses to a person's life and works, along with notes for further reading and information on where personal papers or archives are held.

LION (Literature Online)

The "Author Pages" section includes biographies.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB)

Entries on noteworthy people of the British Isles and their connections overseas, from the earliest times to 2000.

American National Biography Online (ANB)

The standard source for U.S. historical biography. Note: living figures are not included.

Find More Biographies in HOLLIS

Full-length biographical studies provide helpful context about the circumstances surrounding a literary work's production and its immediate reception.

Find More Overviews in HOLLIS

To find in-depth scholarly overviews of a topic, such as a literary genre or era, search the title field of HOLLIS for "Companion OR introductions OR guide" or add "bibliography" to the subject field. For example: bibliographies on James Baldwin or guides to film studies.