HIST 317:
Construction of American Manhood
Fall 2008 · Professor Nathaniel Sheidley

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Primary sources
Find images
Evaluating what you find

• $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course (2 awards)
• $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s (1 award)
• Deadline: April 1, 2008

• Men & Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, & Historical Encyclopedia (2 volumes) - Clapp Reference HQ1090.3 .M436 2004
• American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia - in print: Clapp Reference HQ1090.3 .A453 2003
• Manhood in America: A Cultural History - Clapp HQ1090.3 .K553 2006
• Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles). Try the new Encore interface, or use our "classic" catalog search.

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: the keyword search "masculinity colonial america" leads to subject terms like:
  • Masculinity -- New England -- History
  • Sex role -- New England -- History
  • Masculinity in literature
    
    
    
• use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (man or male or masculinity or manliness)
• use truncation to save time (man* for man, manly, manhood, manliness)
• use parentheses to enclose each string of synonyms

for the sample topic:  "muscular christianity"
you could search:  (manly or masculine)       [using synonyms]
                            AND (christ* or spiritual or religious)        [using * for variants of the root: Christ, christian, christianity]
                            AND (sport* or athlet*)

leading to subject terms such as the following, linking to more books on your topic:

> Masculinity -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History
> Sports -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History
> Masculinity -- United States -- History

Some generally useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Masculinity -- United States
• Masculinity -- United States -- History
• Men in popular culture -- United States

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on the NExpress button to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• America: History and Life
        index to articles on U.S. & Canadian history from prehistory to present, written from 1964 to present
• MLA International Bibliography
        index to articles on all things literary in all eras, cultures & languages
• Project Muse
        full text academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years
  
• JSTOR
        full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles)
  
• Academic Search Complete
        broad, multidisciplinary database of both popular and scholarly articles, mostly fulltext
       tip: limit to peer-reviewed articles or select "Academic Journals" to the left of your search results
  
• Periodicals Index Online
        index to articles published in over 4500 journals in the humanities & social sciences in 40 languages, 1665 to 1995
• Humanities & Social Science Retrospective
        index of articles from scholarly journals in North America and Europe, 1907 to 1984

Primary sources are original, uninterpreted information, such as firsthand accounts of events in letters, diaries, interviews, or historical news reportage; original works of fiction, art, or music; research reports or data; testimony, speeches, etc.

How to Read a Primary Source - Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College

online - licensed by Wellesley College

• America’s Historical Newspapers 1690-1922
        browse by newspaper title, or search with a limit by date
• Early American Imprints, Series I - Evans 1639-1800
  Early American Imprints, Series II - Shaw-Shoemaker 1801-1819
       primary sources covering many aspects of early American life: books, pamphlets, broadsides and other items
• American Broadsides & Ephemera, 1760-1900
• New York Times 1851-2005
• Chicago Tribune 1849-1986
• Chicago Defender 1905-1975
      one of the longest-running African-American newspapers
• The Nation Digital Archive – 1865-present
  
  
• **more Primary Sources

online - free on the Web

• American Memory
        fabulous collection of visual and printed primary sources from the Library of Congress, online and searchable
• Nineteenth Century in Print -
        Cornell & Library of Congress
        browse or search the North American Review, Putnam’s Monthly, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, etc. -
        list of titles and coverage
  

• American Memory - browse by collections / time period / format
        fabulous collection of visual and printed primary sources from the Library of Congress
• JSTOR Image Search - search, then click on "JSTOR Images" tab above the list of results
• ARTstor - search by itself or from within JSTOR
       huge collection of art images from a wide array of sources
• American Broadsides & Ephemera, 1760-1900
       short-lived texts and images that document the 18th and 19th centuries.
• NYPL Digital Gallery - New York Public Library
• OAIster - Open Archive Initiative - limit to "image"

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Is s/he credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias - political, religious, commercial or otherwise?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library · Information Services · Laura Reiner · last October 1, 2008