LibGuides: AFRI1110 Voices Beneath the Veil, African American Drama from 1858 to Present: Researching Plays

Introduction

Researching Plays in Journals and Newspapers

Specific Example: Materials relating to Adrienne Kennedy's play "Funnyhouse of a Negro"

Abstracts & Indexes

MLA Bibliography is the best source for CITATIONS to articles on literature. It is not primarily a full-text database. For works related to Kennedy's play:

Choose the "Advanced Search"
Type in "Kennedy Adrienne" and in "Select a Field" choose "SU Subjects (all)"
Type in "funnyhouse" in the text box below, and click Search

This should bring up 27 hits. SOME have linked full text; to find others in electronic versions, or hard copy, as available, click the FIND IT! button and follow the menus presented. These menus may lead you to other linked full text, to print journals and anthologies at Brown University Library, or, if the journal/anthology is not at Brown, to local holdings, or, finally, to an inter-library loan request. The menus are intended to get you to the article the easiest and quickest way possible.

To find other works on plays and drama:

Type in your search as appropriate and (scroll down) in the "Genre" box, choose "Drama". This will eliminate works relating to other genres.
If you get too many hits, revise your search to put on other relevant limits, such as "Period" (1900-1999 for example).
Specifying a range of "Publication Dates"(this will mean publication date of the ARTICLE, not the original work you are researching) is also a useful way to zero in on sources of interest.
As detailed above, some citations will have linked full text; for others, use the FIND IT! button.

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
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Access to the bibliography of journal articles, books, and dissertations from the Modern Language Association, 1926-present.
1926-present; the MLA International Bibliography is a bibliography of journal articles, books and dissertations. The electronic version of the bibliography contains over 1.5 million citations from more than 4,400 journals and series and 1,000 book publishers.

Performing Arts Periodicals Database (formerly called IIPA) (full text) is an excellent source for articles on all aspects of drama and the performing arts. It also is full text for most of the materials in the journals included.

Typing "funnyhouse" in the Quick Search box will bring up 43 articles.
The "Search Articles" choice offers many options, including selecting from pre-defined list of authors, broad and narrow subjects, document types and special features.
You can also browse the journal list, and view them by subject

Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to scholarly and popular material from all aspects of the performing arts, from scholarly studies to snapshots of popular culture, 1864-present.
1864-present; draws its content from scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals, and also indexes a variety of documents such as biographical profiles, conference papers, obituaries, interviews, discographies, reviews and events. Performing Arts covers nearly all aspects of the performing arts, from scholarly studies to snapshots of popular culture.

Comprehensive databases

Literature Online (LION) and Literature Resource Center (LRC) are good places to start for biographical information on authors, along with listings of their works, critical reviews and bibliographical references. There are several articles on Adrienne Kennedy in each database, and at least one of these cites interviews (always interesting!)

Literature Online (LION)
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See ProQuest One Literature.
Literature Resource Center (LRC) This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors, current.
Current; provides access to biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline. The LRC covers more than 90,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers, and indexes publications such as Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Authors.

Newspapers

The Library subscribes to a number of newspaper packages for material covering the 19th and 20th centuries, including: National Newspapers Expanded [ProQuest], ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Ethnic NewsWatch [ProQuest], Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers [Gale], American Periodical Series. You may also find the freely available database Chronicling America (Library of Congress) to be helpful.

When using the ProQuest search platform, you can search individual newspapers, such as the New York Times (6/1/80 to present), or click on "Advanced Search" and then "News and Newspapers" to search multiple titles and/or multiple databases simultaneously.

Search tips:

It is often useful to search in the ABSTRACT of an article, since that distills the main points made. (Located on the pull-down menus that read by default "Citation and document text")

If you have a title with unusual words (as you do for the Kennedy play -- "funnyhouse") it's easy to search these in a "Citation and document text" search and get accurate results. Common words/names require more experimentation with search fields to avoid very large result sets.

Note that you can specify a range of dates, or limit to full text

Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
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NOTE: A search can be limited to a single ethnic group
1959-present; Ethnic NewsWatch is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press beginning in 1990. This includes ENW: A History, which covers the years 1960-1989. The experiences and contributions of African Americans, Hispanics, Native Peoples, Asian Americans, European Americans, Jewish Americans and Arab Americans illuminate three critical decades in U.S. and world history.
American Periodical Series Online This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to historically significant periodicals from the Americas published between 1740 and 1940
1740-1940; the American Periodicals database indexes periodicals from that time period, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Nineteenth (19th) Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full text and images from newspapers across a range of urban and rural U. S. regions. Encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life among other subjects.
Provides access to approximately 1.5 million pages of primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, featuring full text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S. The collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life among other subjects.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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A digital newspaper archive offering more than 60 historical publications dating back to the 19th century.
These historical newspapers offer full text and full image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. Use the list below to search each newspaper individually.
Brown University Library subscribes to:

Chronicling America (Library of Congress)
A comprehensive, freely available and growing resource for U. S. newspapers dating from 1789 to 1963. Currently, 47 states plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are represented. Features of the site allow for searching by state, by ethnicity and by language.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar includes citations and links to SCHOLARLY articles. Not the usual wild mix of good material and junk that you get in plain old Google.

For your purposes right now, typing in "funnyhouse" will get some useful results.
Google Scholar includes links to Brown holdings. If there are no links to online text, use the citation information to search BruKnow to locate holdings or Borrowing Options to request an interlibrary loan.