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.

Research process

1. Define your topic.
2. Look for background information
3. Based on your preliminary research, formulate a research question that you intend to address through more comprehensive research. You will ultimately address this research question in your thesis.
4. Brainstorm keywords for each concept in your topic to use for searching for information.
5. Use Library Catalogue to find books  and use databases to find articles.
6. Evaluate your resources.
7. Note key authors and works that may lead you to further sources.

Essay  

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 handbooks and encyclopedias

Use encyclopedias, handbooks or textbook for overviews, definitions, and to identify key authors or concepts. 

• 200 words : to help you talk about sexuality & gender [print]
• A Dictionary of Gender Studies
• A-Z of gender and sexuality : from Ace to Ze
• Encyclopedia of feminist theories
• Encyclopedia of Sexuality and Gender
• Global encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history
• Handbook of Research on Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema
• International encyclopedia of communication
  • E.g. search: "sexual content"
    • Arthurs, Jane. "Sex and Pornography as Media Content: Feminist Perspectives." The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Donsbach, Wolfgang (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Blackwell Reference Online. 15 October 2016 http://www.communicationencyclopedia.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781405131995_chunk_g978140513199524_ss38-1
• Oxford handbook of the economics of prostitution
• Routledge handbook of gender in South Asia
• Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas
• Routledge international handbook of feminisms and gender studies : convergences, divergences, and pluralities 
• Sage encyclopedia of LGBTQ studies
• Sage Knowledge 
• Women in developing countries a reference handbook

For more, try Background information

Research question

What is the impact of pornographic content in the movies?

Identify the main concepts:  "pornographic content", "movies", "impact"

For each term, find synonyms or related terms

(sexual content OR pornography OR pornographic content)

AND

(movies OR moving pictures OR motion pictures OR cinema OR films)

AND

(impact OR effect OR influence)

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, either the Basic or the Advanced search

Note: The search results can be limited to "resource type" or "subject"

•  ("sexual content" OR porn*) AND (movie* OR "moving picture*" OR "motion picture*" OR cinema OR films) AND (impact OR effect OR influence)
  • Results limited by "Resource type" of "Books" and "Book chapters" and selected "Subjects"
• ("sexual violence" OR "sexual consent") AND ("Social media" OR Twitter OR Facebook OR Instagram OR Netflix)
• "sexual content" AND (law OR legislat* OR regulat*) AND canad*
• second wave AND feminism
• sexting AND (youth OR girl* OR "young adult" OR adolescent*)
• homoeroticism AND Canad* AND (cinema OR TV OR television OR movies)

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

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

Look at the titles in the "results list" and for those books that look relevant, click on their subject headings.

Selected books

• Bill C-22 : An Act Respecting the Mandatory Reporting of Internet Child Pornography by Persons Who Provide an Internet Service
• Child pornography and the law in Canada : a new agenda for the information age [print]
• Contemporary erotic cinema
• Digital feminist activism : girls and women fight back against rape culture
• Feminist theory today an introduction to second-wave feminism 
• Feminist thought : a more comprehensive introduction
• Gender & Pop Culture: A Text-Reader
• Gender, sex and the law in Canada [print]
• Global currents in gender and feminisms : Canadian and international perspectives
• Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights [print]
• In their time : a history of feminism in Western society [online] [print]
• Judging obscenity a critical history of expert evidence
• Media and the sexualization of childhood
• People's pornography sex and surveillance on the Chinese internet
• Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism
• Pornography: The Politics of Legal Challenges
• Sexting: Motives and risk in online sexual self-presentation
• Sexting and cyberbullying : defining the line for digitally empowered kids
• New feminisms in South Asia : disrupting the discourse through social media, film and literature [print]
• Queer mobilizations : social movement activism and Canadian public policy
• Separate roads to feminism : Black, Chicana, and White feminist movements in America's second wave
• Sex and the Supreme Court : obscenity and indecency law in Canada [print]
• Sexing the Media : How and Why We Do It
• Sexting: Motives and risk in online sexual self-presentation
• Sexting Panic : Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent
• Sexual violence and social media : building a framework for prevention
• Sexuality in adolescence : the digital generation
• Silencing cinema : film censorship around the world
• Television regulation and media policy in China
• Understanding global sexualities : new frontiers
• What even is gender? 
• Women's activism and second wave feminism : transnational histories

