A400: African-American Artists in Paris

AAADS A304;  CMLT C363; and HON H303

Spring 2010
Instructor: Eileen Julien

How to Find Information in the Wells Library:

IU's African Studies collection ranks among the top tier of such collections in the United States. The focus of our collection is on various disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, i.e., history, literature, languages, folklore, political science, economics, anthropology, etc.

The Wells Library also has a strong collection of American literature where you will find sources for your papers. We collect in all formats (print, microform, video, audio), and our collection is as equally strong in historical sources (including many primary source type materials) as it is in contemporary materials.

You should be able to find most of the sources required for your research papers here without having to do interlibrary loan. However, if you do request items via interlibrary loan, keep in mind that it may take 2-4 weeks for them to arrive.

Access to the African Studies Collection:

1. Ask the Librarian: Marion Frank-Wilson (mfrankwi@indiana.edu, 812-855-1481, Wells Library E660)
2. Consult the African Studies Collection website

How to Find Sources:

For Books:
Search IUCAT or IU Worldcat

Examples:
a) Author: Baldwin, James

b) Title:Cotton Comes to Harlem

c) Keywords:
Harlem renaissance

New Orleans and Jazz

Modernity and African Americans

Modernism and African Americans

African Americans and Paris

African Americans and exile

African Americans and internationalism

Black internationalism

Jazz and African American modernist literature

Josephine Baker

Etc.

For tips on effective keyword searching, see: Boolean Operators

You may submit an interlibrary loan request directly from WorldCat. Keep in mind that it may take 2-4 weeks for books to arrive, whereas articles can generally be obtained faster.

For Articles:
Use indexes. Try keyword searches in the following indexes:

America: History and Life (Covers the history of the United States and Canada from pre-history to the present, indexing more than 2000 journals published worldwide, dissertations and reviews)

MLA International Bibliography (Indexes material in over 3,700 journals covering modern languages, literature, linguistics and folklore)

Alexander Street Literature (Searchable collection of creative writing of race, place, and gender)

JSTOR (Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business)

In the First Person (Index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives)

Black Drama (When complete, will contain texts of 1,200 plays (many rare or out of print) written by over 100 playwrights from African diaspora countries)

Black Short Fiction and Folklore (Works by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora compiled from literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors, some previously unpublished)

Black Women Writers (Full-text works by black women writers from the U.S. (18th century - 1970s), the Caribbean and Africa (second half of the 20th century))

Google Scholar (Special version of Google's index to scholarly content on the web; connects to full-text resources available to IU users)

Selected online indexes can be found by going to "Resources by Subject," e.g.,
African Studies

English and American

Language and Literature

Other Online Resources:

Africa South of the Sahara "Literature" from Stanford University (a great collection of websites with access to primary source collections)

Monitor Relevant Listservs, such as H-AfrLitCine (African Literature and Cinema)

Search WorldCat

 

Evaluating Websites:
Information on how to critically evaluate information on the web can be found at the Information Commons' website.