African American Women Playwrights - English Research Guide

For books at UMass, use the Library Catalog searches at http://www.library.umass.edu/cgi-bin/aka/babel.cgi?dokma=http://umlibr.library.umass.edu/ . Best to be as specific as possible in your searching. Start with a subject search (use keyword if subject yields no results). You can use broad categories to browse for sub-topics or to later limit (by date, words in subject or words in title) for more focussed results.

If UMass doesn't have the book(s) you need, try the other Four Colleges, by clicking on the Search Four College link.

African American Review (Both in the Library and online.)
American Theatre (Both in the Library and online.)
Back Stage (Online only)
Black Issues Book Review (Both in the Library and online.)
The Black Scholar (Both in the Library and online.)
Callaloo - A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters (Both in the Library and online.)
The Crisis 1910-1996 Call # Per E185.5.C92 (some missing issues; 1996-2003 changed name to The New Crisis; 2003-present changed back to The Crisis; recent years are online)
The Griot Call # Per E185.5.G75
Journal of Black Studies (Both in the Library and online.)
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Call# Per PN1601.J68
Journal of Negro History (Both in the Library and online.)
MELUS; Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (Both in the Library and online.)
Messenger Call# Per E185.5.M4
Modern Drama (Both in the Library and online.)
Opportunity; Journal of Negro Life Call# Per E185.5.O6
TDR: The Drama Review (Both in the Library and online.)
Text and Performance Quarterly (Both in the Library and online.)
Theatre Journal (Both in the Library and online.)
Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory Call# Per PN1590.W64W59

Databases (Journal indexing and online journals. Once you have a topic, this is where you search for articles on that topic.)

Tips:

From off-campus locations, an OIT Computer Account is required to access licensed databases.
Use the Database Searching Log to keep track of your searches and search strategies.
Use RefWorks to manage your citations and create your bibliography.
After you've run a search, use the button (if the database has it) to retrieve articles or to be taken directly to Interlibrary Loan, so you can order the article if UMass does not have it.

Academic Search Premier A multidisciplinary database with many literature, linguistics and anthropology journals. Citations can be saved to a folder and exported directly to RefWorks.
African American Biographical Database Full-text books on African American lives and culture.
America: History and Life Citations and abstracts for journal articles, dissertations, and book reviews relating to United States and Canadian history.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index In ISI Web of Science, an index to scholarly journals which can be searched by topic, author, source, address or by cited reference. The Arts and Humanities Citation Index covers archaeology, linguistics, architecture, literary reviews, art, literature, Asian studies, music, classics, philosophy, dance, poetry, folklore, radio, television and film, history, religion, language, and theater.
Black Thought and Culture Contains 619 sources with 246 authors which includes the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans.
Biography Resource Center Brief biographies from a variety of reference sources.
Contemporary Women's Issues Full-text articles from periodicals relating to women and women's issues.
Ethnic NewsWatch - Full-text articles from the newspapers, magazines and journals of ethnic communities in the United States. Most articles are in English, but many from Latino periodicals are in Spanish. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.
Expanded Academic Index ASAP Similar to Academic Search Premier (see above) However, no direct export to RefWorks..
Historical NY Times - The entire New York Times, searchable, in image files. Time Period Covered: 1851-1999. Citations can be exported directly to RefWorks.
International Index to Black Periodicals Indexing and abstracting of 150 African, American and Caribbean periodicals, with full text of forty core journals.
International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA) Citations to articles in journals covering theater, dance, film, and puppetry.
JSTOR (full text) Scholarly journals from many disciplines. From the earliest issue of each journal to between two and five years prior to the present. Therefore, does NOT contain very recent scholarship. Citations can be saved in a text file and imported into RefWorks.
Literature Resource Center - A large collection of literature reference material, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism and the Dictionaries of Literary Biography.
MLA International Bibliography - Indexes many articles on film (in addition to literature). Citations can be saved to a folder and exported directly to RefWorks.
Project MUSE Full-text articles from scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences published by Johns Hopkins University Press and a few other publishers; searchable by journal issue, author, and keyword.
Reader's Guide Retrospective - Citations to articles in 600 popular U.S. magazines. Time Period Covered: 1890-1982. Citations can be saved in a text file and imported into RefWorks.
Web of Science - Allows multidisciplinary searches combining arts, humanities, social science and science. Good for seeing who cited whom. Good for academic book reviews. Citations, abstracts, and other information can be saved in a text file and imported into RefWorks.

Internet Resources

Black American Feminisms: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography
Black Women Playwrights: A Short History in Three Acts. "The Emergence of the African-American Woman’s Voice in American Theater"
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
Women of Color, Women of Words "is a site dedicated to African American women who have gifted, shaken up, and disturbed the theatre world with their powerful words."
The Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress

Reserves

Click here for Reserve Books and Paper Copies of Articles and eReserve articles for classes (when available).

Citation Style(s)

Note: The University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries offers a campuswide subscription to RefWorks, a citation management software that creates and automatically formats bibliographies in various styles, including APA and MLA.

Scholars in the Humanities (including English, Comparative Literature, Art and History) generally favor the MLA style outlined in:
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 2nd. ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1998. Ref. and Reserve PN147 .G444 1998

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Prepared for English 891BB: African American Women Playwrights, Spring 2005. Professor Jenny Spencer
Library guide created by Isabel Espinal, Humanities & Anthropology Librarian
Last updated: 12/20/05


	July 4th 2008 \| Complete Hours W.E.B. Du Bois Library • CLOSED Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library (ISEL) • CLOSED Learning Commons • CLOSED