LibGuides: E 314: E 314V Jewish-American Literature

Library Resources for This Course

Below are library databases and search tools hand-selected for this course. Gina Bastone, your course librarian, will cover these in class on Oct. 31 when you visit the PCL. If you have questions about using these resources, please contact Gina: g.bastone@austin.utexas.edu

Reference & Background Information

Reference tools, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and bibliographies can give you important context and understanding on topics related to Judaism that show up in the course readings. For example, if you find a reference to Shabbat dinner in a novel, but don't know the significance, you can look it up in one of these library databases. Select encyclopedia ebooks are to the right as well.

Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Reference/background (encyclopedias, biographies, bibliographies) covering a broad range of subject areas, including history, religious studies, and literature.
Features: Topic Finder
Updated regularly. A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. Fully searchable across all files.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Historical/primary Sources (court cases, correspondence, etc.), reference/background (encyclopedias, biographies, bibliographies), & overviews of major literary works.
Features: Topic Finder, Work Overview.
Updated regularly. Full-text database that provides biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors and their works from every age and literary discipline. The database offers a variety of search options, including searches by person or work. Content comes from a variety of sources, including the following major reference sources: Contemporary Authors Online, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography Online.
American National Biography This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Biographical overviews of major U.S. figures, including writers.
Features: Lengthy biographies and bibliographies
Updated quarterly. Provides biographical information for over 19,000 people from all eras who have influenced and shaped American history and culture. Ranges in time from the earliest recorded European explorations to the very recent past. Includes the content from all 24 volumes of The American National Biography set as well as over 900 fully integrated articles from The Oxford Companion to United States History. The learning experience is enhanced with entries on historic events, social movements, ideologies, and iconic sites in the United States. Wide range of search options.
We have a limited number of users for this database. Please select the logout option before you leave your session. When the limit is reached, a username and password prompt will probably be displayed. If this happens, simply wait 15 minutes and then try the link again.

Scholarly Books & Journal Articles

Use the search tools and databases below to find scholarly books and articles. Note that many scholarly books are anthologies with chapters written by different authors and edited together under a similar theme.

The Complete Cambridge Companion to Literature Series
What you'll find: UT's holdings of Cambridge University Press's long-standing series. These Companion handbooks are great for overviews of major authors and literary works and discovering top scholars in sub-fields.
NOTE: Some titles are in print; others as ebooks.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Scholarly books and journals across many subject areas.
Features: Built-in PDFs
Updated regularly. Offers a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive to support scholarship and teaching. Includes archives of over 1,000 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
MLA International Bibliography
What you’ll find: Scholarly books, book chapters and journals on literary studies and literary criticism.
Updated ten times per year. Indexes critical materials on literature, criticism, drama, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Provides access to citations from over 4,400 journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Produced by the Modern Language Association.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Scholarly journals on U.S. history.
Updated regularly. Contains citations with abstracts to social science and humanities literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present. Covers books, book reviews, journals and dissertations. Also reviews films and video projects. The database corresponds to the print America: History and Life, which is produced by ABC-CLIO. The database covers history, interdisciplinary studies of historical interest and history-related topics in the social sciences and humanities.
ATLA Religion Database This link opens in a new window
What you’ll find: Scholarly books, book chapters and journals on religious studies.
Updated twice per year. Comprehensive index to religious, theological and related scholarship covering over 1,380 journal titles internationally, as well as 13,000 multi-authored books and reviews. There are a total of over 847,000 citations. Full text is available from more than seventy journals selected by leading religion scholars in the United States. Coverage is comprehensive back to 1949, and includes earlier data for the Methodist Reviews Index.
Access to full text portion of this resource is funded by the the Louise Farmer Boyer Chair in Biblical Studies.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
What you'll find: Scholarly books, book chapters, and journal articles mostly in the Humanities (including literary studies and history).
Journals: Updated as issues are published. Project MUSE is a leading provider of humanities and social science content for the scholarly community, with complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals from leading university presses and scholarly societies.
Books: Selected titles from university presses and scholarly societies. All content from the print edition of the book is included in the digital edition. There are no DRM restrictions.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide

General Resources

Jewish Women’s Archive
High-quality materials about a wide range of authors, time periods, literary and cultural movements, etc. The articles cite academic sources and are usually written by scholars, but the articles themselves are not considered academic.
NYPL Holocaust Research, Education, and Remembrance Online Research Guide
A research guide on the Holocaust from the New York Public Library (NYPL). Note that some resources are only available NYPL members. UT may have also have access through our library.
Yiddish Book Center Collections & Materials
A digital library more than 11,000 titles, and our diverse collections, including contemporary oral histories, lectures, Yiddish audiobooks, and more.
My Jewish Learning
A website with general information about Jewish customs, rituals, and culture.

Recommended Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture
Publication Date: 2024
From Europe and America to the Middle East, North Africa and other non-European Jewish settlement areas, the Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture covers the recent history of the Jewish people from 1750 through the 1950s.
Encyclopaedia Judaica
Publication Date: 2007
Includes more than 21,000 entries on Jewish life, culture, history, and religion, written by Israeli, American and European subject specialists.
Encyclopedia of Judaism
Publication Date: 2006
Note: Limited to 1 UT Austin user at a time. The PCL has a physical copy.

Encyclopedia of Judaism explores a tradition that has a 2,000-year recorded history and has been a part of the culture of almost every country and society around the globe. Encapsulating all things Jewish - language, laws, literature, arts, theology, ritual, land, culture, and personalities - this authoritative volume offers readers access to Judaism from both a historical and contemporary perspective.
Encyclopedia of Jewish-American Literature
Note: Only available in print at the PCL.

Jewish-American writing holds an essential place in America's literary tradition, and Jewish-American writers have flourished in many genres, including fiction, drama, poetry, and more.