Research Guides: WRPR 182: The American Family in Historical Perspective (HC): Background

History and Biographical Background

*** Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
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This is a growing collection of articles providing analysis and discussion of recent scholarship. Note the bibliographies and references to related articles at the ends of entries. Use the Browse by Subject link to see listings by topic area.
Features 35 articles under the heading Asian American History. Examples include:
"Angel Island Immigration Station", "The Asian American Movement", "Chinese Herb Doctors in the United States, 1850–1950" and "Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon, California"

American National Biography
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Offers portraits of more than 18,000 men and women, from all eras and walks of life, whose lives have shaped the nation. No living person is included.

AncestryLibrary
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Wide-ranging collections of information for conducting family and local history research. Includes: digitized images of the United States Federal Census from 1790 forward; the American Genealogical Biographical Index; Passenger and Immigration Lists Index; United Kingdom and United States Directories 1680-1830; court, land, and probate records; and many other resources. High school and college yearbooks can provide photos of family members when young.
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
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Offers over 500 articles about important aspects of 19th century society.
Oxford African American Studies Center
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Includes many scholarly journal articles and biographical entries as well as images and primary sources about African Americans. SEARCH ONLINE
Oxford Handbook of American Women's History
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See relevant essays including "Public and Print Cultures of Sex in the Long Nineteenth Century" and "Reproduction, Birth Control, and Motherhood in the United States." This latter essay was written by Rickie Solinger who has written important books on sexuality and abortion.
Oxford Handbook of Asian American History
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Essays address different national groups of immigrants, historical time periods, important themes and emerging historical fields of study.

Background in Other Subject Areas

Find more handbooks in the Tripod catalog using this kind of search:

in Results = 15 records (Limited to 2010-present dates)

The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History
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This book highlights tension, conflict, and creativity in America’s religious history. The 20 chapters, written by experts in their fields, follow particular religious traditions, movements, and time periods.

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. Search online.

Multiculturalism in the United States: A Comparative Guide to Acculturation and Ethnicity
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Features overviews of 17 groups in terms of history and social issues. Groups covered are: African Americans; American Indians; Arab Americans; Asian Indian Americans; Chinese Americans; Dominican Americans; Filipino Americans; German Americans; Haitian Americans; Irish Americans; Italian Americans; Jewish Americans; Korean Americans; Mexican Americans; Polish Americans; Scandinavian Americans; Vietnamese Americans. Published in 2005.

Oxford Art Online
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Oxford Art Online is an art reference library that searches Grove Art Online, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, and The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. This resource contains images, biographies, subject entries, and thematic timelines (antiquity to present).
Search online.

Oxford Handbook of American Immigration and Ethnicity
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Immigrant experiences and issues of ethnicity and race form the heart of essays in this handbook.

Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are a particularly useful resource 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 for greater understanding.

*** Oxford Bibliographies Online
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Extensive annotated bibliographies on specific topics in a variety of subject areas written by scholars in the field. This website is under development with new essays added twice a year. Essays of interest now available include:
Childhood (in the Atlantic History section)
"Family History" (in the Latin American Studies section)
""Feminist Philosophy" (in the Philosophy section)
"Food" (in the Anthropology section)
"Immigrant Assimilation" (in the Sociology section)
Influenza, a part within "Epidemic Diseases and their Effects on History" (in the International Relations section)
"Jamaica in the Atlantic World to 1838" (in the Atlantic World section)
Mental Health Services, Utilization, and Deinstitutionalization, a part within "Mental Illness" (in the Sociology section).
Mexico, a part within "Migration to the United States" (in the Latin American Studies section)
"Sephardic Diaspora" (in the Renaissance and Reformation section)
Women in Higher Education, a part within "Historical Evolution of Higher Education in the United States" (in the Sociology section)
History Compass
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This journal is devoted to literature reviews about history. Specialists analyze the issues involved in a particular question and discuss individual books and journal articles that are essential for research in that area. Browse or search the journal website for overviews related to your research topic. Relevant articles include:
"Death in Early America" (2019)
"Flu: Past and Present" (2007)
"The Public Response to Hazardous Weather Events: 25 Years of Research" (2013) In Geography Compass
"'What it Means to Be a Man': Contested Masculinity in the Early Republic and Antebellum America" (2012).
Annual Review of Sociology
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Covers significant developments in the field of sociology including theory, field studies, and methodology. Also gives access to other subject areas within the Annual Review titles including anthropology and law..
Examples of relevant articles include:
The Future of Historical Family Demography (2012)
Hispanic Families: Stability and Change (2007)
From other Annual Review publications
Marriage and Migration (2017) from the Annual Review of Anthropology
Reproductive Justice (2013) from the Annual Review of Law and Social Science

Dissertations & Theses
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ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is a collection of scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences that consists of records for over 3 million dissertations. Many records include the full text of the dissertation.
A pertinent example is:
Criminal conversations: The narrativity of civil adultery litigation in late nineteenth-century America
Korobkin, Laura Hanft.Harvard University, 1994.

Subsequently published as a book:
Criminal conversations : sentimentality and nineteenth-century legal stories of adultery
Korobkin, Laura Hanft.
Columbia University Press, 1998
Tricollege copies
Table of Contents
Pt. I. Introduction and Historical Foundation, p. 1
1. Criminal Conversation and the Conversational Process of the Law, p. 10
2. The Transformative Magic of Legal Fictions: The Suppression of Sex in Early English Civil Adultery Cases, p. 27
Pt. II. Theodore Tilton vs. Henry Ward Beecher: Criminal Conversation, 1875, p. 55
3. The Maintenance of Mutual Confidence: Sentimental Strategies at the Beecher-Tilton Trial, p. 61
4. Silent Woman, Speaking Fiction: The "Ministry of Catherine Gaunt" at the Beecher-Tilton Trial, p. 92
Pt. III. Female-Plaintiff Criminal Conversation Cases: Rewriting the Law's Story of Marriage, p. 119
5. Rethinking the Law's Story of Marriage: The Bonds of Sentiment, p. 125
6. Consequences of Change: The Sexually Passive Husband and the Erotically Autonomous Wife, p. 159

Reviews in American History
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Use this journal to find detailed book reviews, essays, and bibliographies in American history. These reviews can be helpful for understanding different historical approaches to and interpretations of your topic.