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RELG 150: South Asian Religious Cultures (HC): Relevant Books

Religion 150: South Asian Religious Cultures (Martinez) Spring 2015

Identifying Relevant Books

Use the Tripod Books and More catalog to look for relevant titles owned by Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore.

The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books.

(religio* OR ritual* OR rite*) (india OR "east indian*" OR "south asia*")    [Keyword Search]

worship hinduism   [Subject Search]

buddhis* AND (india* OR "sri lanka*") social   [Subject Search]

pakistan*  religio*    [Subject Search ]

 

Tripod   Connect from Bryn Mawr College      Icon     Icon   For locating books, journals, and other materials held in the Tri-College libraries. Deliveries within the Trico usually arrive in one or two days. Use the "Request"  button

Worldcat  Connect from Bryn Mawr College     Icon     Icon  An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tri-College Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 300 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan.

EZ Borrow and Interlibrary Loan   Connect from Bryn Mawr College      Icon     Icon    Request items that are not available in Tripod on this page. Note that E-Z Borrow provides books in 3 to 5 days.  For books not in E-Z Borrow, request though Interlibrary Loan (ILL).  Again materials may arrive in as little as 3 days.   For journal articles not in Tripod, request through Article Delivery.  They will be sent to you by email.

Oxford Bibliographies Online

The Oxford Bibliographies Online   Connect from Bryn Mawr College      Icon     Icon   lay out the interpretations of various issues within a particular field of study (like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islamic Studies) and evaluate the importance of individidual books and journal articles in the form of an annotated bibliography.  OBO gives you the benefit of expert advice when beginning a research project and when needing to learn more about a specificquestion. 

See essays like these below for some relevant examples:

           Buddhism in India

           Hinduism and Jainism

           Islam in South Asia

           Popular and Folk Hinduism

Religion Compass

This journal is devoted to the study of religion, and 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 Religion Compass will lead you to relevant  sources for further reading.  Other Compass titles, like History 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.

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 often obtain these dissertations and benefit from all the bibliographic treasues and new ideas. Check  Dissertations & Theses to identify dissertations on your topic.

  • Dissertations & Theses  Icon  Icon  Icon
     Dissertations and Theses is a collection of scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences that consists of 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, and 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Coverage is from 1861 to the present day.