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GE Cluster 20: Interracial Dynamics
in American Culture and Society
This library resource page was designed specifically for students in GE Cluster 20. If you can't find what you're looking for, there are many ways to get help.
GE Cluster 20 course website
This page is composed of the following sections:
Exploring Paper Topics
Want background information and an overview of themes discussed in class? Subject encyclopedias and handbooks are great for quick facts, definitions, timelines, general background information, exploring ideas for paper topics and brainstorming search terms. The following resources can be found in the College Library Main Reading Room (2nd floor Powell Library) unless otherwise noted.
Selected Resources (Browse call number area to find more.)
- American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation. New York : Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1997.
Location: Wall E 184 A1A63448 1997
Description: Encyclopedia articles summarize the histories of individual racial and ethnic groups (161 groups total) in the United States. Information included for each group: "1) name of the group, alternative names, and names of major subgroups, 2) defining features of the group that cause group members and/or outsiders to define the group as unique in American society, 3) patterns of cultural variation within the group, both over time and space, 4) immigration and settlement history... 5) demographic facts... 6) languages spoken on arrival in the United States and subsequent changes in language use, 7) cultural characteristics of the group including but not limited to economic patterns, housing, religion, worldview, marriage and family, kinship, interpersonal relationships, the arts, health and illness, social organizations, and political organization... 8) extent of assimilation or cultural persistence... 9) bibliographic citations with emphasis on articles and books available to the general reader" (ix).
- The Asian American Encyclopedia. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1995.
Location: Wall E184 O6A827 1995
Description: Includes brief definition of terms as well as longer essays on significant issues, events, etc. Includes a number of entries on key court cases and U.S. immigration policy. Longer essays are followed by a list of suggested readings.
- Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present
New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Location: Wall Collection E 185.6 E54 1992
Description: Brief entries on people, events, places, issues, art, literature, music, court cases, organizations and legislation of the African American civil rights movement. Each entry includes a selected bibliography.
- The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Location: Wall Collection E 185 E54 1996
Description: Includes entries that focus on "events, historical eras, legal cases, areas of cultural achievement, professions, sports, and places" (vii). Also includes biographical entries on African Americans and influential West Indians who lived between the beginning of the 17th century until the end of the 20th century. Features lengthy essays by scholars that "help readers to see historical events and creative accomplishments in a larger perspective" (vii). Includes illustrations (photographs, art work, cartoons, etc.), statistical tables and bibiographies.
- Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.
Location: Wall E169.1 E624 2001
Description: Includes long entries followed by extensive bibliographies. Entries of interest include: European and Indigenous Encounters, Africa and America, Conflicting Ideals of Colonial Womanhood, Race as a Cultural Category, The Black Church: Invisible and Visible, Prophetic Native American Movements, Slavery and Race, Slave Culture and Consciousness, Thought and Culture in the Free Black Community, Antislavery, Women in the Public Sphere (1838-1877), Domesticity and Sentimentalism, Gender, Social Class, Race, and Material Life, The Harlem Renaissance, Women and Family in the Surburban Age, The World According to Hollywood, Race, Rights and Reform, Second-Wave Feminism, Multiculturalism in Theory and Practice, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinas and Latinos in the United States, Native Americans, Whites and the Construction of Whiteness, Women, Working Class, Borderlands, Ethnicity: Early Theories, Ethnicity and Race, Class, The Pursuit and Exchange of Knowledge, The Arts and Cultural Expression, Gender, and Cultural Studies.
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America.
Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1998.
Location: Wall E185.61 E544 1998
Description: Covers "patterns of discrimination that have affected the entire history of the United States," significant events (e.g., March on Washington), historical eras (e.g., Reconstruction), and broad issues(e.g., English-only movement) (xiii). Also includes illustrations, a "Table of Court Cases which summarizes the significance of key legal decisions and provides the cases' formal court citations" (xiii-xvi), a chronology of important events, bibliographies and suggested readings lists, and a filmography with an "annotated list of feature films that have treated civil rights issues" (xiv).
- Encyclopedia of North American Colonies.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993.
Location: Wall E45 E53 1993
Description: Covers "spatial, demographic, cultural, economic, and social aspects of the colonial past... Particular attention is given...to the cultures (pre- and post-European contact) of Native Americans, including religion, governance, trade and commerce, ecological and other results of Indian-colonist contact, detribalized and manumitted Indians, Native American families and life-styles, technologies, aesthetics, and languages... Similar attention is paid to African-American culture... in essays on interracial societies, hired labor, artisans, slave resistance, the variant characteristics of slavery in different imperial regions," and gender relations (xxxi-xxxii).
- Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.
Location: Reference Desk E184.A1 H26
Description: Articles include the arrivals, migration patterns, economic and social lives, and cultures of ethnic groups in the United States--from Acadians to Zoroastrians. Also includes thematic essays (e.g., "Concepts of Ethnicity," "Federal Policy Toward American Indians" and several essays on immigration), maps and statistical tables.
- Multiculturalism in the United States: A Comparative Guide to Acculturation and Ethnicity.
