Here are the PowerPoint slides for my presentation to your class. Click in the lower right corner to expand the slides to full screen.
For this class, you'll be doing three assignments that require library research: your Author Presentation, your Sexuality Presentation, and a final project that involves both a presentation and an essay. Here's my advice for these projects:
For your Author Presentation and your Sexuality Presentation, think broad, not deep. You're being asked to give an overview of an entire topic, in a very short period of time. You won't have time to cover every narrow detail. For this reason, I recommend that you use broad sources, such as books or specialized encyclopedias, more than narrow sources such as journal articles.
Caution! When researching sexuality, avoid pornography. Pornography isn't helpful, because it isn't an accurate portrayal of anything but pornography itself. In order to avoid pornography, research your sexuality topic through the library instead of through Google.
The final project is different. Think deep, not broad. It's not an overview, it's a deep dive into a topic of your choosing. You won't just be stating facts, you'll be arguing for a conclusion. Here's what the syllabus says:
"You will complete a project that synthesizes close readings of two literary texts discussed in class, Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex,” at least three additional secondary sources, and your own lived experience and argues how a specific element of sexuality circulates within southern culture."
Even though you only need to find three additional secondary sources, you should expect to read many more than three secondary sources. Reading widely is a necessary step in the search for the best sources.
Learn the basics of a topic by reading background information (overviews and summaries). Wikipedia is useful for this. You can also use encyclopedias in the Reference section of Simpson Library. I recommend these encyclopedias:
You can use Quest to search all subjects, or use individual databases to search specific subjects (such as English literature). Out of the 200+ databases that UMW subscribes to, these are the most useful databases for this class:
Call number ranges
Browse these areas in Simpson Library to find relevant books on the shelves:
I recommend that you follow these steps:
Step 1: Reread the assignment description
Step 2: Find a topic (For the Author Presentation and the Sexuality Presentation, your topic will be assigned to you, so you can skip this step.)
Step 3: Find overviews of your topic
Step 4: Find sources
Step 5: Read!
Step 6: Write your paper, or plan your presentation -- and cite your sources
Advice and recommendations for FSEMs in general, and for English literature research.
The Citing Resources guide gives you examples of perfectly-formatted citations. Zotero is a free app that keeps track of the sources you've found, and generates citations without any typing.
Use Quest to search the library's physical collection and the contents of most of the library's electronic databases.