SPAN 242:
Literary Genres: Spain & Latin America
Fall 2007 · Raul Rubio

Contents:

• Find dictionaries & thesauri
• Find background information
• Find books
• Find scholarly journal articles
• Key scholarly websites
• 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

• Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary: English-Spanish | Spanish-English
• Tesauro de SIGNUM - finds synonyms & antonyms in Spanish
• Diccionarios - La Página del Idioma Español
• Specialized Spanish dictionaries in print: Clapp Reference PC2625
• Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionaries in print: Clapp Ref PC4640
  

• Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature - Clapp Reference PQ6055 .F46 2002
• Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature  Clapp Reference PQ6006 .O95
• Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel: 1600 to the Present - Clapp Library PQ6138 .C36 2003
• Literature Resource Center - ON TRIAL UNTIL OCTOBER 31
• Latin American Writers (4 vols) - Clapp Reference PQ7081.A1 L7 1989
• Literary Cultures of Latin America - Clapp Reference PQ 7081 .A1 L525 2004 - includes North America
• Hispanic Literature Criticism - Clapp Reference PQ 7081 .A1 H573 1994

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

• a few tips:

  • do a *subject* search on your author to find books about her or him
  • look for the subject phrase criticism and interpretation – very helpful
  • use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (cat OR gato OR feline)
  • use truncation to save time (cuba* for Cuba, Cuban, cubana, cubano, etc.)
  • use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results

  sample topic:  the role of women in Cuban novels
  sample search:(woman or women or female* or gender or mujer*)
      AND cuba*
      AND (literatur* or novel*)

• or 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"

Some useful subject headings for this topic:

• [your author's name, last name first] -- Criticism and Interpretation
• Spanish poetry (and click on "related subjects")
• Cuban poetry
• Short stories, Puerto Rican [or whatever country interests you]
  
  
• If our copy is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• If NExpress doesn't have it, click on in our catalog (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.

most useful databases

• MLA Bibliography · off campus - articles on all things literary - all genres, all cultures, all languages
  
  
• Literature Resource Center - search an author or title, then select the literary criticism tab (ON TRIAL ONLY UNTIL OCT 31st)
  
  
• HAPI - Hispanic American Periodicals Index - social science and humanities journal articles about Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States
  
  
• Handbook of Latin American Studies - index with abstracts of articles, book chapters, and papers on Latin American life & culture, 1935 to present
  
  
• Informe - indexing, full text, and images to scholarly and popular Spanish-language and bilingual publications. ON TRIAL UNTIL OCTOBER 31 ONLY
  
  
• Fuente Academica - full text access to more than 200 Spanish-language publications, covering all areas of academic study. ON TRIAL UNTIL OCTOBER 31 ONLY
  
  
• Latin America Database Archives  - economic & political news articles & analysis of Latin America, 1986 to present
  

databases with some useful content

• Academic Search Premier · off campus and Expanded Academic ASAP - great starting point for scholarly & popular articles in every discipline; mostly full text from about 1980 to present - tip: limit to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles
  
  
• Periodicals Index Online - index to articles published in over 4500 journals in the humanities & social sciences in 40 languages, 1665 to 1995
  
  
• JSTOR - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles!)
  

• Iberian Studies Web
• Internet para Hispanistas
• Latin American Network Information Centre (LANIC) - Humanities & Society & Culture
• Latin American Arts & Culture
  

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? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified:October 12, 2007