Double Check the Citation Format!
Citation generators can make your life easier BUT they rarely get the citation perfect. You should always double-check what you find to make sure it is the correct format and correct information. That being said, machine-generated citations are often a good source for the basics, such as title, author, and publication date.
The MLA Handbook is available for in-library use. It is located in Ready Reference, behind the information desk on the first floor of the library. The Purdue OWL (Purdue University's Writing Lab) is available online and is an excellent resource for checking your citations.
Other Guides You May Find Useful
- Newspaper Digital Subscriptions for Students, Faculty, and StaffLearn about how to access FREE subscriptions to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal through Norfolk State University.
Resources
- Britannica Academic
Britannica Academic provides access to high-quality, comprehensive reference information. Includes access to the Britannica encyclopedia, atlas, world data, the Classics, biographies, news, multimedia, and more. You can also use Britannica Academic to search an Internet directory that includes more than 300,000 links to Web sites selected, rated, and reviewed by Britannica editors. This database also includes the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary.
- Credo Reference
Credo Reference provides full-text online access to hundreds of multidisciplinary reference book collections, including art, history, law, medicine, psychology, technology, bilingual dictionaries, and encyclopedias through a one-stop search platform. Search results often include articles from a wide array of publications and frequently present subject coverage from multiple perspectives. Using Credo Reference to approach a topic from different viewpoints can be a great way to expand your familiarity with the topic and it can help you develop new arguments and observations for your research.
- MLA Directory of Periodicals (EBSCOhost)
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), this database provides detailed information on thousands of journals and book series in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, film, rhetoric and composition, and folklore. Entries cover publication details, contact information, submission requirements and editorial policies, subscription terms, electronic availability and advertising, and useful statistics such as circulation, average number of articles submitted and published, time from submission to decision, and time from decision to publication. All periodicals and book series indexed in the MLA International Bibliography are listed in the directory.
African American Literature by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781440871504Publication Date: 2019This essential volume provides an overview of and introduction to African American writers and literary periods from their beginnings through the 21st century. This compact encyclopedia, aimed at students, selects the most important authors, literary movements, and key topics for them to know. Entries cover the most influential and highly regarded African American writers, including novelists, playwrights, poets, and nonfiction writers. The book covers key periods of African American literature--such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the Civil Rights Era--and touches on the influence of the vernacular, including blues and hip hop. The volume provides historical context for critical viewpoints including feminism, social class, and racial politics. Entries are organized A to Z and provide biographies that focus on the contributions of key literary figures as well as overviews, background information, and definitions for key subjects.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780195334739Publication Date: 2010From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.
The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415839648Publication Date: 2016The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature considers the key literary, political, historical and intellectual contexts of African American literature from its origins to the present, and also provides students with an analysis of the most up-to-date literary trends and debates in African American literature. This accessible and engaging guide covers a variety of essential topics such as: Vernacular, Oral, and Blues Traditions in Literature Slave Narratives and Their Influence The Harlem Renaissance Mid-twentieth century black American Literature Literature of the civil rights and Black Power era Contemporary African American Writing Key thematic and theoretical debates within the field Examining the relationship between the literature and its historical and sociopolitical contexts, D. Quentin Miller covers key authors and works as well as less canonical writers and themes, including literature and music, female authors, intersectionality and transnational black writing.
- Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost)
This scholarly, multi-disciplinary, full-text database includes more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals with coverage across nearly all areas of academic study. In addition to its 8,500 full-text periodicals, the database features more than 75,000 videos from the Associated Press from 1930 to the present.
- Gale Literature Resource Center
This database provides can up-to-date analysis, biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism, and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods, and from around the world. Gale Literature Resource Center brings together materials that support interdisciplinary approaches, information literacy, and the development of critical thinking skills.
- JSTOR
A multidisciplinary digital library that includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR; spanning more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Access also includes more than two million primary source documents.
And, with the incorporation of Artstor's collections, JSTOR is now home to more than two million images.
- MLA International Bibliography with Full Text (EBSCOhost)This database combines the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film with full text for more than 1,000 journals. Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and international in scope, the bibliography covers scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present, including journal articles, books, articles in books, series, translations, scholarly editions, websites, and dissertations. The database also includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the MLA Thesaurus, a proprietary, searchable collection of thousands of subject terms, and personal names used in indexing the bibliography.
- ProQuest Platform (ProQuest)
Users can search, find and preview more than 900 million documents and retrieve scholarly full-text open access sources directly curated by ProQuest.
- African American Poetry (ProQuest)
This resource contains poems by African American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It provides a comprehensive survey of the early history of African American poetry, from the earliest published African American poems to the major poets of the nineteenth century, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. A full list of titles is available for download beneath the search box.
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1-5 (EBSCOhost)
This collection from the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) contains five series of full-text periodicals covering all aspects of American life.
