Final Project
The final project is a chance for you to work on a research topic that interests you. You must choose one of the themes from weeks 2-14. These themes include but are not limited to: gendered labor, militarized sexual violence (i.e., “comfort women”), U.S. military sex work, refugees, transpacific immigration, trafficking, and deportation.
You have four options to complete your final project:
1. Academic Research Paper (2400-2700 words)
2. Two Editorial Essays (1200-1350 words/essay)
3. Video Podcast (18-20 minutes)
4. Video Essay (10-15 minutes)
Q.: What do these options have in common?
Key Resources
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Library CatalogFind books and e-books provided by Copley Library. If a book is listed as "off site storage," you can request that it be brought to campus for you to check out.
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Ethnic Studies databasesCopley Library has a page devoted to Ethnic Studies databases, so if you want to see an overview of them all at once, go here.
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Browse JournalsYou can browse journal titles that are available through the library.
Reference Information
Reference sources are good places to start your research to get background and contextual information about a topic. They help provide you with foundational knowledge before you launch into more specific research.
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Asian American Experience This link opens in a new window
Primary sources, including images, audio clips, documents, and video, and summary overviews covering historical and current experiences of Asian Americans in the United States
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Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
A digital library containing high-quality reference books from the world's leading publishers. Offers access to millions of entries and contains all types of reference books including dictionaries and encyclopedias, covering science to Shakespeare.
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Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Ideal for those looking for pro and con arguments on a wide variety of contemporary social issues. Includes the opposing viewpoints series as well as links to reference materials, statistics, selected magazine and newspaper articles, images and more.
Library Instruction Survey
Primary Sources
Primary sources are things that come from the time period being studied. For example, a primary source could be a newspaper article that was published during that time period, a speech that was delivered, or an activist's journal entry. Primary sources can give you a richer view of the topic you are studying because you can see it within the context of the specific time period when it happened. The following are some examples of primary source databases, but keep in mind that many databases contain a mix of primary, secondary, and reference information, and are not solely one type of content.
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Asian Life in America This link opens in a new window
Drawing from 18,900+ American and global news sources, this primary source collection offers an expansive window into centuries of Asian American history and daily life – as well as the ways popular culture has portrayed and perceived people of Asian descent. This collection spans from the early 18th century to the early 21st century – from the Manila galleon trade with Spanish Mexico to the modern era – and covers many topics, including arts and entertainment, civil rights and activism, immigration and citizenship, sports, labor, religion, science and technology, and society and culture.
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New York Times Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-1993) provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times (1851-2007)
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Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Independent Voices is a digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals from the 1960s - 1980s. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, and activists from marginalized communities including African-Americans, Native Americans, Latino, LGBTQ and anti-war groups. In addition the collection contains a large number of alternative literary magazines where prominent authors today began publishing.
Scholarly Articles
Once you have defined your topic and you need in-depth sources like scholarly articles, there are several excellent databases to consult. Here are a few of them:
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Access 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR that span more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, along with more than 84,000 backlist titles from 100+ publishers, including Princeton, Yale, and California, and millions of primary sources.
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Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Provides full text for over 2,940 scholarly publications including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, health sciences, and ethnic studies.
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window1954-present. International database for research on history of all regions (except the U.S. and Canada) from 1450 to the current decade. For US history, use America History and Life.
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Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to the full text of over 100 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
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Sage Premier Journals This link opens in a new window
The Premier package provides access to virtually all of the SAGE journal titles in the social sciences, business, humanities, medicine, physical and life sciences
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Archives, Special Collections, & Digital Initiatives
Camino Hall 001NA