Lake Forest College Library: Research Guide: American Studies

Autumn - On the Hudson River (1860) by Jasper
Francis Cropsey (from Wikimedia Commons)

Finding Books

Reference books can provide bibliographies, which are lists of relevant books and articles, and topic overviews. Looking through reference books may help you define your topic more clearly and help you focus in on what interests you the most about your topic.

Some Useful Reference Books

Browse the given call number ranges for other titles.

General

Encyclopedia of American Cultural & Intellectual History. Call number: REF E169.1 .E624 2001
Encyclopedia of American Studies. Call number: REF E169.1 .E625 2001
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Call number: REF F209 .N47 2006
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Call number: REF F209 .E53 1989
American Eras. Volumes in the ranges REF E58 and REF E162-E168
American Decades. Call number: REF E169.12 .A419
American Icons: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things That Have Shaped Our Culture. Call number: SPECIAL COLLECTIONS REF E169.1 .A472155 2006

Communication and the arts

Call number range: Various

American Voices: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Orators. Call number: REF PS408 .A47 2005
History of the Mass Media in the United States. Call number: REF P92 .U5 H54 1998
Encyclopedia of Television. Call number: REF PN1992.18 .E53 2004
A Chronicle of American Music, 1700-1995. Call number: REF ML200 .H15 1996
Identities and Issues in Literature. Call number: REF PS153 .M56 I34 1997
History of the American Cinema. Call number: REF PN1993.5 .U6 H55

Spirituality and religion

Call number range: REF BL2462-BL2525

Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience. Call number: REF BL2525 .E53 1987
Contemporary American Religion. Call number: REF BL2525 .C65 2000

Immigration and multiculturalism

See call number ranges REF E76-E156 and REF E184-E186 for titles on specific cultural groups.

Encyclopedia of American Immigration. Call number: REF JV6465 .E53 2000
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. Call number: REF E184 .A1 G14 2000
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (online)

American families: gender and sexuality

Call number range: REF HQ9-HQ770

The Family in America: An Encyclopedia. Call number: REF HQ536 .H365 2001
Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (online)

Popular culture

Call number range: REF E169

The Guide to United States Popular Culture. Call number: REF E169.1 .D399 2001
The Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture. Call number: REF E169.1 .H2643 2002
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Call number: REF E169.1 .S764 2000
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture. Call number: REF E169.12 .E49 2001
A Century of American Icons: 100 Products and Slogans from the 20th-Century Consumer Culture. Call number: REF HF6161 .B4 C46 2002

Book-length bibliographies

American Studies: An Annotated Bibliography. Call number: REF Z1361 .C6 A436 1986
Sources for American Studies. Call number: REF E175 .S58 1983
American Social History Before 1860. Call number: REF Z1361 .C6 G7
American Social History Since 1860. Call number: REF Z1361 .C6 B7

Other Books

Search for other reference books and circulating books in the College's catalog and the I-Share catalog. Start your search by doing an Advanced Search for your topic or a Subject search with standard Subject headings. Some relevant Subject headings are:

United States--Civilization
United States--Social life and customs

When you request an item from another I-Share library, use the 14-digit barcode number on your college ID.

Searching for Articles in Databases

Start your search for articles with the following databases.

Some databases contain the full-text of articles. JSTOR and Project Muse are full-text databases for scholarly articles across a range of disciplines:

JSTOR
Project Muse

Some databases contain full-text articles from magazines or newspapers from a given time period:

Harper's Weekly (1857-1912), full-text articles and images from the nineteenth-century American popular magazine
Chicago Tribune Historical (1849-1985), full-text articles from the Chicago Tribune newspaper

Other databases may contain the full-text of some articles and the citation records only of other articles. If a database does not contain the full-text of an article, be sure to click on the "Find It--Check Lake Forest College" link to see what access the Library has to that article. The article might be in another online database or in our print holdings.

Academic Search Premier for general research
MLA International Bibliography for research in literature
America: History & Life for scholarly articles in American history
SocIndex for the abstracts and some full text of scholarly articles in sociology

If the College does not have the article online or in print, you can fill out an Interlibrary Loan request for the article.

For additional databases, including the Chicago Tribune (1985-present), go to the Library's list of databases. A few databases require passwords. For passwords, call the Reference Desk at ext. 5074.

Relevant Journals

List of Journals in American Studies
Use the "Find Journals" page to see if the College has access to a given journal.

Relevant Web Sites

American Studies Web (from the American Studies Electronic Crossroads Project) is the largest bibliography of web-based resources in the field of American Studies. If you receive a security warning after clicking on this link but still feel comfortable going to this site, it is still accessible by following the directions.

Noteworthy Online Primary Source Collections:

AmDocs: Documents for the Study of American History (from WWW Virtual Library)
American Memory (from the Library of Congress)
Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy (from the Yale Law School)
Making of America (from the University of Michigan and Cornell University)
History Matters: Many Pasts (from the American Social History Project/Center for Media & Learning, City University of New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University)
American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank (from Associate Professor Michael Eidenmuller, University of Texas at Tyler)
Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars (from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the Civil War (from the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia)
Documenting the American South (from the University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Useful Hints for Using Web Primary Sources:

Using Primary Sources on the Web (from the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association)

Other Useful Web Sites:

American Experience (produced for the Public Broadcasting System by WGBH)
American Masters (from THIRTEEN/WNET)
American Roots Music (from the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Experience Music Project and Ginger Group Productions)
History Now: Songs of the Civil Rights Movement (from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)