Browse by subject

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

Sex, pornography and regulation

• "internet porn*"
• "Internet Porn*" AND (regulat* OR laws OR legislat*)
• Internet pornography -- Law and legislation
• Obscenity (Law) -- Canada
• Pornographic films
• Pornography
• Sex and law -- Canada
• Sexting

Discourse on sex and sexuality

• Body, Human -- Social aspects
• Masculinity in popular culture
• Sex -- Social aspects
• Sex in mass media
• Sex in popular culture
• Sex in motion pictures

Sexuality

• Gay Rights -- Canada
• Gay Rights -- United States
• Gay Liberation Movement -- Canada
• Gender identity
• Gender identity -- [name of country]
• Sex and law
• Sex and law -- Canada
• Transsexuals
• Youth -- Sexual behavior

Media, censorship, regulation

• Mass Media -- Policy
• Mass media -- Policy -- [name of country]
• Mass media -- Policy -- Canada
• Motion pictures -- Censorship
• Censorship -- United States -- History

Feminism

• Feminism
• Feminism -- Canada
• Feminism -- United States
• Second-wave feminism
• Third-wave feminism

Theory

• Feminist theory
• Feminist theory -- Cross cultural studies
• Feminist Theory -- Developing Countries
• Lesbian feminist Theory
• Queer theory

Find journal articles

Databases

Find a Peer-Reviewed Article in Social Science Journals
What is a scholarly journal?
How to find journal articles

Databases index key journals for a discipline. Search for journal articles on your topic using the databases below. 
From within the database, use the "Get@SFU" icon will to find copies of articles which are not full-text within the database or to initiate an inter-library loan request. 
Limit search results to "academic / scholarly" articles.

• Women's Studies International. Key database for Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies area
• ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science. For information of immigrants, racism, society, structural barriers, etc.
• Communication & Mass Media Complete. Key database for the discipline of Communication which studies the media and popular culture, body image 
  Useful for topics such as "influence of media on body image of women"
• Social Sciences Full Text - indexes social sciences journals
• Academic Search Premier. Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals. 
• Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text. Useful for film and television research
• CBCA Complete.  Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) indexes Canadian scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers.  For fulltext of the newspaper articles, use Canadian Newsstream

Google searching

Tips:

Search tips for Google, Google Scholar, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines [guide]
Set up Google Scholar library links and button

Google's Advanced Search page

Search results limited to words in the title of document, using "intitle:".  Use capital "OR" for synonyms. Put braces "()" around words that mean the same thing. 

intitle:(sex* OR porn*) intitle:(laws OR regulations)

  Results

Search for documents from a particular country's domain.  The example below is for India, with country code of ".in"
  Web country codes

site:.in  intitle:(sex* OR porn*) intitle:(laws OR regulations)

  Results

Search for government publications from Canada using "site:.gc.ca

 site:.gc.ca intitle:(sex* OR porn*) intitle:(laws OR regulations)

   Results

Feminist theory websites

• Feminist Theory Website - "provides research materials" - fields within feminism; national and ethnic feminisms; Individual feminists
• Women’s Studies: Feminist Theory

Other websites

• Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission: (CRTC)
  • Statutes and Regulations
  • Public Proceedings: license applications & renewals, public proceedings, submissions, policy statements
• ​Media Smarts (formerly, Media Awareness Network)
  • Research
• Women's Studies / Issues Resource Sites - by Professor Joan Korenman

Terminology for LGBTIQA

• Homosaurus vocabulary (terminology) - although these terms are not used in the "Subject" list (Browse by Subject) in the SFU Catalogue Search, they may assist you when searching for information on LGBTQIA persons. 

Library guides and tutorials

• How to Write an Annotated Bibliography
• Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles
• What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
• Evaluating sources 
• Moving from citation to article: Find the full text of an article from the article citation 
• Library Catalogue search guide
• How to find journal articles
• Communication
  • ​This discipline studies media and popular culture.​
  • Communication: Government resources
    • ​For the regulation of the media

Writing help

• Citing: MLA ,  Finding and using online images: Citing  
• Student Learning Commons
  • Assignment Calculator
  • Academic writing resources
    • Writing for university
    • Academic writing - a list of over 200 books.
  • Book a consultation