RELG 398: Senior Thesis Seminar (HC) Fall 2024

Reference resources (a "tertiary" source) are often helpful in providing you with a broad orientation to the sources and scholarship related to your area of inquiry or topic. It is generally recommended that you consult some of these broadly orientative resources at some point toward the beginning of your research process.

• Subject dictionaries focus on word definitions in a specific subject area, perhaps "defining" proper names of people and places, technical terminology, movements, etc.
• Encyclopedias provide basic and general background information on a topic or subject. 
• Handbooks and companions oftentimes feature narrative essays that assemble important scholarly literature on the topic and discuss how that literature fits together.
• Bibliographies point where to find further information on a specific topic or subject. These can take a variety of forms, with more or less annotation and narration. Sometimes they are more skeletal and resemble the bibliographies you find at the end of a term paper or article. Others summarize and evaluate the sources they list, some have encyclopedia-like introductory paragraphs on the topic and its facets, and some are fully elaborated essays that may even argue a thesis.

The "Search Tips" tab to the left offers further suggestions for brainstorming about your topic. 

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               provides 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. 

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.

• Religion Compass             

Trying to find a primary source that could lead you in an interesting research direction? Here are some suggestions for places to start:

• Princeton Readings in Religion               series are collections of translated primary sources with lists of further reading after each chapter. 
• "Sourcebooks" are usually filled with translated primary sources. If you search for a religious tradition and the term sourcebook, you will likely find important materials. For example, Christianity AND sourcebook.

Sometimes Handbooks are a good place to start for finding sources and subjects of interest. The following list is not exhaustive, but should give you some idea of the types of handbooks on religion we have at Haverford.