Background Information

  • Oxford Bibliographies Online help you identify some of the most important and influential scholarship across a variety of academic disciplines.
    • OBO entries 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. They're regularly updated to remain current.
  • Oxford Handbooks Online provides introductions to topics and critical surveys of the current state of scholarship in specific fields.
    • Literature, and Religion, are two of the subject areas. Either browse through the Handbooks, or search for articles within them. (There are too many articles for browsing, so you can try searching for a general topic idea by using the 'Modify Your Search' search box (on the left-side), and entering a search word).
  • Cambridge Companions Online are a series of authoritative guides offering introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods. 
  • Very Short Introductions offers concise introductions, and has a large collection of various subtopics within the Arts and Humanities subject area.