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Michael Schwartz Library

ENG 207/347/547: African American Literature

A guide on the study of African American literature.

Library PIN

To access research databases from off-campus, you will have to authenticate first -- select Cleveland State University, and then enter your name, CSU ID, and Library PIN. If you don't have a Library PIN yet, then you can create one on the My Account page.

Google Scholar

You can also try searching Google Scholar for known items. Just make sure that your settings allow the results to show CSU library full text!

Featured Criticism Journal Articles

  • Anderson, L. "Analytic Autoethnography." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol 35, no. 4, 2006, pp. 373-395.
  • Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. "Autoethnography: an overview." Historical social research/Historische sozialforschung, 2011, pp. 273-290.
  • Said, Edward W. "Reflections on Recent American" Left" Literary Criticism." Boundary 2, 1979, pp. 11-30.
  • Joyce, Joyce A. "The black canon: reconstructing black American literary criticism." New Literary History, 1987, pp. 335-344.
  • Joyce, Joyce Ann. "A Tinker's Damn: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and 'The Signifying Monkey' Twenty Years Later." Callaloo, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 370-380.
  • Raval, Suresh. "Intention and contemporary literary theory." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 38, no. 3, 1980, pp. 261-277.
  • Poovey, Mary. "The model system of contemporary literary criticism." Critical Inquiry, vol. 27, no. 3, 2001, pp. 408-438..
  • Hoover, Steven. "The case for graphic novels." Communications in Information Literacy, vol. 5, no. 2, 2012, p. 9.
  • Jacobs, Dale. "More than words: Comics as a means of teaching multiple literacies." English Journal, 2007, pp. 19-25.
  • Dallacqua, Ashley K. "Exploring literary devices in graphic novels." Language Arts, vol. 89, no. 6, 2012, pp. 365-378.
  • Clark, J. Spencer. "Encounters with historical agency: The value of nonfiction graphic novels in the classroom." The History Teacher, vol. 46, no. 4, 2013, pp. 489-508.

Known Item Searching

To find a specific journal article, follow these steps:

  1. Visit the library homepage.
  2. In the main search box, switch the tab above to Journals.
  3. Search for the journal title. The journal title will be something like The Journal of African American History. *NOTE* If you are conducting your search off-campus, this is when you will need to enter your library PIN. See the Library PIN box for information about how to set up your PIN.
  4. If that journal appears in the results, the library has access. You can then search within the journal for the article title. This will be the longer, more specific title in your citation.
  5. If you get stuck, don't be afraid to ask for help from a librarian!