Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

Research process

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.

Selected encyclopedias and handbooks

Use encyclopedias and handbooks to obtain an overview of a topic and to identify key authors and resources on a topic. Articles sometimes have maps and statistics.

• Berkshire Encyclopedia of China: Modern and Historic Views of the World's Newest and Oldest Global Power
• Cambridge Illustrated History of China [print]
• China Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the People's Republic
• Encyclopedia of Modern China
• Global encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history
• Handbook of contemporary China
• Handbook on Class and Social Stratification in China
• Handbook on ethnic minorities in China
• Handbook on human rights in China
• Narrating Southern Chinese Minority Nationalities: Politics, Disciplines, and Public History
• Routledge handbook of East Asian gender studies
• Routledge handbook of human rights in Asia
• Routledge handbook of revolutionary China

For more, try the side tab, Background information

Find journal articles

Searching the "Databases for a discipline" is a great strategy to view articles that have been written within the scholarly journals of that discipline.  For help, refer to the How to find journal articles, What is a scholarly journal?, and Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video 3:13 mins]

If full-text of article is not available from within the database, click on the "Get@SFU" to start a search.  If the Library does not provide access, then use the Citation Finder/ILL tab to request a copy from another library (free) through SFU Library's Inter-Library Loans (ILL) service.

• Anthropology Plus - Key database for Anthropological journal articles.
• Sociological Abstracts  Key database for sociology and anthropology journals. 
• Social Sciences Full Text 
• Bibliography of Asian Studies - Humanities and social sciences information on East, Southeast and South Asia.
• Historical Abstracts - Indexes literature on the history of the world since 1450 except for the United States and Canada.
• International Political Science Abstracts - Provides access to abstracts of political science articles published in journals and yearbooks around the world.
• Women's Studies International  - for issues related to gender, sexuality and women's studies

Find books

Library Catalogue search guide

Search the SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced keyword

To find a specific book

  Use "Browse by title"

• Afterlives of Chinese communism: poltical concepts from Mao to Xi
• Women and China's revolutions

• (women OR gender OR feminis*) AND (rights OR equal*) AND China

Examples of keyword combinations for some of the research topics

You can limit the result to "books" by using "Resource type" of "Books

• Mao AND (women OR gender) AND China
• (Mao* OR post-Mao* OR patriarch* OR patrili*) AND (women OR gender) AND China
  • above results limited by selected subjects
• (women OR gender) AND ethni* AND "modern China"
• "women's liberation" AND China
• (women OR gender) AND (rights OR equal* OR feminis*) AND China
• (women OR gender) AND China AND (reproduct* OR "child policy")
• China AND (transgender OR queer OR LGBT* OR homosex* OR lesbian* OR Tongzhi)
• China AND "Han Chinese"
• China AND rural AND urban
• China AND (factory OR factories) AND (labor OR work*)
• China AND (sexuality OR intimacy)

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 pull-down menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"

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

Selected books

• Borderland memories : searching for historical identity in post-Mao China
• Contemporary China: Society and Social Change
• Chinese women since Mao [print]
• Chinese women through Chinese eyes 
• Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding
• Contemporary China: Society and Social Change
• Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority
• Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture
• Dangerous pleasures : prostitution and modernity in twentieth-century Shanghai
• Disenfranchised: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Citizenship in China
• Fanshen a documentary of revolution in a Chinese village 
• Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China
• Gender Legacy of the Mao Era: Women's Life Stories in Contemporary China
• Gender of memory : rural women and China's collective past
• Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform [print]
• Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace
• Lesser dragons : minority peoples of China
• New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China
• Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken But Unforgotten [print]
• Other modernities : gendered yearnings in China after socialism 
• Political Economy of Reforms and the Remaking of the Proletarian Class in China, 1980s-2010s: Demystifying China's Society and Social Classes in the Post-Mao Era
• Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village
• Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan
• Queer Politics and Sexual Modernity in Taiwan
• Queer Women in Urban China: an ethnography
• Reproductive realities in modern China : birth control and abortion, 1911-2021
• Rethinking China in the 1950s [print]
• Sexual and Reproductive Health in China: Reorienting Concepts and Methodology
• Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China
• Village China Under Socialism and Reform: A Micro-History
• Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China : a Brief History
• Women and China's revolutions 
• Women and Chinese patriarchy : submission, servitude, and escape [print]
• Women and gender in twentieth-century China  [print]
• Women in China's long twentieth century [print]
• Women and gender in contemporary Chinese societies : beyond Han patriarchy [print]
• Work and Family in Urban China: Women's Changing Experience since Mao

Browse books using subject headings

Catalogue Search / Browse then change "Title" to "Subject" and enter your subject term

• China -- Ethnic relations
• China - History -- 1949-
• China -- History -- Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976
• China - Social conditions
• Ethnic groups -- China
• Ethnology -- China
• Families -- China
• Feminism -- China
• Gays -- China
• Gender identity -- China
• Labor policy -- China
• Lesbians -- China
• Minorities -- China
• Social classes -- China
• Women -- China
• Women -- China -- Social conditions
• Women's rights -- China

Presentation skills and writing help

See the Student Learning Commons for expert and friendly help with academic writing, learning, and study strategies.

• Resources on developing your participation skills
• Resources to help you improve your presentation skills

Library guides

• Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles.
• Annotated bibliographies
• Evaluating sources
• How to find journal articles
• Library Catalogue search guide
• What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?
• What is plagiarism?  Guide to common forms of plagiarism and how to avoid them