WOST 220:
American Health Care History in Gender, Race, and Class Perspective
Spring 2008 ·Susan Reverby

Contents:

• Find background information
• Find books
• Find scholarly journal articles
• Find articles in the alternative press
• Key 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

• CQ Researcher - In-depth, unbiased background and analysis on timely political topics, 1923 to present
• Encyclopedia of American Social Movements - Clapp Ref HN57 .E594 2004
• Encyclopedia of Bioethics
• Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics. 4 vol. Clapp Ref B51 .R68 1998
• Encyclopedia of Population
• Encyclopedia of Social Theory
• Encyclopedia of U.S. Biomedical Policy - Clapp Ref RA395.A3 E545 1996
• Health Care Policy and Politics A to Z - Clapp Ref RA395.A3 R685 2003
• Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States
• The New A to Z of Women's Health: A Concise Encyclopedia - Clapp Ref RA778 .A494 2000, Science Ref RA778 .A494 2000
• New Dictionary of the History of Ideas
• Portrait of Health in the United States - Science Ref q RA407.3 .P67 2001
• Praeger Handbook of Black American Health: Policies and issues behind disparities in health - Clapp Ref RA448.5.N4 H364 2004
• Stedman's Medical Dictionary - Clapp Ref R121 .S8 2000, Science Ref R121 .S8 2000

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

a few tips:

• use a keyword search to return a broad set of results, or to find resources that reference specific key terms (e.g., health disparities, eugenics, reproductive health latina, )
• use subject headings to identify more books on a specific topic (find them by clicking on the "Full Record" tab in any catalog record) in our catalog and in NExpress or WorldCat

some useful subject headings for research in this course might be:

• Social justice
• Medical ethics
• Social medicine

• Minorities -- Medical care -- United States
• African American women -- Medical care
• Hispanic Americans -- Medical care
• Health and race -- United States
• Racism -- Health aspects -- United States
• Discrimination in medical care -- United States
  
  
• Women's health services -- United States
• Women's health services -- Political aspects -- United States
• Women's health services -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Pregnancy -- Political aspects
• Human reproduction -- Political aspects
• Eugenics -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Sterilization -- Birth control
  

• 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

relevant databases

• Women's Studies International
• Academic Search Premier
• Web of Science
• PubMed
• Project Muse (recent articles) / JSTOR (older articles)
• America: History and Life

find more databases on the Databases A - Z page

• Alt-Press Watch
• Ethnic NewsWatch
• GenderWatch

• Women's Health websites
• Web Sites for Women’s Health
• Boston Women's Health Book Collective
• Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement
• History of Race in Science
• US National Library of Medicine: History of Medicine - Research guide
  

Critically evaluate what you find

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 • Alana Kumbier • last modified: February 21, 2008