Contact info

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.

Selected encyclopedias

Encyclopedias, handbooks or textbooks provide overviews, definitions and identify key authors and ideas.

• Ashgate research companion to fan cultures
• Ashgate research companion to queer theory
• Communication, cultural and media studies: the key concepts
• Encyclopedia of contemporary American culture
• Encyclopedia of gender in media 
• Encyclopedia of racism in American films
• Handbook of gender, sex, and media
• Handbook of global media research
• Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts
• Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality
• Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies
• Routledge Handbook of East Asian Gender Studies
• Routledge handbook of East Asian popular culture
• Routledge international encyclopedia of queer culture
• Routledge international handbook of contemporary racisms
• Sage encyclopedia of LGBTQ studies
• Sage international encyclopedia of mass media and society
• Transgender : a Reference Handbook
• Transgender encyclopedia

Journal articles, news and primary sources

Searching the "Databases for a discipline" is a great strategy to view articles that have been written within the scholarly journals of that discipline.  Limit search results to academic or scholarly articles.

If full-text of article is not available from within the database, click on the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.

For help, refer to the How to find journal articles, What is a scholarly journal?, Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video 3:13 mins]

• Women's Studies International - key database for feminist perspectives
• Communication and Mass Media Complete  - Important database for "popular culture", "social media" and "mass media" topics
• Academic Search Premier - Multidisciplinary index to academic and popular journals. Indexes many women's studies journals.
• ProQuest Sociology Collection - International literature in sociology. Searches multiple databases including: Applied Social Science Index, ProQuest Sociology Database, Social Services Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts.
  • Sociological Abstracts- for issues related to class, gender, racism and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.
• Social Sciences Full Text - similar to Sociological Abstracts, it indexes social sciences journals
• CBCA Fulltext Reference - Covers Canadian topics including business, politics, literature, history and news event
• Film & Television Literature Index - International index to scholarly and popular journal literature on film, television and video
• Google Scholar -- use the database through the Library to search for fulltext of articles. For better search results, consult the guide, Search tips for Google and Google Scholar
  • Topic search: ("fan culture" OR fandom) AND (gay OR lesbian OR queer OR LGBT OR transgender) AND (international OR global OR transnational OR cross-cultural)
  • Search for your "key" article.  Check the link "cited by" right beneath the reference to that article

Find books in the Library

How to use the Library Catalogue  [guide]

Do a Library Catalogue search to see if the Library owns or provides access to the sources that you've identified. 

For known items it is best to check using "Browse by title" icon.

Search by topic, using Basic or Advanced Search

Note: Searches can be limited to "Resource type" of "Books" and selected "Subjects"

• "fan cultur*" OR fandom*
• ("fan cultur*" OR fandom*) AND (gay OR lesbian* OR queer* OR LGBT* OR transgend*)
• ("fan cultur*" OR fandom*) AND (gay OR lesbian* OR queer* OR LGBT* OR transgend*) AND (discours* OR  represent* OR portray*)
• ("fan cultur*" OR fandom*) AND (gay OR lesbian* OR queer* OR LGBT* OR transgend*) AND (media OR "popular cultur*" OR TV OR movie* OR "motion picture*")
• ("fan cultur*" OR fandom*) AND (gay OR lesbian* OR queer* OR LGBT* OR transgend*) AND (international OR global OR transnational OR cross-cultural)
• ("sextual minorities" OR LGBT* OR queer* OR gay OR lesbian* OR transgender*) AND ("Mass media" OR "popular culture" OR television OR TV)

To search for a particular television show, use Advanced Search, "Subject contains" and then enter  name of the show

Proper syntax for Boolean logic (words that allow you to combine concepts)

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")

Selected books

• Boys' love, cosplay, and androgynous idols : queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan 
• Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-cultural Fandom of the Genre
• Fandom : identities and communities in a mediated world 
• Fandom, Second Edition: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World
• New media literacies and participatory popular culture across borders 
• Pink 2.0: Encoding Queer Cinema on the Internet
• Productive fandom : intermediality and affective reception in fan cultures
• Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans through Homoerotic Possibilities
• Queering Chinese Kinship : Queer Public Culture in Globalizing China 
• Seeing fans : representations of fandom in media and popular culture [print]
• Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies 

Seeing fans : representations of fandom in media and popular culture Browse search

Choose: Browse tab, change "title" to "subject"

For books about a person, search for the person as "Subject" using "Advanced Search" or "Browse by subject"

 Browse by Subject (change the default "Title" to "Subject")

• Fans (Persons)
• Feminism And Mass Media
• Feminism And Motion Pictures
• Gays in popular culture
• Homophobia
• Homosexuality in motion pictures
• Mass media -- social aspects
• Mass media and culture
• Mass media and minorities
• Mass media and race relations
• Mass Media And Sex
• Popular culture - Psychological aspects
• Queer theory
• Race in mass media
• Rape in mass media
• Race in mass media
• Sex role in mass media
• Sex in music
• Sex Role On Television
• Sexual minorities in mass media
• Social classes in mass media
• Video games -- Social aspects

Google search tips

Google power searching [online course by Google] / Search tips for Google, Google Scholar, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines

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. 

Writing help and other library guides

• What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
• Finding and evaluating resources
• Critical thinking skills at university
• Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles.
• For help with writing essays:  Student Learning Commons &  Writing for university