Rationale of this Guide
Welcome! This guide is designed for students in Christina Davidson's Spring 2019 class on "Creole Spirits."
It seeks to introduce you to some of the important "wayfinding" tools you'll need to do your work
The secondary sources described here are among the field's gold standards. Some will help you contextualize, for example or close a knowledge gap. The subject databases section offers you option for searching, efficiently, the authoritative scholarly conversations and debates in this interesting, interdisciplinary field.
Let us know if you have suggestions for the guide or questions about your research and Harvard's library collections!
Sue Gilroy, Liaison to African and African American Studies, Lamont Library
Ramona Crawford, Liaison to Folklore and Mythology and Non-Western Religions
Image above: "[Daughters (?), etc. of Engenho Velho filhas, before house of Xango]," one of the oldest Candomblé temples is Brazil, October 24. 1938. Photograph from the collection of anthropologist Ruth Landes (1908-1991). Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID%3Asiris_arc_286064&repo=DPLA.
Reading Your Way Into a Topic
Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography
Aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the lives of historically significant Caribbeans and Afro-
descended individuals in Latin America, including people who spoke and wrote Creole, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
It encompasses the full scope of history, with entries on figures from the first forced slave migrations in the sixteenth centuries, to entries on living persons such as the Haitian musician and politician Wyclef Jean and the Cuban author and poet Nancy Morejón.
NOTE: While religious topics are not sorted into their own category (organization is alphabetical), you can search within the text for references to a particular religion/refligious custom or expression to locate individuals that way.
Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions (2 vols)
A landmark project that combines the breadth of a comparative approach to religion with the depth of understanding of Caribbean spirituality as an ever-changing and varied historical phenomenon.
Entries examine how Caribbean religious experiences have been shaped by and have responded to the processes of colonialism and the challenges of the postcolonial world. Systematically organized by theme and area, the encyclopedia considers religious traditions such as Vodou, Rastafari, Sunni Islam, Sanatan Dharma, Judaism, and the Roman Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches.
Detailed sub-entries present topics such as religious rituals, beliefs, practices, specific historical developments, geographical differences, and gender roles within major traditions. Also included are entries that address the religious dimensions of geographical territories that make up the Caribbean. An index facilitates access to entries and cross-referenced material.
The second edition of the important,15 volume work originally edited by the religious historian Mircea Eliade, this is a standard reference resource in the field. Presents a cross-cultural approach that emphasizes religion's role within everyday life and as a unique experience from culture to culture.
Examples of articles of interest (which are accompanied by ample bibliographies and cross-referenced):
OBOs combine the best features of the annotated bibliography with an authoritative subject encyclopedia in order to help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship on a broad social, political, cultural or interdisciplinary topic. They're regularly updated to remain current.
Often the issue in information-seeking isn't scarcity of material but overabundance. OBO entries can help you solve the problem of knowing what or who to read or which voices in the conversation you should give some fuller attention to.
Among the particular entries that might be useful for your AFRAMER 187 projects:
Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 1450-1850
Contains thirty-seven articles that offer a wide-ranging and authoritative account of the movement of people, plants,pathogens, products, and cultural practices around and within the Atlantic basin. As a result of these movements, new peoples, economies, societies, polities, and cultures arose in the lands and islands touched by the Atlantic Ocean, while others were destroyed.
The articles in this volume seek to describe, explain, and, occasionally, challenge conventional wisdom concerning these path-breaking developments. They demonstrate connections, explore contrasts, and probe themes. During the four centuries encompassed by this collection, pan-Atlantic webs of association emerged that progressively linked people, objects, and beliefs across and within the region.
Encyclopedia of Religion in America
ERA examines the origins, development, adaptation, influence, and interrelations of the many faiths practiced, including major world religions, new religious sects, cults, and religious movements that originated or had an influence in the United States.
Its coverage is more authoritative than Wikipedia -- by virtue of the fact that entries are the work of recognized scholarly experts. Bibliographies accompany subject entries.
African American Studies Center
Produced by Oxford University Press and overseen by Harvard's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the AASC billsitself as the "online authority on the African American experience." It draws its content from some of the most important reference works in the field (including diaspora studies) and is continually updated.
At present, it contains more than 10,000 articles by top scholars from around the world, over 1,750 images, more than 300 primary sources with specially written commentaries, maps, charts, tables, timelines, and 6,000 biographies. A key feature of the AASC is the "At a Glance" page, which brings together multiple entries on a subject or an individual for browsing.
