EALC 398: Senior Seminar (BMC/HC) Fall 2023

Here is a selected list of some handbooks you might find useful. Handbooks provide readers with a summary overview of a topic and include carefully selected bibliographies.  Be sure to look at the lists for further reading provided by the authors of the entries--they will be especially useful for you as you deepen your research. 

Literature reviews are a particularly useful kind of article when doing research. They address the issues involved in a particular question and the debates among scholars. They map out the intellectual terrain succinctly and give you the major landmarks in terms of key authors and significant titles.

The Oxford Bibliographies Online               provide literature reviews for a variety of fields including Asian Studies (they specify the following subject areas: Chinese Studies, Buddhism, International Relations, etc. You can take a look at their subjects and complete a few searches to find what you are interested in).  The essays take the form of an annotated bibliography.  It gives you the benefit of expert advice when identifying what to read for your research. 

• China and the World 1900-1949   Dong Wang 
• Pilgrimage in Japan  Barbara Ambros 
• ​Buddhist Philosophy   William Edelglass 
• Chinese Language Film Julian Ward
• Chinese Literature Post-Mao Richard King
• Contemporary Chinese Art Since 1976 Amanda Wangwright

Looking up sources from the bibliography of a relevant article, or looking up other sources that cited an article once it was published, are both good ways to trace the scholarly conversation on your topic over time.

Library databases, Google Scholar and other site often have links that make it easy to do this – look for links like “Works Cited”, “References”, “Related Articles”, “Cited By”, etc.; Here is a brief video tutorial from NCSU Libraries finding cited references in Google Scholar:

Knowing where to search is just the first step. Once you’ve found databases on your topic, you will need to be able to do effective searches.

The University of Arizona Libraries has a short tutorial on effective boolean searching.

NCSU Libraries also has this brief video on refining your search strategy: