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VIST 258: American Queen (HC)

Visual Studies 258: American Queen: Drag in Contemporary Art and Performance (Knight) Fall 2017

Further develop your research

When trying to decide on a paper topic, it can be very helpful to browse the stacks (book shelves) in the library. See the tab "Keyword Searching" for some helpful tips on how to find resources in other areas. Do not hesitate to ask the visual studies librarian, Anna Fodde-Reguer (afodderegu at haverford) for help. 

Your final paper asks you to focus on a work of visual art, media, or performance in relationship to course themes. Finding the work in question is the first step, so the following resources are good places to start looking for visual artists. 

Google Search Tips

Using Google to find more information about artists, galleries, and museums can be helpful. Here are some tips for finding what you need:

1. Use double quotes to search for exact phrases:
Enclose exact phrases in double quotes "like this" to emphasize search results containing that phrase, or the name of an artist.

2. Create your own search engine for a particular website using Google:
To search within a particular website, add the following "site:" statement to your search results.

keith haring site:metmuseum.org​

3. Eliminate commonly associated search terms:
You can exclude search results that include certain words. For example:

queer art -homosexual

4. Emphasize certain search terms:
Use the + sign to bring search results containing certain terms towards the top of your Google results. For example:

queer representations +drag

5. Search for only academic websites:
Add site:.edu to your search terms to search (US) academic websites. For example:

queer art site:.edu

You can use this for .org as well to find legitimate organizations, such as museums.  

6. Use Google's "Search Tools" to narrow your results by date added

   1. Enter your search term(s) and click Search.

   2. At the top of the search results page, click "Search Tools." 

   3. You can then change the drop down menu from "Any Time" to the past year, a custom date range, etc.

ARTstor

Looking for high quality images of artwork? Or just need a place to browse for drag-related artwork? This is a good place to start.