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Research Resources

ENG 470—History research resources

Encyclopedias

  • The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Hodges Ref. F209 .N47 2006): Volumes on history, ethnicity, foodways, literature, gender, music, etc. Entries include “Belles and Ladies,” “Bubba,” “Southern Rock,” etc.
  • The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American South (Hodges Ref. G1281.S5 F7 1999): Good historical overviews of various periods in Southern history. Chapters include “Reconstruction,” “Cotton Culture and Sharecropping,” “Lynching,” “Tennessee Valley Authority,” etc.

Archival and primary source collections

  • Documenting the American South: Collection of primary-source texts related to Southern culture.
  • American Memory, Library of Congress: Multimedia digital archival collection documenting the “American experience,” such as field recordings of traditional Southern musicians, interviews conducted with ordinary citizens during the Great Depression by the WPA, and oral histories of slavery.
  • UTK’s History and Classics Databases: Worth exploring. Highlights include 19th Century U.S. Newspapers (1800-1899), America’s Historical Newspapers (1690-1922), American Periodical Series Online (1740-1900), Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective, the Atlanta Constitution (1868-1942), Harper’s Weekly (1857-77) and the New York Times (1851-2006).
  • Southern Focus Poll data: Polls of views and beliefs of both Southerners and non-Southerners, conducted by UNC from 1992-2001.

Scholarly databases

  • Don’t neglect the library’s general periodical and journal databases, which contain important sources not available through Google Scholar or other web-based search engines. Some of the most useful include JSTOR, Academic Search Premier, Expanded Academic ASAP, and Lexis-Nexis.
  • To find books not available in the UT library, try WorldCat, which allows you to locate  nearby libraries that may.

Journals