WRPR 111: Power, Place, and Film (HC)

Scholarly journal articles are important sources of information offering:

1. Originality.  Provides new evidence and interpretations.
2. Authoritativeness.  Written by researchers for their peers.
3. Documentation.  Cites key scholarship in footnotes that you can check.
4. Reliability.  Reviewed by editors for significance and accuracy.
5. Conciseness.  Presents an argument directly since length is often limited to 40 pages or less.
6. Engagement.  Responds to issues and adds to an ongoing dialog.
7. Currency.  Treats recent issues more quickly than books due to publishing schedules

1) Looking for journal articles by the article title: "Lyric Bodies: Poets on Disability and Masculinity"

• Check Proquest Research Library, where many journal articles are available full-text.

2) Looking by the journal name:  Publications of the Modern Language Association of America  

• Go to  Tripod Advanced Search and choose the Material Type Journals. This will list all popular magazines and journals available through Tripod.

3) Looking for journal articles by subject:

• Use journal databases where you can apply a full range of search techniques to find scholarship on your topic. See the Search Tips tab for more details.

• Identifying which database/s to search is an important research strategy:

   

  • Multi-disciplinary databases, sometimes with magazines and newspapers included.  They cover the top-tier journals but will not go into depth in all subject areas:
    
    
    • Proquest Research Library: Enhance your PRL search by choosing a subject area with its related databases or adding individual databases from the link at the top of the page.
    
    
    • Web of Science: Covers the humanities and social sciences as well
    
    
    • JSTOR: All articles are full-text and come from quality journals; but the latest 3 to 5 years of articles are usually not included.  Also includes essays and chapters from books.
    
    
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• Subject-specific databases give more in-depth coverage of topics.

   

  • The Research Guides website outlines the major databases by subject area.  It also includes resource lists for classes and for categories like news and government information.  The Research Guides site can be searched by word or phrase (in quotations) to find something specific. 
  
  
  • For your paper you may be doing some research in the area of film studies, gender studies, sociology or other subjects.  Major databases in those areas are:
    • Performing Arts Database [including film studies]
    
    
    • GenderWatch  
    
    
    • Sociological Abstracts [including issues of social class and discrimination ] 

4) Accessing journal articles online and in print

Online journals are often available from more than one source.  The Tripod Find It menu directs you to the sources and shows the years covered.  If you have multiple choices, the university presses, JSTOR, and Project Muse offer the best functionality.

 5) If the libraries at Haverford don't have the article you need, get a digital copy through Article Request.  There is no charge and no limit on the number of articles you can request.