Your "default" approach to searching Harvard's catalog, HOLLIS, is probably similar to your Google approach: enter some words, see what comes up, then try again or improve from there. But BROWSING in the catalog is an under-appreciated research strategy, especially when you're trying to discover your interest. It helps you see how writing ABOUT an author, an idea, an event, etc. has been broken down and categorized. So instead of getting the typical list of titles, you see results in terms of sub-topics. Inspiration may lie there!
HOW DO YOU BROWSE?
Open HOLLIS. Click on the 
link above the search box. Then change the option from AUTHOR to SUBJECT.
WHAT DO RESULTS FROM A BROWSE SEARCH LOOK LIKE?
Click on the image above to find out.
SMART BROWSING TIPS :
- Sometimes, you find your browse terms intuitively -- typing jamaica religion in the subject browse box for example, would bring you to a top level category. Then, you might note how the first few sub-categorizations appear. These are clues: adding an additional word or phrase to add might even get you closer to a subject heading you're hoping will exist (and save you many pages to click through!).
- Sometimes, you'll find a linked subject string attached to an item record you've found by keyword
searching. Clicking on it will lead you to every other item we own that has that same tag. And if the tag leads you a bit off course, remember that you can back up: remove the last word/phrase of a string to get to higher category. OR simply look again at the original item you started with. Perhaps there are other subject terms that work as well--or better -- than the one you chose first. - Some "patterns" to adapt if you browse subjects:
blacks -- [add country name] -- religion
[add country name] -- religion
afro-caribbean cults --[region or country name]
Primary Sources in Online and Print Collections
- Afro Americana Imprints, 1535-192212,000 essential books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other primary source documents. Critically important subjects include the West's discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World; the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought; political protest and resistance to racism; descriptions of African American life -- slave and free -- throughout the Americas; printed works of African American individuals and organizations
- Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture: the Oliveira Lima LibraryA pamphlet and monograph collection, in large part in Portuguese, covering history and politics between 1801 and 1983.
- Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)Provides access to Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials held in archives, libraries, and private collections. dLOC comprises collections that speak to the similarities and differences in histories, cultures, languages and governmental systems. Types of collections include but are not limited to: newspapers, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official documents, documentation and numeric data for ecosystems, scientific scholarship, historic and contemporary maps, oral and popular histories, travel accounts, literature and poetry, musical expressions, and artifacts. dLOC is administered by the U of Florida.
- Empire OnlineThis resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. Religion in colonial contexts is well-represented here.
- GallicaDesigned as the digital repository of French culture and originating at the Bibliotecque Nationale, Gallica covers virtually all areas of human inquiry, in particular history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science. through the mid-20th. It has particular strength in 19th century materials.
- In Motion: the African American Migration ExperienceOrganized around thirteen defining migrations that have formed and transformed African America and the nation, this Schomburg Center site presents more than 16,500 pages of texts, 8,300 illustrations, and more than 60 maps, as well as bibliography and web resources.
- Peterson, Anna Lisa, and Manuel A. Vásquez. Latin American Religions: Histories and Documents in Context. New York: New York University Press, 2008.Provides introductory essays, followed by documents. Going up to the present, it treats the pre-independence period in some detail. Documents that are likely to be relevant are collected in the following sections: Colonial Encounters, Independence and Modernity; Protestantism in Latin America; Postconciliar Roman Catholicism; Contemporary Religious Diversity and Change.
- Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice, 1490-2007Primary source texts and images, pertaining to North America, the Caribbean, Brazil and Cuba along with material on European, Islamic and African involvement in the slave trade. Sections include: the African coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); spiritualism and religion; resistance and revolts; the Underground Railroad; the abolition movement; legislation; education; the legacy of slavery and slavery today.
- Transatlantic Slave Trave Database: VoyagesVoyages is the most comprehensive source of data currently available on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It contains records of nearly 35,000 separate slaving voyages between 1514 and 1866. Each record offers information on a single slaving voyage; some of the details include the country of origin, the individual(s) who sponsored it, the voyage itself (its itinerary, dates of travel, and outcome), captains and crew members, slaves transported, and the sources providing this voyage information.
- UmbraSearchA digital library that aggregates materials documenting African American history and cultural life from archives, libraries, museums, and other US repositories. Umbra Search features photographs, manuscripts, documents, books, sound files, video files, and other freely available resources.
