Background - HIST 340: Voices for Justice - Seven African American Lives (HC)

U.S. History and Politics: Subject Encyclopedias

Subject encyclopedias provide overviews of ideas, people, and events They are a quick way to find out the basic facts and current points of debate. When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article. It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, sometimes, primary sources.

Oxford African American Studies Center
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Publication Date: Updated regularly
Comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American history and culture. Features articles by top scholars in the field, images, primary sources with specially written commentaries, maps, charts and tables, and biographies.
Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History by Lynn Dumenil (Contribution by); Paul Boyer (Series edited by)
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Publication Date: 2012-04-13
Social structures that shaped American life, including family, work, leisure, social movements, and patterns of mobility and settlements, are central to the work, as are themes of race,gender, ethnicity, and class. Sensitive to transnational developments, the volume draws extensively on new literature on slavery, health and disease, sexuality, women's activism, and technology's impact on everyday life.
Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History by Michael Kazin (Editor);
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Publication Date: 2009-11-29
Broad in scope, the book addresses both the traditional topics of political history and the wider subjects of current scholarship, including military, electoral, and economic events, as well as social movements, popular culture, religion, education, race, gender, and more.

Encyclopedias and Histories in Related Subject Areas

African American Literature in Transition
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This series from Cambridge University Press currently has published 10 volumes in its projected critical and revisionary history of African American literature running from 1750 to the present.
Encyclopedia of Religion in America
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This four-volume reference work examines how religious history and practices are woven into the political, social, cultural, and historical landscape of North America. Published in 2010.
The Image of the Black in Western Art.
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See these volumes: v. 3. pt. 3. From the "Age of Discovery" to the Age of Abolition : the eighteenth century -- v. 4. pt. 1. From the American Revolution to World War I : slaves and liberators -- v. 4. pt. 2. From the American Revolution to World War I : Black models and White myths -- v. 5. pt. 1. The twentieth century : the impact of Africa -- v. 5. pt. 2. The Twentieth Century: the Rise of Black Artists.
Books include many illustrations of artworks as well as interpretive essays. See, for example, Vol. 5, The Twentieth Century, Part 2: The Rise of Black Artists Childs, Adrienne L. “Activism and the Shaping of Black Identities (1964–1988),” pages 131-178. The full set of volumes was published in 2010-2014.

Literature Resource Center
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Provides biographies, bibliographies and scholarly articles on novelists, poets, essayists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of highly-studied authors.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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This 10-volume encyclopedia covers philosophical themes, philosophies, historical periods, and religions. Published in 2000.
See also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for up-to-date coverage of social theory and background on important writers. See, for example:
Africana Philosophy
Anna Julia Cooper
Frederick Douglass
W.E.B. Du Bois