Library research help

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies by email (moninder_lalli@sfu.ca) or Ask a librarian.

Other relevant guides

• GSWS 411 / URB 695: Women and Cities
• Urban Bylaws, Legislation and Planning Resources

Essay  

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process and steps to take to find resources for your essay.

Selected dictionaries and encyclopedias

Get overviews, summaries, key authors, debates and ideas from encyclopedias, handbooks or textbooks. 

• A companion to feminist geography
• Encyclopedia of feminist theories
• Encyclopedia of urban studies [print]
  • See "Reader's guide" entries under "Urban Studies—Topical Areas: Gender and Sex – Social Space"  such as: Gay Space, Gendered Space, Sex and the City
• Routledge companion to modernity, space and gender - See articles such as:
  • Roberts, Marion , "Engendering Urban Design" , in The Routledge Companion to Modernity, Space and Gender ed. Alexandra Staub (Abingdon: Routledge, 13 Mar 2018 ), accessed 06 Jan 2023 , Routledge Handbooks Online.

For more, try Library guide -- Urban Studies Enclopedias

Find books

The Library Catalogue provides access to books, journal articles, videos, government documents and much more.  To limit the search results to "books", use the filter (left-hand column in search results) to "resource type" of "books."

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue using either the Basic or the Advanced search

Note: Search results can be limited by "resource type" or "subject"

Search strategies for your topic

1. Find alternate terms for your concepts for better search results

Space:
city or "public space*" OR  "queer space*" OR "city workplace*" OR "urban landscape*" OR"urban social space*" OR "social space" OR "red light district*" OR "park space"

Geographic area:
Vancouver OR  West End OR  Downtown Eastside OR Yaletown OR  West Hastings 

Sexuality:
sexualit* OR  masculinit* OR  queer* OR "sexed bod*" OR  homosexual* OR  lesbian* OR  heteronormative OR homonormative OR transsex* OR  GLBT OR  GLBTQ OR  gay

2. Combine different concepts

• (women OR female* OR gender) AND ("Public space*" OR urban OR city)
• engender* AND ("urban design" OR "urban plan*" OR "built environment")

Note: In the searches below, search results can be been limited to"Resource type" of "Books" and "Subject" (left-hand column)

• (women OR female* OR gender) AND ("Public space*" OR urban OR city)
• engender* AND ("urban design" OR "urban plan*" OR "built environment")
• (aborig* OR indigen* OR poor OR marginal*) AND (city OR cities OR urban) AND canad*

Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words

Use pulldown menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"

Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

Selected books

• Contentious cities : design and the gendered production of space
• Engendering cities : designing sustainable urban spaces for all
• Feminist city : a field guide / Leslie Kern
• Globalizing cities reader
• Public space reader [print]
• Resistance and the city : negotiating urban identities: race, class, and gender
• Suffragette city : women, politics and the built environment 
• Toward equity and inclusion in Canadian cities : lessons from critical praxis-oriented research
• Urban Canada [print]

Browse by subject

Browse by subject (change the default "Browse by title" to ""Browse by subject" using the pull-down menu)

You can sort the results list by "newest first" (default is by "relevance")

• Architecture and women
• City Planning -- British Columbia
• City Planning -- British Columbia -- [Name of city]
• City Planning -- British Columbia -- Burnaby
• City Planning -- British Columbia -- Vancouver
• City planning -- Social aspects
• Public safety
• Public spaces
• Space (Architecture) -- Social aspects
• Urban Women -- Social Conditions
• Vancouver -- City Planning -- British Columbia
• Women and city planning

Find journal articles

How to find journal articles
Search for journal articles on your topic using the databases, below. You can "limit" your search to "academic or "scholarly / peer reviewed" journals.
Use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.

• Women's Studies International - key database for the discipline
• Academic Search Premier - Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals. Limit to "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" articles.
• ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.
• Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America - Covers all aspects of Native North American culture, history, and life from the sixteenth century to the present.
• Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.
• CBCA Complete - Canada's reference and current events - scholarly journal articles, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.

Websites

Vancouver

• City of Vancouver
  • The LGBTQ Advisory Committee
  • Areas of the city menu
    • Downtown
  • City of Vancouver Archives
• Metro Vancouver
  • Census Demographic Bulletins and Maps
  • Metro Vancouver Key Facts
  • Publications
  • Statistics
• Community Health Online Digital Archive Research Resource (CHODARR)  - A publicly accessible digital archive of research materials related to health and social welfare, with an emphasis on housing, gender, aboriginal issues, HIV and mental health.
• Women Downtown Eastside - Vancouver
  " ... the website was primarily intended as an interface between the DTES and the general and academic public. We hope to encourage a deeper and more personal understanding of this vibrant yet troubled community, including the threats it faces from gentrification. Through this website, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of this special neighborhood and of the experience of poverty, poor living conditions and drug addiction familiar to so many, and encourage a pondering of equitable solutions." [Dr. Jaqqueline Levitin]

Writing help

For undergraduate students, the Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.

• Academic writing resources
• Library Catalogue search: Academic writing
  • E.g. Writing effective course assignments : a guide to non-degree and undergraduate students
• Book a consultation

Library guides

• Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles.
• Library Catalogue search guide
• Where can I get this? Citation finder
• Citation styles: APA (6th ed.),MLA (8th ed.),Chicago/Turabian (17th ed.)
  • Citation or reference management tools to organize your sources & to create a bibliography using different citation styles.
• Evaluating sources