New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Location: Wall E184.A1M85 1992
Description: Collection of 12 essays, most of which focus on a specific ethnic group. Essays include a bibliography and information on the following: impact of mainstream America on group identity and culture, strategies the group developed to gain benefits, recognition, internal divisions, the effect of social mobility and exogamous marriage patterns on group cohesion, education and acculturation, intergenerational conflict, strategies for language maintenance and religious orthodoxy (from the introduction). Essay titles: "African-Americans," "American Indians," "German-Americans," "Irish-Americans," "Scandinavian-Americans," "Polish-Americans," "Jewish-Americans," "Italian-Americans," "Chinese-Americans" and "Mexican-Americans."
- Racial and Ethnic Relations in America.
Pasadena, CA: Salem Press Inc., 2000.
Location: Wall E49.R33 2000
Description: Includes both brief definitions and lengthy essays. Approaches racial and ethnic matters from the point of view of theory, the perspective of history, and the perspective of current events and issues (x-xi). Volume 3 includes a "'Time Line' that puts issues into a historical context that can be seen at a glance, giving easy-to-follow chronological structure for topics covered in the text" (xi).
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Searching for Books
Use an online catalog to find books. The three catalogs most often used by students at UCLA are listed below. You can search online catalogs more effectively (and save time) if you use the right Library of Congress Subject Headings.
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Searching for Articles
To find relevant articles efficiently, be sure to choose a database that will have information on your topic, have the type of article you need (peer-reviewed? popular?), and try multiple searches using a variety of search terms.
Selected Databases for GE Cluster 20
You can access the UCLA Library databases from off-campus by using the BruinOnline Proxy Server. Since you may be exploring multidisciplinary topics, it's probably a good idea to search in more than one database.
- Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 4,600 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,500 journals and a total of nearly 10,000 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for nearly 1,000 journals.
- Alt Press Watch
Full text database of selected newspapers, magazines, and journals of the alternative and independent press. Covers a wide range of areas including social science, government, art, literature, mass media, popular culture, and more.
- America History and Life
Indexes and abstracts journal articles on the history, social life and customs of the people of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. This extensive database also covers books, chapters in books, media reviews, and dissertations.
- Bibliography of Native North Americans
Indexes books, essays, journal articles, US and Canadian government documents and other publications concerning the history, life and culture of native North Americans from the 16th century to the present. Contains the citations from the eight volumes of the Ethnographic Bibliography of North America as well as additional new citations.
- Black Studies Database
The Kaiser Index to Black Resources is a computerized bibliographic database drawn from the handwritten notes of librarians and other staff of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 1948 until 1986.
- Chicano Database
Indexes all types of materials in the areas of Mexican-American topics from 1967 to the present and, since 1992, materials on other Latino cultures.
- Ethnic Newswatch
Contains the complete text of articles published in select publications of the ethnic, minority, and native presses (1990-present). Includes archival material dating back to the mid 1980's. Covers news, culture, and history, and is searchable in both English and Spanish.
- GenderWatch
Contains the full text of publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas from the 1970's to the present. Provides in-depth coverage of subjects that are uniquely central to women's lives. The complete text of journal articles is available on the database for all or some of the journals indexed.
- HAPI
Authoritative, worldwide information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States appearing in more than 400 key social science and humanities journals. Covers articles, book reviews, documents, original literary works, and other materials.
- Left Index [NISC]
Indexes the literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Topics covered include the labor movement, ecology and environment, race and ethnicity, social and cultural theory, sociology, art and aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization.
- LION: Literature Online
An array of literary databases (including the full text of poems, plays, and fiction), reference works (including bibliographies, encyclopedias, etc.), and links to other Web resources for the study of literature. The complete text of journal articles is available on the database for many of the journals indexed. Fully searchable texts of over 250,000 works in English and American Literature.
- Literature Resource Center
Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers. Combines the core Gale Group literary databases: Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.
- MLA
Includes peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, essays and dissertations on language, folklore, literature and film. Covers 1963-present.
- Periodicals Archive Online
Index to millions of articles published in 4,547 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences from 1802 to 1995, including full text for 200 complete journal runs.indexed.
- Sociological Abstracts
Covers 1974-present. Contains citations for articles from over 2,600 journals, books, conference papers, and dissertations in the sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Journal articles after 1974 contain abstracts.
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Search Tips
Figuring Out Search Terms
Finding useful search terms is sometimes tricky. Often, the language that seems the most natural to us isn't the most effective language to use when searching a database. It's a good idea to brainstorm search terms before you start searching. You'll also want to explore search terms throughout your research process, remain flexible, and try several searches--it may take several tries before you start finding the type of resources that you're really interested in.
A few ways to investigate the language of the database:
- start with a keyword search, find a title that looks like it's on target, look at the full record for that title, then look at the words in the "subject" or "descriptor" section
- use the database thesaurus or subject guide if available to identify effective search terms quickly
- try searching on synonyms--like, "gender roles" or "sex roles" or "gender" or "masculinity" etc....
