Relevant Databases
The below databases (database = buckets of content) are useful when looking for scholarly articles concerning Africana Studies.
The best database for your individual project will depend on your topic. For example, if researching music from the Harlem Renaissance, you might want to also search Oxford Music Online. Browse our full database list here.
Particularly relevant to African Studies curricula taught at W&L
- African Diaspora, 1860-Present
…African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
- Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more.
- LAPOP: Latin American Public Opinion Project This link opens in a new window
The AmericasBarometer, one of the many and growing activities of LAPOP, is the only survey of democratic public opinion and behavior that covers the Americas (North, Central, South and the Caribbean).
- ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers
The History Vault contains manuscripts and archival collections that focus on the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, and American Politics and Society.Many of the collections in the History Vault were originally available in microfilm.
Accessible within the History Vault you will find:
- NAACP Papers for the Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files
- NAACP's Major Campaigns: Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
- NAACP's Major Campaigns: Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
- RIPM Jazz
The Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (RIPM) Jazz collection provides access to a wide variety of Jazz-related journals, including Jazz cross-over with other genres, the culture surrounding Jazz music, and Jazz outside of the United States. Great primary source for those in a variety of disciplines, like history and music.
General / Multi-Disciplinary Databases of Scholarly Sources
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Excellent starting point. Multidisciplinary article database offers access to more than 16,000 journals, magazines, and newspapers, including over 15,000 peer-reviewed journals.
- Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new window
Coverage of over 2,000 journals in history, film studies, religion, philosophy, and other fields within the humanities.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A digital archive of over 1,100 important scholarly journals. All issues of each journal are included in full-text except for the most recent 2-to-5 years, based on JSTOR's agreement with the journal's publisher.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
The MLA International Bibliography is a subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to about 600 journals from academic publishers.