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Contact info
For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies by email 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, dictionaries and handbooks to obtain definitions and overviews of a topic and also to identify key authors.
- Bloomsbury handbook of 21st-century feminist theory
- Encyclopedia of feminist theories
- International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family
- Routledge handbook of contemporary feminism [2019]
- Same-sex marriage : a reference handbook
For more, try Background information
Find journal articles
Search for journal articles on your topic using the databases, below. From within the database, use the "Get@SFU" link to find it or to initiate an inter-library loan request.
- Women's Studies International -- scholarly feminist literature
- Academic Search Premier -- (multidisciplinary) covers many GSWS journals in full text.Limit your search results to "Academic" or "Scholarly" sources.
- Sociological Abstracts - for any social issue including includes marriage and family studies
- Social Sciences Full Text - for any social issue including includes marriage and family studies
- America: History and Life - Literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture, and current affairs from prehistory to present.
- CBCA Complete -- Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA) Complete. Limit your search results to "Academic" or "Scholarly" sources.
- Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - full text of public policy documents
- Canadian Newsstream - for articles from Canadian newspapers
For more, try Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Databases
Selected journals
Find books in the Library
Library Catalogue search guide
Search the SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced keyword
For the searches below, you can limit the search results by "Subject" or "Resource type" (such as "books)
- (marri* OR spous* OR conjug* OR couple* OR "domestic relations") AND (BC OR British Columbia OR Ontario OR Canad*)
- (marri* OR spous* OR conjug* OR couple* OR "domestic relations" OR wife OR wives OR husband OR co-habit*) AND feminis*
- (marriage OR spous*) AND immigration AND Canad*
- marriage AND "reality tv"
- mormons AND (united states OR americ*) AND polygam*
- canad* AND (immigration OR migration OR "family reunification") AND marriage*
- canad* AND (immigrant* OR arranged OR "South Asian*" OR transnational OR inter-country) AND marriage*
- canad* AND (mixed OR international OR global OR cross-border OR transnational) AND marriage*
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
- A family matter : citizenship, conjugal relationships, and Canadian immigration policy
- A perfect union? : television and the winning of same-sex marriage
- Arranging Marriage : Conjugal Agency in the South Asian Diaspora
- Cohabitation and Marriage in The Americas : Geo-Historical Legacies and New Trends
- Courtship, marriage and marriage breakdown : approaches from the history of emotion
- Gay marriage : the story of a Canadian social revolution [print]
- Marriage and health : the well-being of same-sex couples
- Marriage Gap between Rich and Poor Canadians: How Canadians Are Split into Haves and Have-Nots along Marriage
- Marriage in an age of cohabitation : how and when people tie the knot in the twenty-first century [print]
- Married women who love women : and more ...
- Marrying Kind?: Debating Same-Sex Marriage within the Lesbian and Gay Movement
- Media depictions of brides, wives, and mothers
- New world courtships : transatlantic alternatives to companionate marriage
- Not the marrying kind : a feminist critique of same-sex marriage [print]
- Queer families and relationships after marriage equality
- Queering marriage : challenging family formation in the United States [print]
- Same-Sex Marriage: The Personal and the Political
- Spouse and Partner Immigration to Canada
- Surveillance of women on reality television : watching The bachelor and the bachelorette
- War Brides: The Stories of the Women Who Left Everything Behind to Follow the Men They Loved
- Wife, Inc: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century
Browse by subject
Browse by subject (change the default "Browse by title" to ""Browse by subject" using the pull-down menu)
- Divorce -- Canada
- Families
- Families -- Canada
- Family policy
- Family policy -- Canada
- Families -- Sociological aspects
- Immigrant Families -- Canada
- Intergenerational relations
- Marriage -- Canada
- Marriage -- [name of country]
- Marriage -- United States
- Same-sex marriage
- Unmarried couples
Government and statistics
Statistics Canada is the main statistical agency with responsibility to gather statistical data on Canadians. Explore their "subject", "data", and "analysis" sections as well as trying keyword searches on your topic.
- Searches:
- Publications by subject
Library guides
- Finding and evaluating resources on the web
- Evaluating sources [video from Western University 2:16 mins]
- Avoiding plagiarism
- What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
- How to write an annotated bibliography
- How to place an Inter-Library Loan request
- Search tips for Google and Google Scholar
- Citation or reference management tools (Zotero or Mendeley) - use these tools to manage your citations and to create bibliographies for your papers. For assistance with Zotero or Mendeley, email, citation-managers@sfu.ca.
- Library Tutorials
Presentation skills
- Resources on developing your participation skills
- Resources to help you improve your presentation skills
Writing help