- identify useful dates (e.g., searching on "Nat Turner and rebellion" versus "Southampton Insurrection 1831")
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Using Databases
- Use the database truncation or wildcard symbols. If you typed child*, the database would look for child, children or childhood. The symbols vary from database to database, so investigate the "help" screens.
- Use the advanced search screens, they give you more control over your search.
- Dissecting a Database: Teaching Yourself How to Search
- Use "quotation marks" if you want to search an exact phrase.
- Use connectors (boolean operators) like "and" "or" and "not" to combine ideas and construct effective searches.
If you were doing a keyword search, don't type in a question, like: how is race socially constructed? instead, type in main concepts : social construction and race OR race awareness and social aspects.
Keeping Track of Your Research
- Email citations to yourself.
- If the full-text of the article is available online, email it to yourself.
- If you use full-text online articles, record when you accessed it--you'll need that info when you write your bibliography.
- If you're not emailing citations to yourself, be sure to write them down someplace.
- If you photocopy journal articles, write the citation down on your photocopy, or photocopy the page that has the publication info.
- If you photocopy portions of books, photocopy the page that has the publication info (place of publication, publisher, year, etc.).
For more information on keeping track of your research, see "avoiding disaster" from Bruin Success with Less Stress.
Explore Search Terms
The words used to catalog information on groups of people reflect the customs, opinions and race relations during specific moments in history, so explore different words used for ethnic groups, concepts, and issues--even if the language seems archaic. Also, different databases might respond better using different words so try several searches until you find the right terminology for that database. TIP: Use the database thesaurus or subject guide if available to identify effective search terms quickly.
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Ethnicity/Race Examples: |
| African Americans |
American Indians |
| African Americans |
Indians |
| Afro Americans |
Indians of North America |
| Afro-Cuban or Cuban |
Indian literature |
| Americans |
Native Americans |
| Blacks |
Native North Americans |
| Cape Verdean Americans |
Cherokee Indians |
| Haitian Americans |
Eskimos |
| Negroes |
[tribe name] |
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| Asian Americans |
Hispanics |
| Asian Americans |
Chicanos |
| Chinese Americans |
Latinos |
| Filipino Americans |
Mexican Americans |
| Japanese Americans |
Mexicans in the US |
| Korean Americans |
Cuban Americans |
| Indian Americans |
Salvadoran Americans |
| East Indian Americans |
Brazilian Americans |
| Pacific Islander Americans |
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| Thai Americans |
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| Race Relations, Immigration and Other Issues Examples |
| Race |
Ethnicity |
Assimilation |
| Race awareness |
Ethnicity in literature |
Ethnic Relations |
| Race in literature |
Ethnicity-United States |
National Characteristics |
| Race relations |
United States Immigration |
American |
| Race discrimination |
Border Patrol |
Interracial marriage |
| Race discrimination - Law and Legislation |
Illegal aliens - United States |
Miscegenation-law and legislation-United States |
| Racism |
Undocumented immigrants |
Miscegenation-United States |
| Racism in literature |
Emigration and immigration law |
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| Racism in motion pictures |
United States |
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| Racism in United States |
Emigration and immigration - United States |
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| Minorities in motion pictures |
United States-emigration and immigration-government policy |
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| Mass media and race relations-United States |
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Getting Books and Articles
Materials are arranged at the library by call number (the first letter of the call number usually indicates which floor the book/periodical is on). The first letters of a call number represents the subject area, so you can usually find books on the same topic next to each other on the shelf. At most libraries, recent periodicals and books are kept in different locations. At College Library, recent periodicals are arranged in alphabetical order in the East Rotunda, and bound periodicals (older) are arranged in call number order in the Main Reading Room. Be sure to make note of the call number and the library that owns the item you need. Your Bruin ID is your library card. At College Library, you will find:
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Evaluating Resources
Try to use high quality sources. Evaluate the books, articles, websites, etc. that you have found to make sure the information is relevant, up-to-date and coming from a reliable source. You can use the guides below to help you:
Writing and Revising
Ready to start writing? You might want to take a look at these links.
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Citing Resources
Yes, the details of citation format can be tedious, but it's pretty much an accepted fact that these conventions must be followed in academic writing. Be sure to consult with your instructor regarding which documentation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) he or she prefers and always refer to the most recent handbook or manual. For a general overview of the why's and how's, see "Citing and Documenting Sources" in the Bruin Success with Less Stress web site. For an online guide to APA, MLA, Chicago and CBE citation styles, see Research and Documentation Online.
- American Psychological Association (APA)
Biomedical Library, PE1475. P976 2001 (stacks, reference and reserves)
College Library, BF76.7.P83 2001 (reference—2nd floor, bookcase behind reference desk)
Law Library, BF76.7.P83 2001 (stacks)
Young Research Library, BF76.7.P83 2001 (reference)
- Modern Language Association (MLA)
College Library Main Reading Room (6 copies): LB2369 .G53 2003
- The Chicago Manual of Style
College Library Main Reading Room (1 copy): LB2369 .T84m 1996
College Library Stacks (4 copies): LB2369 .T84m 1996
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