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.

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 reference sources

• 200 words : to help you talk about sexuality & gender [print]
• A Dictionary of Gender Studies
• Encyclopedia of gender and society
• Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History
• Greenwood encyclopedia of LGBT issues worldwide
• Inequality studies from the global South
• Routledge handbook of gender in South Asia

Databases for journal articles

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.

Search strategy to search five "selected journals"

You can either search each of the databases individually or search all of them at the same time (use the "choose databases" above the search box to select the databases to be searched).
To limit your search to just the five "selected journals" with the six of the databases, try:

• (​​​​​​ZJ "contemporary south asia")  OR  ZJ "signs"  OR ZJ "south asia journal of south asian studies" OR ZJ "modern asian studies" OR ZJ "feminist review")
  AND
  (your topic word OR your topic word)
  AND
  (your topic word OR your topic word)

Databases

• Women's Studies International - for any issues related to gender, sexuality and women's studies
  • This database selectively (not cover to cover) indexes journals: Contemporary South Asia, Modern Asian Studies, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.
• Academic Search Premier  Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals. Also indexes women's studies journals.
• Bibliography of Asian Studies - indexes journal articles and books focused on Asia and South Asia.
• 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.
• Social Sciences Full Text  Multi-disciplinary database
• Communication and Mass Media Complete  - Important database for "popular culture" and "media" topics.
• Film & Television Literature Index - International index to scholarly and popular journal literature on film, television and video

Legal

Guide: Legal cases by Topic (Canada)

• HeinOnline - Law Journal Library

About: HeinOnline's Law Journal Library is a collection of over 2,800 law-related journals, featuring US, Canadian, and international content. There are five searchable sub-collections of journals within the core library, including one that focusses on international law journals.

To search, under databases by name, select "Law Journal Library". Note that many of these articles are searchable via the SFU Library catalogue as well. 

Selected journals

The journals will also be selectively indexed in the six databases, listed above.  Search for articles within all of these five journals using the search strategy mentioned in this guide

• Contemporary South Asia
• Feminist review
• Modern Asian studies
• Signs : journal of women in culture and society
• South Asia : journal of South Asian studies

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":

Examples:

• (Bollywood OR Hindi OR Punjabi) AND (cinema OR movies)
• (LGBT* OR queer OR gay OR lesbian* OR transgender*) AND (activism OR rights) AND (India OR Bollywood)
• ("cultural artifacts" OR yoga OR "caste system" OR "arranged marriag*") AND (transnational OR global*) AND (India OR Bollywood)
• (LGBT* OR queer OR gay OR lesbian* OR transgender* OR hijra*) AND India

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:

• Bollywood and Globalization Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora
• Bollywood and postmodernism : popular Indian cinema in the 21st Century
• Bollywood's India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India  [print]
• Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India
• Criminal love? : queer theory, culture, and politics in India
• Dalit feminist theory : a reader
• Daughters of Parvati: Women and madness in contemporary India
• Enemy lines: Warfare, childhood, and play in Batticaloa
• Faith and feminism in Pakistan : religious agency or secular autonomy?
• Feminism : an Indian perspective [print]
• Gender in South Asia : social imagination and constructed realities
• Gendering caste through a feminist lens [print]
• Gendering South Asia : rhetorical non-phallic bodies in the global capital
• Given to the goddess: South Indian devadasis and the sexuality of religion
• Global trajectories of queerness : re-thinking same-sex politics in the Global South
• (Hi)stories of desire : sexualities and culture in modern India
• Made in India : decolonizations, queer sexualities, trans/national projects [print]
• New South Asian feminisms : paradoxes and possibilities
• Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
• Out of line and offline : queer movements in ′90s Eastern India [print]
• Out of time : the queer politics of postcoloniality
• Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India [print]
• Queer activism in India: A story in the anthropology of ethics
• Queering digital India : activisms, identities, subjectivities  [print]
• Queering India: same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society  [print]
• Sexuality, abjection and queer existence in contemporary India
• South Asian Feminisms
• Subaltern movements in India : gendered geographies of struggle against neoliberal development
• Trouble with marriage : feminists confront law and violence in India
• Unfinished gestures : devadāsīs, memory, and modernity in South India
• What even is gender?
• Women, political struggles and gender equality in South Asia
• Women, gender and everyday social transformation in India
• Women, Political Struggles and Gender Equality in South Asia
• Women's human rights in India

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.

• Feminism -- South Asia
• Gays -- India
• Gender identity -- India
• Homosexuality -- India
• Motion pictures -- India
• Women -- India
• Women -- India -- Social conditions
• Women --  Pakistan
• Women -- South Asia -- Social conditions
• Women's rights -- India
• Women's rights -- South Asia

Citation style guides

• APA (7th ed.)
• MLA (8th ed.) 

Library guides

• Developing a topic [video]
• Evaluating sources
• Search tips for Google and Google Scholar
• More Tutorials

Writing help

For undergraduate students, the Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.

• Academic writing resources
• Library Catalogue search: Academic writing
  • E.g. Writing effective course assignments : a guide to non-degree and undergraduate students
• Book a consultation