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HIST 307: Gender, Race, and Class in the Americas (HC): Finding Books

HISTORY 307: Gender, Race, and Class in the Americas (Laurent-Perrault) Spring 2015

Identifying Relevant Books

Use Tripod to look for relevant books owned by Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr.

The following suggested subject searches are only a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic not listed below, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Library Catalog to find relevant titles and then using the subject headings assigned to those items to find more.

Beyond the Tri-College Collections

WorldCat is an important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 179 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these titles are available to you though interlibrary loan

History Compass

This journal is devoted to the study of history.  All of the articles are written in the form of literature reviews.  Specialists analyze the issues involved in a particular question and discuss individual books, journal articles, and other scholarship that are essential for research in that area.  Browse or search the journal website for overviews related to your research topic.  The bibliographies accompanying articles in History Compass will lead you to relevant  sources for further reading.  Other Compass titles, like Religion Compass and Literature Compass, may have useful articles as well.

If you don't find a relevant literature review in History Compass, check for titles in Dissertations and Theses (see below).  Most doctoral students will write a chapter of their dissertation in which they survey the available scholarship on their topic.

Oxford Bibliographies Online

The Oxford Bibliographies Online lay out the parameters of various issues within a particular field of study and evaluate the importance of individidual books and journal articles in the form of an annotated bibliography.  It gives you the benefit of expert advice when choosing what to read. 

See essays like these below for some relevant examples:

           Black Experience in Colonial Latin America

           Gender in Postcolonial Latin America

           Race in American Political Thought 

           Women in Colonial Latin America

Dissertations

Doctoral students go through an exhaustive literature search when writing their dissertations. They also tend to work on new questions, sometimes ones that have received very little attention from scholars before. You can sometimes obtain these dissertations and benefit from all the bibliographic treasues and new ideas. Check ProQuest Dissertations & Theses to identify dissertations on your topic.