ICSM Look Homeward, Lookaway: Reading and Performing Fiction of the American South
- Thomas Wolfe's childhood home in Asheville, North Carolina. At left, a photo from the 30s, at right a "restored" version from 2004.
Southern States--Civilization
Southern States--Civilization--19th century
Southern States--Civilization--20th century
Southern States--Economic conditions
Southern States--Economic conditions--1918-
Southern States--Economic conditions--1945-
Southern States--Ethnic relations
Southern States--History--1865-1877
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Southern States--History--1865-1951
Southern States--History--1951-
Southern States--Intellectual life
Southern States--Intellectual life--1865-
Southern States--Politics and government--1865-
Southern States--Politics and government--20th century
Southern States--Race relations
Southern States--Race relations--History
Southern States--Race relations--History--19th century
Southern States--Race relations--History--20th century
Southern States--Social conditions
Southern States--Social conditions--1865-1945
Southern States--Social conditions--1945-
Southern States--Social life and customs
Southern States--Social life and customs--1865-
Family--Southern States--History
Marriage--Southern States--History--19th century
Women--Southern States--History
Women--Southern States--History--19th century
Slavery--Southern States
Slavery--Southern States--History
Slavery--Southern States--History--19th century
Slavery--Southern States--Justification
Plantations--Southern States
Plantations--Southern States--History
Racism--Southern States--History
Racism--Southern States--History--19th century
African Americans--Southern States
African Americans--Southern States--History
African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States
African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States--History--20th century
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States--History
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States--History--20th century
Social classes--Southern States--History--19th century
Social classes--Southern States--History--20th century
Southern States--In literature
American literature--Southern States
American literature--Southern States--History and criticism
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation--Congresses
Wolfe, Thomas, 1900-1938
Wolfe, Thomas, 1900-1938--Criticism and interpretation
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905---Criticism and interpretation
Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001--Criticism and interpretation
Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001--Criticism and interpretation
O'Connor, Flannery
O'Connor, Flannery--Criticism and interpretation
Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980
Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980--Criticism and interpretation
McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967
McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967--Criticism and interpretation
Walker, Alice, 1944-
Walker, Alice, 1944---Criticism and interpretation
American literature--19th century--History and criticism
American literature--20th century--History and criticism
American literature--Women authors--History and criticism
American literature--Minority authors--History and criticism
American literature--African American authors--History and criticism
Southern States--Civilization--19th century
Southern States--Civilization--20th century
Southern States--Economic conditions
Southern States--Economic conditions--1918-
Southern States--Economic conditions--1945-
Southern States--Ethnic relations
Southern States--History--1865-1877
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Southern States--History--1865-1951
Southern States--History--1951-
Southern States--Intellectual life
Southern States--Intellectual life--1865-
Southern States--Politics and government--1865-
Southern States--Politics and government--20th century
Southern States--Race relations
Southern States--Race relations--History
Southern States--Race relations--History--19th century
Southern States--Race relations--History--20th century
Southern States--Social conditions
Southern States--Social conditions--1865-1945
Southern States--Social conditions--1945-
Southern States--Social life and customs
Southern States--Social life and customs--1865-
Family--Southern States--History
Marriage--Southern States--History--19th century
Women--Southern States--History
Women--Southern States--History--19th century
Slavery--Southern States
Slavery--Southern States--History
Slavery--Southern States--History--19th century
Slavery--Southern States--Justification
Plantations--Southern States
Plantations--Southern States--History
Racism--Southern States--History
Racism--Southern States--History--19th century
African Americans--Southern States
African Americans--Southern States--History
African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States
African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States--History--20th century
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States--History
African Americans--Segregation--Southern States--History--20th century
Social classes--Southern States--History--19th century
Social classes--Southern States--History--20th century
Southern States--In literature
American literature--Southern States
American literature--Southern States--History and criticism
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation--Congresses
Wolfe, Thomas, 1900-1938
Wolfe, Thomas, 1900-1938--Criticism and interpretation
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989
Warren, Robert Penn, 1905---Criticism and interpretation
Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001--Criticism and interpretation
Welty, Eudora, 1909-2001--Criticism and interpretation
O'Connor, Flannery
O'Connor, Flannery--Criticism and interpretation
Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980
Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890-1980--Criticism and interpretation
McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967
McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967--Criticism and interpretation
Walker, Alice, 1944-
Walker, Alice, 1944---Criticism and interpretation
American literature--19th century--History and criticism
American literature--20th century--History and criticism
American literature--Women authors--History and criticism
American literature--Minority authors--History and criticism
American literature--African American authors--History and criticism
Note: Journals that might be of special interest and which are accessible full text from IC databases:
MLA International Bibliography provides the most complete and fully indexed coverage of articles and books on modern literatures, linguistics, folklore, rhetoric, and composition from 1925 to the present. There is ample full text provided by ProQuest, as well as links to full-text articles in JSTOR and Project Muse. Full text from other IC databases is also readily available via the "GetIt" links below article citations.
