LibGuides: Africana Studies: Where to Start

Subject Guide

Holly Snyder

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Contact:

Box A/ John Hay Library

Telephone: (401) 863-1515

Subjects:Africana Studies, Arts, History, Humanities, Judaic Studies, Science and Society, Special Collections

Ask Holly Snyder

REFERENCE POINTS

DuBoisopedia (University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
Booker T. Washington: Online Resources (Library of Congress)
Frederick Douglass Papers (Library of Congress)
Online collection containing approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), spanning the years 1841-1964, with bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1865. Note that many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.
Inman Edward Page, Brown Class of 1877 (Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History)
Sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society
John Brown Watson, Brown Class of 1904 (Encyclopedia of Arkansas)
Sponsored by the Central Arkansas Library System
John Hope, Brown Class of 1894 (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
Sponsored by the Georgia Humanities Council
Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black (DocSouth Collection)
Although not officially enrolled at Brown, Leonard Black studied privately with Brown President Francis Wayland in the mid-1840s -- the earliest African American student who is documented to have done so.
Rediscovering Black History blog (National Archives & Records Administration)
The blog of the NARA Black History Guide, sharing records relating to the African American experience in the United States as found in records at the National Archives.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Emmett Till Archive (Florida State University)
For further information about establishement of the Emmett Till Archive, see this NPR story
West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song (British Library)
Includes images and interpretive essays related to the British Library's new exhibition -- the first the BL has mounted from its holdings on Africa.

DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Umbra
A freely available search hub for digital materials (still and moving images, sound, text) in African American history and culture. Searches materials from a wide variety of cultural institutions across the United States. (NOTE: the Brown University Library is a contributing partner to this project.)

INDEXES

America: History and Life
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1954-present; article abstracts and citations of reviews and dissertations on the history and culture of the United States and Canada.
Historical Abstracts
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1954-present; article abstracts and citations of books and dissertations on the history of the world from 1450 to the present. Excludes the U. S. and Canada.
Index Islamicus
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1906-present; Index Islamicus is an international bibliography of publications in European languages covering all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, including history, beliefs, societies, cultures, languages, and literature. The database includes material published by Western orientalists, social scientists and Muslims.
Academic Search Premier
Current; multidisciplinary full text database, designed for the academic community. Includes full text coverage for just under 4,700 journals, including 3,600 peer-reviewed journals.
Humanities International Index
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1975-present; Humanities International Index is a comprehensive database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities. Humanities International Index provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracting for over 1,700 journals and contains more than 1.5 million records. Humanities International Index includes deep backfiles for some of the most important journals in the area of humanities.