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English Literature: Graduate Studies

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Welcome to the English Literature Graduate Studies Guide

The English and American Literature collection is one of the largest and most widely used in the libraries. The collection includes works of literature, criticism, biography, reference resources, and digital copies of primary texts published before 1900. Strengths of the collection include Caribbean, Early Modern, Ethnic, Transnationalism, Irish Modernism, World Literatures, and Translational Studies.

 

Come visit us for support for formatting electronic theses and dissertations!

  • UM Libraries' ETD support
    The UM Libraries support the University’s ETD Program by providing assistance with the final steps of submission. We work with the students to convert their files into the pdf format.
  • UM Graduate School Templates
    The UM Graduate School has a number of templates and guides to help with formatting theses and dissertations.
  • University of Miami Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    Provides a searchable, full text repository of UM theses and dissertations in PDF format. The Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) program is a joint effort between the Graduate School and the University of Miami Libraries. The University of Miami ETD site provides a publicly available, searchable, full text repository of UM theses and dissertations in PDF format.

General databases

  • Arts and Humanities Citation Index
    International coverage of more than 1,150 leading arts and humanities journals as well as selective coverage from leading science and social sciences journals.
  • Humanities Index (BHI)
    An international abstracting and indexing tool for research in the humanities. BHI indexes over 320 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK.
  • Contemporary Authors Online
    Provides complete biographical and bibliographical information and references on more than 120,000 U.S. and international authors.
  • Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson)
    Wilson Humanities Full-Text indexes more than 300 key humanities journals. Abstracts of journal articles are included from the spring of 1994; selected full-text coverage began in January 1995.
  • Humanities International Index
    Humanities International Index is a database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities. Produced by Whitston Publishing (an imprint of EBSCO Publishing), Humanities International Index provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals and contains more than 2.47 million records.

Main Research Databases

  • MLA International Bibliography
    The MLA Bibliography indexes some one million citations from over 4,000 journals and series published worldwide on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics.
  • Literature Criticism Online
    A database of ten encyclopedias of literary criticism. Centuries of analysis of scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books and periodicals.
  • Literature Resource Center
    Literature Resource Center is a current, comprehensive, and reliable online resource for research on literary topics, authors, and their works. What you'll find in Literature Resource Center is: Full-text scholarly articles from more than 300 academic journals and literary magazinesthe majority peer-reviewedas well as excerpts from scholarly monographs, literary correspondence and diaries. Reviews of books of all sorts, from children's literature to adult fiction, from popular non-fiction to scholarly studies. Substantive biographical essays on more than 130,000 authors, providing insights into life and times, works, and critical reception. Full text of thousands of poems and short stories published in contemporary journals and magazines. Overview essays on thousands of books and literary topics. Links to editorially selected websites on authors and their works, as well as pictures of well-known authors. New and updated material is added daily.
  • Gale Literary Sources
    A cross-search platform of all Gale literary sources that provides a seamless research experience that helps researchers of all levels find a starting point, search across a wide array of materials and points in time, and discover new ways to analyze information. Users will be able to cross-search a wealth of primary sources, critical articles, literary and cultural analysis and biographies.The following collections are available within Gale Literary Sources: Contemporary Authors Online Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online Literature Resource Center Literature Criticism Online LitFinder
  • Dissertations & Theses -- ProQuest
    Includes more than 1.6 million citations to doctoral dissertations and master’s theses from 1861 to the present.
  • Project MUSE - Premium Collection
    Project Muse provides access to the full-text of over 40 of the Johns Hopkins University Press's scholarly journals. Dates of coverage vary.In general, Literary Theory & American Studies journals begin with the 1995 volume, while most others start with 1996. New issues of these journals are placed online in advance of the print version.Readers may search the full-text of individual journals to find a specific author, subject or title, and/or search the full-text of all journals in the collection. Among Muse features are hypertext links in the tables of contents, endnotes, author biographies, illustrations and, the option to create online reference 'shelves' or electronic syllabi.
  • JSTOR
    JSTOR provides digital versions of the backfiles of major scholarly journals. Primarily an archival collection, JSTOR does not provide access to the most recent 3-5 years of content for most titles.

Related Resources

  • ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
    The Atla Religion Database is an essential resource for religious and theological studies, containing over 2.8 million bibliographic records covering topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history and religion in social issues.
  • Caribbean Literature
    Caribbean Literature is a searchable collection of poetry and fiction produced in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the titles selected by are works written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and various Creole languages.
  • Essay and General Literature Index (H.W. Wilson)
    Essay and General Literature Index is a bibliographic database that cites essays and articles contained in collections of essays and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. More than 300 volumes are indexed annually. Additionally, more than 20 annuals and serial publications are indexed.Essay and General Literature Index also provides full bibliographic information on collective titles indexed. Essay and General Literature Index focuses on the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film.
  • Film & Television Literature Index
    Bibliographic database that provides indexing for more than 600 publications. Film & Television Literature Index is an index to film and television literature. It is a bibliographic database that provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 300 publications, and selected coverage of 300 more. The database has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers.
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
    RILM Abstracts of Music Literature features content from the early 1800s through the present with some content coverage extending back as far as the late 18th century. Updated monthly, the database includes coverage of relevant articles from thousands of journals, many of which are not specifically devoted to music.In addition to journal articles, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature covers a variety of publication and media types including essay collections, conference proceedings, critical editions of music, digital media, dissertations, monographs, online resources, reference materials, reviews, and technical drawings of instruments. Sound recordings and motion pictures that present the results of scholarly research or fieldwork are also included.
  • Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English
    This online encyclopedia includes over 1600 entries from more than 600 internationally-recognized scholars that examine the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
  • Southern Literary Messenger: Literature of the Old South
    This collection comprises, in its entirety, the Primary Source Media microfilm collection entitled Southern Literary Messenger.