- Series 1 (1691 - 1820): Presents over 500 titles from 1691 through 1820. Representing over two centuries of print culture from early colonial imports to titles published on American soil during the Revolution and early republic.
- Series 2 (1821 - 1837): Presents over 1000 titles dating from 1821 through 1837. The subject matter covered in Series 2 represents the Jacksonian Democracy era in history. It is broad in scope and includes coverage of agriculture, entertainment, history, literary criticism, and politics.
- Series 3 (1838 - 1852): Presents over 1,800 titles dating from 1838 through 1852. The themes presented in Series 3 reveal a rapidly growing young nation, where industrialization, the railroads, regional political differences, and life on the western frontier were daily realities.
- Series 4 (1853 - 1865): Presents over 1,100 titles dating from 1853 through 1865. While the Civil War is a focal point of the collection, there is also a diverse record of the continuance of daily life for many Americans—both leading up to and during the war.
- Series 5 (1866 - 1877): Presents over 2,500 titles dating from 1866 through 1877. The themes presented in Series 5 reflect a nation following the Civil War, emancipation, and westward expansion.
- American Poetry (ProQuest)
This collection contains over 40,000 poems from the Colonial period through to the early-twentieth century. This collection features major canonical poets, important literary groups, such as the Transcendentalists and the Knickerbocker school, and substantial bodies of work by less familiar names such as Elizabeth Akers Allen, Richard Emmons, Lemuel Hopkins and Emma Lazarus. A full list of titles is available for download beneath the search box.
- History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle (ProQuest)
History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle contains the following collections:
- NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files;
- NAACP Papers: Branch Files and Youth Department Files;
- NAACP Papers: Special Subjects;
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment and Armed Forces;
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files;
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses.
Databases
- eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost)
This collection contains over 246,000 eBooks on a wide variety of academic subject matter.
- eBook Central (ProQuest)
eBook Central is a collection of nearly 250,000 academic e-books on a wide variety of subjects.
- Taylor & Francis eBooks
Taylor & Francis eBooks offers approximately 100,000 full-text resources including content published within the past year.
- Wiley Online Library
Wiley Online Library provides access to multidisciplinary content across more than 1,600 journals and 22,000 ebooks.
Spaces in Literature
Depictions of Home in African American Literature by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781793649638Publication Date: 2021In Depictions of Home in African American Literature, Trudier Harris analyzes fictional homespaces in African American literature from those set in the time of slavery to modern urban configurations of the homespace. She argues that African American writers often inadvertently create and follow a tradition of portraying dysfunctional and physically or emotionally violent homespaces. Harris explores the roles race and religion play in the creation of homespaces and how geography, space, and character all influence these spaces. Although many characters in African American literature crave safe, happy homespaces and frequently carry such images with them through their mental or physical migrations, few characters experience the formation of healthy homespaces by the end of their journeys. Harris studies the historical, cultural, and literary portrayals of the home in works from well-known authors such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and August Wilson as well as lesser-studied authors such as Daniel Black, A.J. Verdelle, Margaret Walker, and Dorothy West.
Environmental Knowledge, Race, and African American Literature by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9783030821029Publication Date: 2023This open access book suggests new ways of reading nineteenth-century African American literature environmentally. Combining insights from ecocriticism, African American studies, and Foucauldian theory, Matthias Klestil examines forms of environmental knowledge in African American writing ranging from antebellum slave narratives and pamphlets to Charlotte Fortens journals, Booker T. Washingtons autobiographies, and Charles W. Chesnutts short fiction. The volume highlights how literary forms of environmental knowledge in the African American tradition were shaped by the histories of slavery and race, mainstream environmental writing traditions, and African American forms of expression and intertextuality. Turning to the Underground Railroad, debates over education and home-building, and the aesthetics of the pastoral and the georgic, Environmental Knowledge, Race, and African American Literature provides an original perspective on the African American ecoliterary tradition that uncovers new facets of canonical and understudied texts and offers new directions for ecocriticism and African American studies.
Street, Text, and Representation in African American Literature by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781032457147Publication Date: 2024Comprehensive and comparative, this volume investigates African American street novelists since the Chicago Black Renaissance and the semiotic strategies they employ in publication, consumption, and depiction of street life. Divided into three chapters, this text analyzes the content, style, and ethics of "street" narrative through a discursive/rhetorical lens, exploring the development of street literature's formal and contextual concerns to resolve the sociocultural and political questions surrounding cultural work. The book also gives emphasis to "text" or (post)structural literary analysis by answering questions about the genre's aesthetic and linguistic techniques that respond to the injustices of urban planning. The last chapter, "Representation," investigates the phenomenological hermeneutics of more recent street literature and its satire, highlighting the political stakes for authorship, credibility, and subjectivity. Through historical and contemporary studies of urban space, Blackness, and adaptations of street literature, this work attempts to network activists, artists, and scholars with the greater reading public by providing a functional ontology of reading the inner city.