- African American Newspapers, 1827-1998270 newspapers from 36 American states, dating from the early 19th century through the late 20th century, digitized from three of the most extensive African American newspaper archives in the United States: the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Kansas State Historical Society, and the Library of Congress.
- African Newspapers40 fully searchable newspapers published in Africa between 1800 and 1922. The selection of titles were guided by a set of criteria including breadth of coverage, diversity of viewpoints, and historical significance. Languages include English, German, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Sotho, et.al.
- Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-187666 newspaper titles from 22 islands published in the 18th and 19th centuries. Created in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society, this database constitutes the largest online collection of newspapers published in this region.
- Ethnic NewsWatcha current resource of full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives.Coverage dates from c. 1959- present.Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the resources is the inclusion of unique community publications not found in any other database, as well as top scholarly journals on ethnicities and ethnic studies.
- Latin American Newspapers35 titles, from 19th and early 20th century publications.
- Latin American NewsstreamEnables users to search the most recent local, national, and regional news content with archives featuring newspapers, newswire, and news sites in active full-text format. It includes titles from Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Latin American Newsstream provides newspapers in Spanish and Portuguese. Key newspaper titles include: El Universal (Mexico City);O Globo (Brazil);La Nación (Argentina);and El Mercurio (Chile).
- ProQuest Historical NewspapersFull-text of the runs of key U.S. titles like the NYT, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and WSJ, along with some international papers, like the Guardian and the Irish Times. Also includes access to the backfiles of important African Amercan newspaper titles.
STRATEGIES
- Sometimes, adding the word sources to a keyword string will retrieve published collections of primary source materials. Other words that you can try include reader; document* (for documents and documentary); reader; anthology; casebook.
- Using the right side limits, adjust the DATE PARAMETERS of your search results. Items that were published on the subject during the period you specify will qualify as primary sources.
- Using the right side limits, examine the FORM/GENRE categories. Items that have been tagged with words like "interviews," "autobiography," "memoir," "speeches," "photographs," "correspondence" (and so on) might help you target various kinds of primary sources.
- Flowers, H. (1980). A classification of the folktale of the West Indies by types and motifs (Folklore of the world). New York: Arno Press.The folk tales indexed in this book may be used as primary sources if they are relevant to your topic. Often, you may be able to find translations of indexed tales into English (look them up in HOLLIS). Beware of re-tellings, which are not authentic and lack scholarly exegesis.
- Abrahams, Roger D. African American Folktales : Stories from Black Traditions in the New World. Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999.These tales range from the earthy comedy of tricksters to stories explaining how the world was created and got to be the way it is, to moral fables that tell of encounters between masters and slaves. They includes stories set down in travelers' reports and plantation journals from the early nineteenth century, tales gathered by collectors such as Joel Chandler Harris and Zora Neale Hurston, and narratives tape-recorded by folklorist Roger Abrahams himself during extensive expeditions throughout the American South and the Caribbean.
Secondary Sources: The Scholarly Debate
One of the first, and still the best known of our full-text scholarly databases. JSTOR provides access to the contents of 2600 core academic journals, in 60 knowledge domains in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Much of the journal content in JSTOR has a "moving wall," a set period of time in which the most current volumes, issues, and articles of a particular journal are not available online for reading and downloading. Depending on the journal title, the moving wall may be anywhere between 1 and 5 years). In a few instances, the moving wall has been eliminated altogether
SMART SEARCHING TIP: Articles not (yet) available on JSTOR may be available to you another way. Try searching for the article title in HOLLIS.
- If another Harvard Library database has the full-text article, HOLLIS will identify that access point.
- If we only have it print, you can request a Scan and Deliver.
- On the rare occasions when we don't have the journal at Harvard, we'll get you a PDF copy of the article if you submit an Interlibrary Loan.
Most of the research databases you use search for information differently than Google Scholar. Most base their results lists on "metadata" -- the descriptive information about items that identifies features in certain fields (title, author, table of contents, subject terms, etc.).
While Google Scholar's algorithms account for some of this same information, it adds full-text into the mix when it retrieves, sorts, and ranks search results.
What does this mean for you? Sometimes, better relevance, especially on the first page or so. And sometimes, given that it searches full-text, Google Scholar might reveal more quickly than our databases where a hard-to-find nugget of scholarly information is hidden away in a published article.
SMART SEARCHING TIP: Google Scholar can also be a good place to do a "cited reference" search in order to trace scholarly reaction to/engagement a particular article forward in time.
Originally a collection of high quality journals published by the Johns Hopkins University Press,Project Muse now includes both journals and and books from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and socieities.