Because books, book chapters/essays, and dissertations will usually not be available full text, you may wish to limit your search to "Journal article" under "Source type."
"Author's Work" and "Author as Subject" will be especially helpful search fields at finding literary criticism. And for additional search field options either click on "Show more fields," or, for the complete list, open the drop-down menus to the right of the "Anywhere" default for the top three rows of search slots. This list includes both "Literary Influence"--who influenced a particular author you have entered--and "Literary Source"--who was influenced by that particular author.
If you set up a free "My Research" account with Proquest (top right), you can save all the articles you check, any searches you want to remember, and set up e-mail or RSS notification for new articles that match your search terms.
JSTOR has excellent 100% full-text coverage of literary scholarship. There is no Subject searching, so remember to put titles and authors' names in quotation marks to search them as Keyword phrases--and leave authors' names in the normal first-name last-name order. Set "Limit" to "Article"--or else you may unleash an avalanche of reviews of books on your topic.
JSTOR access to journal articles begins 2-4 years prior to the present--so don't look for any criticism from the last couple of years--but coverage always extends back to the first issue of each journal--in some cases into the 19th century and beyond.
Project Muse , although a smaller database, it complements JSTOR. LIke JSTOR it provides 100% full text of mostly scholarly journals, but its coverage is entirely current--mainly spanning the last 10-15 years. Muse offers a basic keyword search (be sure to put the titles of literary works in quotation marks). Once you've retrieved a set of articles you can sort them into broad categories using the Research Area options on the left.
Note: Checking the "Articles" box under Content Type before you run a search will eliminate reviews of books about your topic and leave you with just the articles on your topic.
ProQuest Research Library & Academic Search Premier are comprehensive databases and include considerable literary criticism--much of it full text. In running searches on authors, don't settle for a Keyword search on the author's name, as this will retrieve too many articles in which the author is only mentioned in passing. Instead use the specialized Subject search each provides.
In ProQest enter the author's name, last name first, in the "Person" slot.
In Academic Search Premier open the "Select a Field" drop down menu and search the author's name, last name first, in the "People" field.
In both databases the titles of literary works must be searched as Keyword phrases, so be sure to put them in quotation marks.
In both databases you can set a "Document Type" limit to "Interview"--if it's a contemporary writer. And for a contemporary writer you might also try an "Author" search, since many writers publish criticism and social commentary that might shed light on their creative work.
General OneFile is another comprehensive database with considerable literary criticism, but the default Subject search forcess you to retrieve EVERYTHING on a particular author. The standard "subdivisions" by which General OneFile organizes these results--"Ethical Aspects," Political Aspects," "Social Aspects"--are broad in respect to authors. So--
If you wish to focus on a specific literary work, open "Advanced Search" and in the "Select Index" box choose "Named Work": this allows you to run a Subject search on a title.
If you wish to focus on a particular a theme, the best strategy is to open all the results from the initial Subject search on the author and then use the the "Search within these Results" slot at the upper left to enter thematic Keywords.
PsycINFO & SocINDEX with Full Text : As the names suggest, these are good resources for articles on authors and literary works from a psychological or sociological perspective.
America: History and Life : This is the only database that allows you to set a "Historical Period" limit (below the search slots on the left). This means that for any topic you search you can focus the articles retrieved on a particular period--for example Race and American Literature between 1920 and 1940 . But: be aware that setting a Period limit of 1920-1940 will also retrieve any Period that contains those two decades, so, for instance, an article with a time frame of 1900-1980 will also be retrieved.
Also be sure to set the "Document Type" limit to "Article" to weed out all the many, many book reviews that will otherwise clot your search for articles.
Having set the Period and Article limits, a good way to begin with this database is to open "Indexes" above the search slots and select the "Subject Terms" index, where you can check to see if there is a good Subject Heading for your topic.