Background information

uSearch: Find books and more!

WorldCat

Google Scholar

Find items in Google Scholar

Your Librarian

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

Use the interlibrary loan when you find a needed item is not available through the Richter Library's catalog.  In most cases, we can get the item needed and in a relatively short period of time.

Main Databases

  • 19th Century British Library Newspapers
    Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers offers full runs of national, regional and local 19th century British newspapers, taken directly from the holdings of the British Library. The content includes 48 titles, totaling approximately 2.2 million pages, selected to reflect the social and political developments of the times in which they were published.
  • 19th Century U.S. Newspapers
    Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers provides access to primary source newspaper content from the 19th century, including 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.
  • 19th Century UK Periodicals
    19th Century UK Periodicals is a database using content from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Australia, and many other sources, to make available digitized versions of key 19th Century UK Periodicals.
  • African American Newspapers Accessible Archive: The 19th Century
    African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century provides first-hand reports of the cultural life and history of African-Americans in the United States.
  • Early English Books Online
    Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473–1700.From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection contains more than 130,000 titles and more than 17 million scanned pages as listed in 4 collections - Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. EEBO covers more than 30 languages from Algonquin to Welsh, and variant editions and multiple copies.
  • Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership
    The primary goal of the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) is to create standardized, accurate XML/SGML encoded electronic text editions of early printed books. The partnership transcribes and encodes the page images of books from ProQuest’s Early English Books Online, Gale Cengage’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and Readex’s Evans Early American Imprints.This work, and the resulting text files, are jointly funded and owned by more than 150 libraries worldwide. Ultimately, all of the TCP’s work will be placed into the public domain for anyone to use. The texts can be searched through web interfaces provided by the libraries at the University of Michigan and University of Oxford. In addition, partner libraries and their users are welcome to locally store, host, manipulate, analyze and otherwise work with the encoded text files, just as if they had been created locally.
  • Early European Books
    Early European Books traces the history of printing in Europe from its origins (circa 1450s) to 1700, offering full-colour, high-resolution facsimile images of rare and hard-to-access printed sources.Early European Books allows unlimited access to thousands of pre-1701 books and rare incunabula printed in Europe. It embraces the two-and-a-half centuries following Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the mid-15th century, which witnessed an unprecedented proliferation and dissemination of literature throughout Europe. In keeping with the tenor of the time, religious works dominate, but there is no shortage of secular material concerning every field of human thought and activity.
  • Eighteenth Century Collections Online
    Eighteenth Century Collections Online Parts I and 2 combined now contain over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes), adding to the depth of 18th century research. The titles cover the same subjects areas as the original collection, with a special emphasis on Literature, Social Science and Religion titles. The Collection includes materials such as books, broadsides, Bibles, tract books, sermons, and printed ephemera.Content includes works by lesser known authors and complete works by twenty-eight major authors including Alexander Pope, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Henry Fielding. Content also includes significant women writers, collections about the French Revolution, numerous editions of the works of Shakespeare, and multiple editions of individual works. The second edition includes nearly 50,000 titles and 7 million pages from the library holdings of world-renowned institutions such as the British Library, Bodleian, Cambridge, National Library of Scotland and the Ransom Center at the University of Texas.
  • Internet Library of Early Journals (18th -19th Centuries)
    The ILEJ is a searchable full-text collection of 120,000 digital pages of runs of six important British journals from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Search and browse capabilities provided.The three 18th-century journals are: Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The three 19th-century journals are: Notes and Queries, The Builder, and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
  • Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700
    Compiled by the Perdita Project, Perdita Manuscripts is a collection of digital facsimilies of the manuscripts of early modern women authors.
  • Women Writers Online
    Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early womens writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible.

UM Collections

Citation Tools

  • APA, Chicago, and MLA Citation: KnightCite
    KnightCite is an online citation generator service provided by the Hekman Library of Calvin College. This service simplifies the often tedious task of compiling an accurate bibliography in the appropriate style by formatting the given data on a source into a reliable citation, eliminating the need to memorize minute details of style for multiple kinds of sources. The service is provided free of charge by the college, and is available to members both within and outside of the Calvin community.
  • RefWorks - Legacy
    Refworks is a web based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create their own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases.
  • EndNote
    Students, faculty and staff download from the University of Miami Technology Center.
  • Mendeley
    Mendeley is a reference and pdf manager with collaboration tools and an online social network that allows you to discover and share research. It has both online and desktop components.
  • Zotero
    Free Firefox extension for collecting, managing and citing your sources.

Citation Guides