Muse is weighted heavily toward the humanities, though its coverage of the social sciences is also robust.
Content is current, so unlike JSTOR, there is no moving wall to contend with. In fact, recent issues of journal titles that are embargoed in JSTOR will sometimes be available for access in Project Muse.
But there's substantial unique content in Muse, as well -- by some estimates, about 30% of the database -- and that makes double-checking it worthwhile.
- Africa-WideA large, comprehensive database of research and historical scholarship on all aspects of Africa and African Studies, from the the 16th century to the present.
- America: History and LifeThe premier database for historical scholarship on North America (U.S. and Canada), from prehistoric times to the present. World history --including Latin American history -- from 1450 to the present is covered in a companion database, Historical Abstracts.
- Anthropology PlusAP combines the contents of the two most important anthropological databases available to researchers: Anthropological Index (produced at the British Museum) and Anthropological Literature (produced at Harvard's Peabody Museum). It covers core periodical sand lesser-known journals back to the early 19th century and helps identifying important journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and ethnographies.
- ATLA Religion DatabaseProduced under the auspices of the American Theological Library Association, this database is considered the premier place to search for the scholarly literature on all religions, from 1949-present.
- Bibliography of British and Irish HistoryCovers scholarship on history of these regions from 55 BC to the present.
- HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index)Produced at UCLA's Latin American Institute, this database helps identify the ontents of scholarly journals published around the world on Latin America and the Caribbean since the late 1960s. Coverage includes everything from political, economic, and social issues to the arts and humanities. Searching can be done in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
- Historical AbstractsCovers the scholarly literature on world history, 1450-present, excluding the U.S Canada. [ These areas are covered in a companion database, America: History and Life.] HA covers Latin America.
- African Diaspora Vol. 9, No. 1/2, Religious Circulation in Transatlantic Africa (Jan 2016)This special issue explores and analyzes the ways in which African or African-derived religions travel in the contemporary transatlantic space. By accounting for the recreation of African religions in culturally diverse contexts, this issue aims to discuss different forms of religious circulation between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Contributors "pay particular attention to the role of ‘mutable mobiles’ in the circulation of religions – things, discourses, and practices that spread over various sites and different moments in time, taking different shapes but coexisting in one particular Atlantic space. The transatlantic space functions as a hub of African religiosities in the making."
- Atlantic Studies Vol 12, No.2, Obeah: Knowledge, Power, and Writing in the Early Atlantic World (2015)Eleven articles positioned "at the confluence of several recent interdisciplinary scholarly conversations: the reconfiguration of relations between religion and science, reconsiderations of colonial archives and their representation of subordinated peoples, and new scholarship about obeah."
- Western Folklore Vol. 66, No. 1/2, Afro-Caribbean Religions, Culture, and Folklore (Winter - Spring, 2007)This special issue examines the ever-shifting nature of transnational religious culture in the Afro-Caribbean world. Essays explore creolization—how boundaries around different Afro-Caribbean religions become re-situated into new, “impure” configurations. The geographical areas covered include Cuba, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Trinidad. The autors’ approaches are, for the most part, post-colonial and subaltern.
Tools for Locating Full-Text and Managing Your Sources
Google Scholar Settings: One simple change can turn Google Scholar into what's effectively a Harvard database -- with links to the full-text of articles that the library can provide. Here's what to do: Look to the left of the GS screen and click on the "hamburger" (
); then click on 
. Look for "Library Links." Then type Harvard University into the search box and save your choice. As long as you allow cookies, the settings will keep.
This free, open source citation management tool makes the process of collecting and organizing citations, incorporating them into your paper, and creating a bibliography or works cited page stress-free and nearly effortless.
A good guide, produced by Harvard librarians, is available here: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/zotero.
Library Experts to Contact
In addition to Sue Gilroy and Ramona Crawford, other librarians who may have additional perspectives and different kind of expertise to share include:
ART HISTORY [Christine]
- Jessica Evans Brady, Research and Collections Librarian, Fine Arts Library, Littauer
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES [Massiel]
- Lynn Shirey, Librarian for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, Collection Development, Widener Library
MUSIC [Kelly]
- Liz Berndt-Morris, Music Reference and Research Librarian, Loeb Music Library
- Kerry Masteller, Music Reference and Digital Program Librairan, Loeb Music Library
RELIGION [Janan]
- Renata Kalnins, Research Librarian, Harvard Divinity School Library