GSWS 320 / GSWS 831: Intro to Porn Studies: The Poetics and Politics of Sex

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Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies 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

Databases 

Databases let you easily to search for articles from within scholarly journals for a discipline.

How to find journal articles tutorial. 

What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?

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

GSWS

Films & popular culture

  • Film & Television Literature Index: International index to scholarly and popular journal literature on film, television and video.
  • Film Literature Index (FLI): Citations to journal articles, film reviews and book reviews published between 1976-2001. For later years consult the Film and Television Literature Index.
  • Communication & Mass Media Complete: Indexing & abstracts for over 300 journals in the fields of communication, mass media studies, linguistics and film including full text for nearly 200 journals

Health & psychology

  • CINAHL Complete - database focused on nursing and allied health
  • Global Health - covers global health, biomedical life sciences, non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, food safety and hygiene, and much more
  • Project MUSE Search  - Current humanities and social sciences peer-reviewed academic journals and ebooks from university presses and scholarly societies world-wide.
  • PsycINFO: The most inclusive database for research in psychology. PsycINFO Quick Guide

Multi-disciplinary

  • JSTOR  Searchable, archival collection (not current 5 to 7 years) of core scholarly arts, humanities and social sciences journals
  • Oxford Bibliographies Online  Lists key books, articles, and other sources on a wide variety of subjects via annotated and curated bibliographies. An excellent starting point for locating important literature and scholarly sources on a topic. Focuses on the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Also included are bibliographies on film, cinema, and directors.  
  • Google Scholar - Indexes the full text of articles, books, reports, academic web sites, reports, etc.  Good for cross-disciplinary and emerging fields of research.
    • Search results limited to words in the title of document, using "intitle:".  
    • No need to use "AND" to join different concepts (done automatically by Google)
    • Use capital "OR" for synonyms.
    • Put braces "()" around words that mean the same thing. 
  • Citation searching
    • Search for your "key" article.  Check the link "cited by" right beneath the reference to that article

For more tips, check: Search tips for Google, Google Scholar, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines [guide]

Primary sources

  • Archives of Sexuality & Gender  A collection of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world since 1940.  Rare and unique content from newsletters, organisational papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more.
    • Use the "Advanced" search or "Topic finder" to search for topics
    • film* or cinema or "motion picture*"
    • [name of a film] and ("review or critic*")
    • porn*

Selected journals

Writing film criticism

  • An introduction to film analysis : technique and meaning in narrative film [print]
  • A short guide to writing about film / Timothy Corrigan [online is on order] [print]
  • The language and style of film criticism [online] [print]

For more, try the Library guide: Writing about film

Find books in the Library

How to use the Library Catalogue  [guide]

Search by topic, using Basic or Advanced Search.  For known items it is best to use "Browse by title" search.

Try searching by keywords and then limit by "Subject" (left-hand column) and "Resource type" of "books":

Names of films, directors or actors

To find books on cinema from a different culture

  • (lgbt OR lesbian OR gay OR bisexual OR trans OR transgender OR queer) AND (cinema OR film* OR "motion pictures") AND  [name of a group or country]

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 to find more books on that topic.

Selected books

  • Tainted love : screening sexual perversion [print]

Browse subject headings for books

Browse by Subject    (change the default "title" to "subject").  Browse by Subject will only result in books, not book chapters or journal articles.

To find films from a particular country, but not necessarily related to sexual identity

Motion pictures--[specific geographical place]; Examples, below:

Feminist theory website

Writing an annotated bibliography

The guide below provides information on how to write an annotated bibliography.

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography

Citing films

Citing film in MLA