ERIC (Ebsco interface) is an Education database where you can find many scholarly articles on the interpretation and teaching of literary texts at the levels of both secondary and higher education.
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text : A specialized resource for dramatic literature, playwrights, and the theater. Play titles may be searched as "Subject Terms" here--and you should take advantage of this. Searching a play title as a Subject guarantees that the articles retrieved will be substantially about the the play. For example,a Keyword search on Hamlet retrieves about 2200 articles, whereas a Subject search retrieves about 700. The Subject search eliminates 1500 articles that mention but are not primarily about Hamlet.
If you wish to focus on reviews of a theater piece, search the title in the "Reviews and Products" field.
New York Times (1851-2009) offers the full text of the New York Times from 1851 up to 2006, so you can access contemporary reviews of Twain, Tennyson, Hemingway, and Joyce. Enter a Keyword search, putting phrases in quotation marks. You might begin by searching in the “Citation and Abstract” field, then, if this doesn’t yield enough results, expand to the default “Citation and document text” field.
Literary Reference Center : The emphasis here is on articles from a wide range of reference resources, including Magill's Survey of American Literature, Cyclopedia of World Literature, Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature, Masterplots, etc. There is also access to the Critical Insights book series published by Salem Press, each volume dedicated to a single author or a single work. Both the reference works and the Critical Insights series provide very basic biography and interpretation, but these are supplemented by selected scholarly articles.
The simplest approach may be to enter a single author or a particular work in the "Most Studied Authors" or "Most Studied Works" sections of the "Browse" box. An Author or Work record will offer you "Related Information" categories such as "Literary Criticism," "Reference Books," "Biography," and "Plot Summaries."
In addition to literary criticism and reference, there is a wide range of full-text literary works supplied (mostly) by Project Gutenberg.
- Southern literary journal: from Fall 2000 to present in Project MUSE
- Southern quarterly: from 10/01/2002 to present in ProQuest Research Library
- Journal of southern history: from 05/01/2003 to present in Academic Search Premier
- Southern cultures: from 1993 to present in Project MUSE - Premium Collection
- Southern studies: from 04/15/2007 to present in OmniFile Full Text Select
- Journal of Southern religion: from 1998 to present in Directory of Open Access Journals
- Southern theatre: from 02/01/2006 to present in International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance
MLA International Bibliography provides the most complete and fully indexed coverage of articles and books on modern literatures, linguistics, folklore, rhetoric, and composition from 1925 to the present. There is ample full text provided by ProQuest, as well as links to full-text articles in JSTOR and Project Muse. Full text from other IC databases is also readily available via the "GetIt" links below article citations.
Because books, book chapters/essays, and dissertations will usually not be available full text, you may wish to limit your search to "Journal article" under "Source type."
"Author's Work" and "Author as Subject" will be especially helpful search fields at finding literary criticism. And for additional search field options either click on "Show more fields," or, for the complete list, open the drop-down menus to the right of the "Anywhere" default for the top three rows of search slots. This list includes both "Literary Influence"--who influenced a particular author you have entered--and "Literary Source"--who was influenced by that particular author.
If you set up a free "My Research" account with Proquest (top right), you can save all the articles you check, any searches you want to remember, and set up e-mail or RSS notification for new articles that match your search terms.
JSTOR has excellent 100% full-text coverage of literary scholarship. There is no Subject searching, so remember to put titles and authors' names in quotation marks to search them as Keyword phrases--and leave authors' names in the normal first-name last-name order. Set "Limit" to "Article"--or else you may unleash an avalanche of reviews of books on your topic.
JSTOR access to journal articles begins 2-4 years prior to the present--so don't look for any criticism from the last couple of years--but coverage always extends back to the first issue of each journal--in some cases into the 19th century and beyond.
Project Muse , although a smaller database, it complements JSTOR. LIke JSTOR it provides 100% full text of mostly scholarly journals, but its coverage is entirely current--mainly spanning the last 10-15 years. Muse offers a basic keyword search (be sure to put the titles of literary works in quotation marks). Once you've retrieved a set of articles you can sort them into broad categories using the Research Area options on the left.
Note: Checking the "Articles" box under Content Type before you run a search will eliminate reviews of books about your topic and leave you with just the articles on your topic.
ProQuest Research Library & Academic Search Premier are comprehensive databases and include considerable literary criticism--much of it full text. In running searches on authors, don't settle for a Keyword search on the author's name, as this will retrieve too many articles in which the author is only mentioned in passing. Instead use the specialized Subject search each provides.
