Drama 287: African-American Drama
Professor Kathryn Williams

http://www.lib.unc.edu/coursepages/dram/F11_dram287_001.html

Tommy Nixon
Subject Librarian for Classics, Dramatic Art, & English/Comparative Literature
Davis Library
tommy_nixon@unc.edu

Davis Reference Desk
(919)962-1151

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Introduction to Library Research

Citing Information Tutorial

How Do I? Cite Sources? Conduct a Literature Review, etc.?

Get Help Writing a Paper, etc.

Through the Carolina BLU Delivery Service, you can request to have books and articles available at any of the UNC-CH campus libraries, as well as books and articles requested through interlibrary loan, delivered to the campus library most convenient to you.

This Library of Congress classification system holds true for any library in the world using the LC system. For example, Drama as genre generally will be classed in the PNs; American literature will be classed in the PSs; and American history will be classed in the Es & Fs.

Use this Map to find books in Davis Reference.

Use this Location Guide to find books in Davis.

As with encyclopedic resources, there are indexes for almost any topic that might be supplemental to literary or historical research, and these may be arranged by subject discipline, by period, by region, by gender or ethnicity. If you are unsure of an appropriate index to use, try searching E-Research Tools By Subject and first try the "Recommended Databases." Of particular interest for this course are E-Research Tools for Dramatic Art & African-American Studies.

Literature Resource Center LRC offers a wealth of critical and biographical information about more than 120,000 authors from the Classical period to the present. Search the "Person-By or About" field (e.g., for Ntozake Shange), then select entries from the "Biographies" tab.

Oxford African American Studies Center
This database combines an array of historical and cultural information about the African American experience with selected primary documents, web sites, and maps. The material is compiled by Oxford University Press from their many reference works, such as Africana, Encyclopedia of African American History, various Oxford Companions, and the African American National Biography. Use Search, then Biography Search.

Ethnic NewsWatch
Ethnic NewsWatch is a full-text collection of newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.

Early Black American playwrights and dramatic writers : a biographical directory and catalog of plays, films, and broadcasting scripts. Bernard L. Peterson, Jr. New York : Greenwood Press, 1990.
Davis Reference PS153.N5 P44 1990

Contemporary Black American playwrights and their plays : a biographical directory and dramatic index. Bernard L. Peterson, Jr. New York : Greenwood Press, 1988.
Davis Reference PS153.N5 P43 1988

The Greenwood encyclopedia of multiethnic American literature . 5 vols. Edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2005.
Davis Reference PS153.M56 G74 2005

More Article Databases |  How Do I Find Articles? | How Do I Find an Article if it is not Full-Text?  | How Do I Distinguish Different Types of Journals?

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To find contemporary articles on a dramatic production, first determine the date of the production, & then try the resources available for that time period. Productions from major cities may be reviewed in major papers and magazines. Local productions may only be reviewed locally or regionally. If the sources below do not work, try the News sources listed. See also Play Review Resources.

America's Newspapers
Provides full text of over 800 national & local newspapers, including many N.C. papers for reviews of PlayMakers' productions. Good for current topics and the recent past.

Academic Search Premier
Covers popular and scholarly journal articles with many full-text articles from about 1980 to the present. Also good for play reviews from national magazines like The Atlantic Monthly.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Search eleven historical newspapers together: Atlanta Constitution (1868 to 1945) Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1986) Baltimore Sun (1837-1885) Chicago Defender (1910-1975)/ Daily Defender (1956-1975) Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1986) Los Angeles Times (1881 - 1986) New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993) New York Times (1851 to 2 or 3 years ago) Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002) Washington Post (1877 to 1993) Wall Street Journal (1889 - 1991).

Black Studies Center.
A major resource for Black Studies & especially good for earlier materials by and about Blacks.

Readers' Guide Retrospective
Rather than a full text database, RGR is an index to the contents (including reviews) of several hundred popular American magazines, 1890-1982.

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Literary Reference Center
LRC offers a wealth of material with which to study and analyze literature: 31,000 plot summaries, 100,000 critical essays, 140,000 author biographies, 430 literary journals, 605,000 book reviews, 60,000 poems, 15,000 short stories, and 5200 author interviews. It also provides reference material such as several encyclopedias of literature.

MLA International Bibliography Plus Full Text via Chadwyck-Healey's LiteratureOnline
MLA is a specialized database for literary criticism, allowing for thematic searching within works of literature or in relation to an author or authors, etc.

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 Example of an academic book

Subject searching for books in the Library's catalog is often best done by beginning with a Keyword Search . Start with a Keyword Search and identify one or more relevant books. Then look at the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) given in the Full Records of those titles. You can follow the subject heading links in the catalog to find similar books, or you can use the terms in the subject headings to revise your search strategies.

Keyword Search: black american playwrights

Search by LC Subject Heading: African American dramatists -- Biography.

Search by LC Subject Heading: American drama -- African American authors.

Keyword Search: black theater civil rights

POTENTIALLY USEFUL LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SUBJECT HEADINGS

African American theater.

African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.

African American arts -- 20th century.

African American women -- Drama.

Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem Renaissance -- Encyclopedias.

African Americans in literature -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Black Arts movement.

Free Southern Theater.

Search for books By a literary author as an Author search; search for books About a literary author as a Subject search.

Author: Baraka, Imamu Amiri, 1934-

Subject: Baraka, Imamu Amiri, 1934-.

Campus Libraries Map

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Subject encyclopedias can be very useful for providing an overview and context for a variety of specialized topics. Most essays will also include a bibliography. A number of reference books from Oxford U. Press are now available electronically via Oxford Reference Online Premium.

Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history [electronic resource] : the Black experience in the Americas . 6 vols. Colin A. Palmer, editor in chief. 2nd ed. Detroit : Macmillan Reference USA, c2006.
Davis Reference E185 .E54 2006

The Oxford encyclopedia of theatre and performance [electronic resource]. 2 vols. Edited by Dennis Kennedy. New York : Oxford University Press, c2005.
Search for thematic & contextual overviews (e.g. "African-American theatre") as well as for major figures.
Davis Reference PN2035 .O94 2003

Black Drama
Black Drama contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 150 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.

The Oxford dictionary of literary terms [electronic resource]Chris Baldick. 3rd ed. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2008.

A handbook to literature. William Harmon. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson Prentice Hall, c2009.
A very clearly written handbook.
Davis Reference Desk PN41 .H355 2009

MLA handbook for writers of research papers. Joseph Gibaldi. 7th ed. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
Davis Reference Desk LB2369 .G53 2009

Oxford English Dictionary
A comprehensive dictionary of the English Language that stresses the historical origins of words.

Literary Resources on the Net (Jack Lynch, Rutgers)

Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, UCSB)