Home › Help › Subject Guides › English Literature ›

ENGL 492 Topics in World Literature in English: Women Writers from Africa

This guide lists selected print and electronic information sources useful for this class. Please consult the Women's Studies Research Guide for more resources. If you don't find what you need, please contact Moninder Bubber, Liaison Librarian, 778-782-4264 /  bubber@sfu.ca.

Professor: Alessandra Capperdoni
Semester: September - December 2008
Course Outline: English 492 - Topics in World Literature in English: Women Writers from Africa

Services

Contents

How to find:

Back to Table of Contents

 

Books

Back to Table of Contents

Journal articles

Most likely there will be plenty of material in the databases below. However if you don't find enough, then you may try the more complete lists in the English guide and the Women's Studies guide.

  • MLA International Bibliography
    • A core database for research on literary and cultural studies topics. MLA International indexes journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers and conference proceedings. Provides some full-text. As with the library catalogue, remember to use the Author search (from the pull-down menu) for works by an author, and Keyword or Subject searching for works about an author.
  • Black Short Fiction
    • Contains an estimated 8,000 works of short fiction produced by writers from Africa and the African Diaspora from the earliest times to the present. The materials have been compiled from early literary magazines, archives, and the personal collections of the authors. Approximately 30 percent of the collection is fugitive or ephemeral, or has never been published before.
  • Contemporary Authors
    • Useful for overviews and brief biographies of authors but also for the reference lists at the end of the articles.
  • Contemporary Literary Criticism - Select
    • Use keyword searching or search by author of interest. In addition, like Contemporary Authors, this database is useful for the reference lists at the end of the biographical overviews, which include hyperlinked scholarly articles.
  • Film Literature Index (FLI)
    • Contains citations to articles, film reviews and book reviews published between 1976-2001. For later years consult the Film and Television Literature Index.
  • Project MUSE
    • TIP: From Project Muse's Advanced Keyword search page, check the "Include JSTOR back issues" (left column), to search the JSTOR simultaneously.
    • A searchable, online, full-text collection of over 110 humanities and social science journals. Subjects include: literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, and gender studies. Date coverage begins varies from title to title, but generally starts with mid-1990's.
  • JSTOR
    • TIP: From Project Muse's Advanced Keyword search page, check the "Include JSTOR back issues" (left column), to search the JSTOR simultaneously.
    • A searchable, online, full-text archival collection of core scholarly journals mainly in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Note that JSTOR does not provide access to the most current issues of journals. In most cases 2-5 full years plus the current calendar year are excluded.
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Index
    • A broad database covering Humanties and Social Sciences. Subjects include Folklore, Performing Arts, Art, Literature, Film, and many others.
  • Women's Studies International
    • Start with "keyword" and move to "subject" or "descriptor" word searching. Also note the yellow bar on left hand side, which narrows your search even further by subjects
      • try keyword similar to the ones used to search for books in Library Catalogue. E.g.
      • femini* and africa
      • represent* and africa and women
      • etc.
    • Some Descriptor/Subject headings:
      • DE "African feminism"
      • DE "African women"
      • DE "Ethiopian women"
      • DE "Protocol on the rights of women in africa [2003]"
      • etc.
  • Women's Human Rights Resources Database WHRR
    • No print equivalent - 1995 to present - WHRR contains annotated references to books, articles, documents and links websites related to international women's rights law or the domestic application of international women's rights law. Full-text documents are provided where available. You may find fulltext of many of the legal journals by checking the Library Catalogue by "journal title".
  • Global Health
  • Lexis Nexis (full text) - Especially good for access to women's "human rights" and "legal" types of journals.

Back to Table of Contents

Selected Journals

  • Research in African Literatures (indexed in MLA database)
  • Jenda : a journal of culture and African women studies (indexed in Women's Studies International)
    • In the Women's Studies International database, you can search within this journal by entering "Jenda" in the "keyword" box and then choosing "SO Publication Name" in the pull down menu.
  • Journal of African Cultural Studies (indexed in MLA database)
  • Journal of Postcolonial Writing Bennett Bound Journals (indexed in MLA database)
  • Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Bennett Bound Journals (indexed in MLA database)
  • Gender and Development (indexed in Women's Studies International database)
  • Al-Raida (indexed in Women's Studies International database, full-text in Contemporary Women's Issues database)

Back to Table of Contents

Government information

Back to Table of Contents

Statistics

International

  • UNdata - United Nations Statistical Common Database -- compilation of United Nations and agency statistics, covering economic, social, financial and development topics. The series can be accessed alphabetically, by sources or by topics. Among the main data sources are the Statistics Division's own databases in merchandise trade, national accounts, demography and population, energy, status of women and industrial commodities production; and statistics from the Population Division, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Project Link, FAO, ILO, IMF, ITU, OECD, UNESCO, WHO, WIPO, World Bank and World Tourism Organization, among others. Get time series, html, excel, etc.format.
  • Metadata - Country profile - alphabetical list by country
  • Data Extraction and query - Basic view - select countries to compare -- "legally induced abortions" by country
    • Select "country/area profile" -- (e.g. Aghanistan)
    • Select a "profile" - e.g. "social indicators"
    • Select "series" -- here is where you select "abortion", "aids orphans", "births", "condom use", "marriage by age of bride", "women unemployment rate", etc.
    • Select year ranges

Back to Table of Contents

Websites

Back to Table of Contents

 

Owned by: Moninder Bubber
Revised by: Moninder Bubber
Last Modified: 2011-04-04