Library Guides: American Studies: Getting Started

Finding Background Information

Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History
“Ordinary Americans” and their experiences are examined. Noted Americans such as presidents, intellectuals, and military heroes are excluded.

Entries cover how the lives of Americans were shaped by various events, inventions, and movements in history, e.g., automobiles, the westward movement of settlers and farmers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the transformation of work, the women's suffrage movement, racial divides, and leisure activities. Suggested readings of scholarly works are included.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Examines how social movements and other historical events impacts how food and drink is viewed, prepared, and consumed in America.

Articles cover American cuisine as it relates to people, advertising, historical eras, holidays and festivals, ingredients, and geographical regions.
American National Biography
Scholarly full text biographies and bibliographies on thousands of Americans.

Biographical portraits of more than 17,400 American men and women.
Encyclopedia of American Religions
Online encyclopedia describing the historical development of more than 2,300 North American religious groups in the U.S. and Canada.

Covers more than 2,300 North American religious groups in the U.S. and Canada -- from Adventists to Zen Buddhists. Includes, when available, rubrics for membership figures, educational facilities and periodicals. (Online version of 7th edition, 2003.)
Encyclopedia of American Studies
Online encylopedia covering the history, philosophy, arts, and cultures of the United States in relation to the world, from pre-colonial days to the present, from various perspectives and the global American Studies movement.

Sponsored by the American Studies Association (ASA), this encyclopedia covers a wide range of disciplines related to the history and cultures of the United States, from pre-colonial days to the present.

The Research Process

Choose a topic.

Do a brain dump: Note down what you already know about your topic, including

Names of people, organizations, companies, time period you are interested in, places of interest [countries, regions, cities]

Fill in the gaps in your knowlege: get background information from encyclopedias or other secondary sources. Wikipedia can be good here.

Select the best places/ databases to find information on your topic. Look under the History Databases tab of this guide for article database suggestions. Or use a catalog like Oskicat or Melvyl to search for books and other resources.

Use nouns from your brain dump as search terms.

Evaluate what you find. Change search terms to get closer to what you really want.

Refine Your Topic - Using the information you have gathered, determine if your research topic should be narrower or broader. You may need to search basic resources again using your new, focused topics and keywords.

Take a look this short tutorial on beginning your research for more ideas.

How to Narrow Your Topic

"I'm writing a paper on World War II."

Often students start their research with a very general topic, even though they may realize the topic is too large to deal with in a 10-15 page paper. Faculty and librarians tell them, "You have to narrow this down." But how do you narrow a topic?

Ask yourself--

What discipline am I working in? If you are in a sociology class, ask a sociological question about World War II, like "How did WWII affect women?" If it's a political science class, your question might be something like "How did WWII affect presidential elections in the US?"

What are some subsets or aspects of your topic. Some good aspects are:
- by place, such as a country or region
- by time period, such as a century, decade or year
- by population, such as men, women, ethnic group, youth, children or elderly

You can combine these ideas, "What were the major impacts of WWII on women in France, in the decade after the war?"

More ideas in our brief tutorial on topic selection and narrowing.

Secondary menu

American Studies: Getting Started

Finding Background Information

The Research Process

How to Narrow Your Topic