In ProQest enter the author's name, last name first, in the "Person" slot.
In Academic Search Premier open the "Select a Field" drop down menu and search the author's name, last name first, in the "People" field.
In both databases the titles of literary works must be searched as Keyword phrases, so be sure to put them in quotation marks.
In both databases you can set a "Document Type" limit to "Interview"--if it's a contemporary writer. And for a contemporary writer you might also try an "Author" search, since many writers publish criticism and social commentary that might shed light on their creative work.
General OneFile is another comprehensive database with considerable literary criticism, but the default Subject search forcess you to retrieve EVERYTHING on a particular author. The standard "subdivisions" by which General OneFile organizes these results--"Ethical Aspects," Political Aspects," "Social Aspects"--are broad in respect to authors. So--
If you wish to focus on a specific literary work, open "Advanced Search" and in the "Select Index" box choose "Named Work": this allows you to run a Subject search on a title.
If you wish to focus on a particular a theme, the best strategy is to open all the results from the initial Subject search on the author and then use the the "Search within these Results" slot at the upper left to enter thematic Keywords.
PsycINFO & SocINDEX with Full Text : As the names suggest, these are good resources for articles on authors and literary works from a psychological or sociological perspective.
America: History and Life : This is the only database that allows you to set a "Historical Period" limit (below the search slots on the left). This means that for any topic you search you can focus the articles retrieved on a particular period--for example Race and American Literature between 1920 and 1940 . But: be aware that setting a Period limit of 1920-1940 will also retrieve any Period that contains those two decades, so, for instance, an article with a time frame of 1900-1980 will also be retrieved.
Also be sure to set the "Document Type" limit to "Article" to weed out all the many, many book reviews that will otherwise clot your search for articles.
Having set the Period and Article limits, a good way to begin with this database is to open "Indexes" above the search slots and select the "Subject Terms" index, where you can check to see if there is a good Subject Heading for your topic.
ERIC (Ebsco interface) is an Education database where you can find many scholarly articles on the interpretation and teaching of literary texts at the levels of both secondary and higher education.
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text : A specialized resource for dramatic literature, playwrights, and the theater. Play titles may be searched as "Subject Terms" here--and you should take advantage of this. Searching a play title as a Subject guarantees that the articles retrieved will be substantially about the the play. For example,a Keyword search on Hamlet retrieves about 2200 articles, whereas a Subject search retrieves about 700. The Subject search eliminates 1500 articles that mention but are not primarily about Hamlet.
If you wish to focus on reviews of a theater piece, search the title in the "Reviews and Products" field.
New York Times (1851-2009) offers the full text of the New York Times from 1851 up to 2006, so you can access contemporary reviews of Twain, Tennyson, Hemingway, and Joyce. Enter a Keyword search, putting phrases in quotation marks. You might begin by searching in the “Citation and Abstract” field, then, if this doesn’t yield enough results, expand to the default “Citation and document text” field.
Literary Reference Center : The emphasis here is on articles from a wide range of reference resources, including Magill's Survey of American Literature, Cyclopedia of World Literature, Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature, Masterplots, etc. There is also access to the Critical Insights book series published by Salem Press, each volume dedicated to a single author or a single work. Both the reference works and the Critical Insights series provide very basic biography and interpretation, but these are supplemented by selected scholarly articles.
The simplest approach may be to enter a single author or a particular work in the "Most Studied Authors" or "Most Studied Works" sections of the "Browse" box. An Author or Work record will offer you "Related Information" categories such as "Literary Criticism," "Reference Books," "Biography," and "Plot Summaries."
In addition to literary criticism and reference, there is a wide range of full-text literary works supplied (mostly) by Project Gutenberg.
Few databases offer 100% full text. Most retrieve a mix of full text articles and article "citations"--article title, author(s), publication info, and usually an "abstract" or one-prargraph summary of the content. When a citation makes you want the full text, look below it for this icon:
Clicking "GETIT" checks (almost all) the IC Library's other databases to see if any offers the full text of the article--or if the Library has a print subscription to the journal in which the article appeared.
Clicking "GETIT" checks (almost all) the IC Library's other databases to see if any offers the full text of the article--or if the Library has a print subscription to the journal in which the article appeared.
- "GETIT" will usually find the full text in another database and open it in a new window.
- If none of our databases can access the full text but we have a print subsciption to the journal, "GETIT" will retrieve the Library catalog record for the journal so that you can see if the date of the article falls within the date range we have on hand.
