Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant African American cultural movement that emerged between the two World Wars, sparking an extraordinary flourishing of literature, drama, dance, visual arts, and music. This research guide provides you with suggested electronic resources to help you explore this dynamic and influential era.

These databases provide scholarly articles and other resources across many academic fields, making them ideal for interdisciplinary research in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and more.

All of our databases may be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet, with your Single Sign-on (SSO) username and password. This username/password is the same one that you use to log into campus computers, the wireless network, EWU Google Drive, EWU email, etc.

If you have not created your password, go to accounts.ewu.edu. See IT Support Solutions for more information.

For your Harlem Renaissance Analysis Project, you will need to find articles published in scholarly journals. Other terminology for this type of source:

• Peer-reviewed journals -- this means that the articles were critiqued by the author's peers, or other experts on the issue the article is about
• Refereed journals -- the same definition as peer-reviewed journals
• or just journals -- many scholarly journals have the phrase Journal of in the title, so this becomes the shorthand name for scholarly information published in periodicals.

The library databases help you identify where the article is coming from. In the EBSCOhost databases (Academic Search Ultimate, SocINDEX with Full Text, etc.), it will label peer-reviewed journals as Academic Journals, as opposed to News or Periodicals.

And the limiter to scholarly, peer-reviewed journals is available almost in all of our article databases.

Start with Keywords

Use simple, specific terms related to your topic. Avoid full sentences.

Use Boolean Operators

AND narrows results. Used to combine different terms (e.g., slavery AND Africa)

OR broadens results. Used to group synonyms (e.g., Boers OR Afrikaners)

NOT excludes terms (e.g., bats NOT baseball)

Apply Filters

Limit by date, peer-reviewed status, subject, or publication type to refine results.

Use Quotation Marks

For exact phrases: "Pan African Movement", "Atlantic Slave Trade".

Truncate Words

Use an asterisk (*) to find word variations: Afrocentri* finds Afrocentricity, Afrocentrism.

Check Subject Terms

Use database-assigned subject terms to find more relevant articles.

Review Abstracts

Skim summaries to quickly assess relevance before reading full texts.

Save & Cite

Use built-in tools to save articles and generate citations in your required format.

Citation Chaining

Explore references in relevant articles to find additional sources.