Ask-A-Librarian | View Your Account | Search This Site 
For questions regarding the selection of materials for the collection please contact . For reference assistance or to arrange a library instruction class please contact .
Please select one of the following options:
RECOMMENDED DATABASES
- MLA (MLA International Bibliography)
Produced by the Modern Language Association of America, consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore, and includes coverage from 1963 to the present. Provides access to scholarly research in over 3,000 journals and series, and covers books, book chapters, working papers, conference proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats.- Literature Online (LION)
A fully searchable library of more than 330,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies, and key criticism and reference resources. This resource contains the Database of African American Poetry, 1760-1900, among other sources.- JSTOR
Full text images of over 100 scholarly titles in a range of subject areas, including language and literature, philosophy, African American studies, and classical studies. Search the archive or pull up a specific article. Coverage: Varies by journal title but there is significant historical coverage. Most journals are included from volume 1; coverage runs up until the most recent three or five years, depending on the journal. Issues from the past three to five years are not included.- American Humanities Index
The American Humanities Index provides indexing for more than 700 literary, scholarly, and creative journals, published in the United States and Canada. Cover-to-cover indexing includes not only scholarly material, but also poems, fiction, photographs, paintings, and illustrations. American humanities Index is part of Humanities International Index.ADDITIONAL DATABASES--PRIMARY RESOURCES
- Documenting the American South
A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.- American Memory
Gateway to primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. Offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.- Black Drama
Black Drama contains the full text of 1,200 plays written by more that 150 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.RECOMMENDED JOURNALS
- Callaloo
Callaloo, the premier African-American and African literary journal, publishes original works and critical studies of black artists and writers worldwide. The journal offers a rich mixture of fiction, poetry, plays, critical essays, interviews, and visual art from the African diaspora. Frequent annotated bibliographies, special thematic issues drawing on people and place, original art and photography are some of the features of this highly acclaimed international showcase of arts and letters.
Gorgas Library Periodical Stacks, 4M
Call number: NX506 .C34
Link to Print- Obsidian III
Obsidian: Black Literature in Review first appeared in 1975. Its ninety-seven pages of articles, fiction, poetry and reviews began the tradition of publishing first-rate work that continues today. As Obsidian has evolved into a respected literary journal acknowledged by the National Endowment of the Arts as a forerunner in the world of African-American Literature, it has also been committed to publishing excellent scholarly articles.
Link to Obsidian II
- African American Review
As the official publication of the Division on Black American Literature and Culture of the Modern Language Association, the quarterly journal African American Review promotes a lively exchange among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who hold diverse perspectives on African American literature and culture. Currently, the journal prints essays on African American literature, theatre, film, the visual arts, and culture generally; interviews; poetry; fiction; and book reviews.
Gorgas Library Periodical Stacks, 4M
Call number: E185.5 .N35
Link to PrintSELECT REFERENCE SOURCES
- Oxford Companion to African American Literature
The Oxford Companion to African American Literature is a comprehensive reference volume devoted to the texts and the historical and cultural contexts of African American literature.
- African American Authors, 1745-1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook
A central objective of this sourcebook is to provide a wide-ranging introduction to the first 200 years of this fascinating African American literary history. Among the writers included here are essayists, novelists, short story writers, poets, playwrights, and autobiographers.
- Black American Poets & Dramatists Before the Harlem Renaissance
This volume provides biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on the twelve most significant black American poets and dramatists up to the early twentieth century. Each chapter consists of three parts: a biography of the author; a selection of brief critical extracts about the author; and a bibliography of the author's published books.
- Black American Poets & Dramatists of the Harlem Renaissance
This volume provides biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on the ten most significant poets and dramatists of the Harlem Renaissance. Each chapter consists of three parts: a biography of the author, a selection of brief critical extracts about the author, and a bibliography of the author's published books.
- For additional, print resources on African American Literature, please visit the library's catalog or Gorgas Library's Reference area, in particular section PS153.N5.
WEB RESOURCES
Online Texts and Additional Information
- University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center: African American Collection
The Electronic Text Center's holdings include approximately 70,000 on- and off-line humanities texts in many languages (including online Chinese and Japanese literature) and hundreds of thousands of related images (book illustrations, covers, manuscripts, newspaper pages, page images of Special Collections books, museum objects, etc.).- African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century is a digital collection of some 52 published works by 19th-century black women writers. A part of the Digital Schomburg, this collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920. A full text database of these 19th and early 20th- century titles, this digital library is key-word-searchable.- Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
Voices from the Gaps (VG) was founded in 1996 as a collaborative project of the American Studies Department and English Department at the University of Minnesota. VG's intent is to use new digital media to preserve and extend knowledge of art by women of color. VG focuses on the lives and works of North American minority women artists and writers, visual artists, performance artists, musicians, sonic artists, and filmmakers. Each artist page presents biographical, critical and bibliographical information about the artist, images and quotations pertinent to her life and works, and links to other resources on the web that provide information about her, including translations and archives.- American Academy of Poets
Started in 1996, Poets.org is the award-winning website of the Academy of American Poets. Visitors can find hundreds of essays and interviews about poetry, biographies of more than 500 poets, almost 2000 poems, and audio clips of 150 poems read by their authors or other poets. The site allows an advanced search by movement (i.e., Harlem Renaissance), or entering "African American" into the keyword box returns a selection of African American poets.
- Paul Laurence Dunbar Digital Text Collection
The Digital Text Collection was established to honor Dayton poet and novelist, Paul Laurence Dunbar, upon the occasion of the rededication of the Wright State University Library as the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library on May 2, 1992. This digital collection of a selected group of Dunbar's poetry is intended to encourage the use of and interest in the works of Dunbar.- Voice of the Shuttle: Minority Literatures--African American
Collection of links for select African American authors, journals, listservs, newsgroups, and conferences.Select Periods in African American Literature
- North American Slave Narratives
"North American Slave Narratives" collects books and articles that document the individual and collective story of African Americans struggling for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.
- Harlem Renaissance Multimedia Resource
Time period: 1919-1940
Sponsored by John Carroll University, this site includes general information on various aspects of the Harlem Renaissance. The literature section of the site includes an overview of the writers and works of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as links to additional resources. More resources can be found on the Credits page.
- Modern American Poetry: The Black Arts Movement
Time period: 1960s
MAPS is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern American poetry. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by the Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONS
- English Department, University of Alabama
Listing of UA English faculty, organized by areas of interest.- Modern Language Association
Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy.
- MLA Formatting and Style Guide
Examples of general MLA format for research papers, including in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and Works Cited page from Perdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL).
Return to Gorgas Subject Guides
©2007-2009 The
University of Alabama
Last modified:
02/25/08
Comments about this site to: webmaster
Return to Top