- If full text is not available from any database or from a print subsciption, "GETIT" will provide a link to the IC Library's Interlibrary Loan. Log in (same as your IC e-mail)--and set up your account if you've never used it before. "GETIT" will have populated the article request form with all the necessary information and you simply submit the request elecrtonically. Most articles are supplied as digital files and will be sent to you via e-mail when they arrive.
- Ebrary
- Citation
- Interlibrary Loan
- Plagiarism Tutorial
- Ghosts of the Confederacy : Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913
- Away down South : A History of Southern Identity
- Contemporary Southern Identity : Community through Controversy
- Disappearing South? : Studies in Regional Change and Continuity
- Searching for Their Places : Women in the South Across Four Centuries
- Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865-1895
- Beyond Image and Convention : Explorations in Southern Women's History
- Southern Masculinity : Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction
- Making the Modern South : White Masculinity in the Recent South
- Black Masculinity and the U.S. South : From Uncle Tom to Gangsta
- Rage for Order : Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation
- In Black and White : An Interpretation of the South
- End of Southern Exceptionalism : Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South
- Psychology and Selfhood in the Segregated South
- Growing up Jim Crow : How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race
- Jim Crow's Counterculture : The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945
- Terror in the Heart of Freedom : Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South
- Black, White, and Southern : Race Relations and Southern Culture, 1940 to the Present
- Mythic Land Apart : Reassessing Southerners & Their History
- Still Fighting the Civil War : The American South and Southern History
- Southern Past : A Clash of Race and Memory
- South That Wasn't There : Postsouthern Memory and History
- Dreaming of Dixie : How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture
- New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 19 : Violence
- Southern Renaissance : The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955
- Southern Heritage on Display : Public Ritual and Ethnic Diversity Within Southern Regionalism
- Religion in the South : Southern Crossroads : Perspectives on Religion and Culture
- New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 1 : Religion
- Reinventing the South : Versions of a Literary Region
- Fable of the Southern Writer
- Reading for the Body : The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction, 1893-1985
- Dirt and Desire : Reconstructing Southern Women's Writing, 1930-1990
- Dream of Arcady : Place and Time in Southern Literature
- Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction
- Intellectual in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature
- South in Black and White : Race, Sex, and Literature in the 1940s
- Queer Chivalry : Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature
- Our South : Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature
- Disturbing and Alien Memory : Southern Novelists Writing History
- Southscapes : Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature
- Southern Writers : A New Biographical Dictionary
- Thomas Wolfe
- William Faulkner and Southern History
- Natural Aristocracy : History, Ideology, and the Production of William Faulkner
- On the Prejudices, Predilections and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner
- Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition
- Resisting History : Gender, Modernity, and Authorship in William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty
- Between the House and the Chicken Yard : The Masks of Flannery O'Connor
- Risen Sons : Flannery O'Connor's Vision of History
- From Texas to the World & Back : Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter
- Legacy of Robert Penn Warren
- Strange Bodies : Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson McCullers
- Alice Walker's The Color Purple
- Documenting the American South: "a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture," from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
- Southern Spaces: "An interdisciplinary journal about regions, places, and cultures of the US South and their global connections." Lots of full text under Articles. Also take a look at Presentations and Videos.
- Southern Literary Trail: Some interesting features. Start with "Start Here" and scroll down to the Author links.
- Voice of the Shuttle: American Literature: A good gateway site, though the sprawl of listed links requires careful scanning. Also see the VOS section for African American Literature.
- American Authors on the Web: A useful gateway to sites concerned with individual writers.
- Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide: More old-fashioned bibliography than online gateway, but the site is well-organized and comprehensive. Don't overlook the "Outside Links" toward the top of every author and topic page.
- William Faulkner on the Web: A comprehensive site.
- Thomas Wolfe Society: See especially the About Thomas Wolfe tab and note the Links page.
- Robert Penn Warren: Note index along left margin.
- Eudora Welty Foundation: See especially Life & Works.
- Flannery O'Connor Repository: A mixed bag; read critically.
- Katherine Anne Porter: From Perspectives in American Literature, this page offers some bibliographies and a biography.
- Carson McCullers Project: Mainly bibliographic information.
- Alice Walker: The Official Website: Very concerned with contemporary political and cultural issues.
MLA is the citation style used by most disciplines in the Humanities. The guides below use the latest 2008/9 standards.
