SPAN 160G: Exile: The Latin American Experience - Kebadze

Welcome to the Research Guide for SPAN 160G: Exile The Latin American Experience.

This guide was built specifically to support your research goals for this course. As you start exploring topics and sources for your two research papers, use this guide for research ideas and direct links to databases for academic sources.

1. Brainstorming Topics and Using/Finding Keywords

Broad focus: identify the country and/or person and/or movement you want to research
Add keywords that will narrow your focus such as: years/timeline, and specific keywords like "censorship," "repression," "revolution," etc.
[Hint: many databases and articles provide keywords as well. Take note of the ones most helpful to you.]
 

2. Find Scholarly and Primary Sources

Scholarly sources are published in peer-reviewed journals and/or manuscripts and are often written by researchers within a specific field. Primary Sources are first-hand accounts or original discoveries/research that are being contributed to existing research.

• Scholarly Source Examples: academic articles, conference presentations, peer-reviewed academic books
• Primary Source Examples: recorded interview, blog post, diary entry, journal article with original research

UMBrella is a great place to start! This tool searches multiple databases in one search if you do not know where to start

Ethnic NewsWatch is a current resource of newspapers, magazines, and journals of ethnic and minority perspectives

JSTOR a fantastic interdisciplinary database with ONLY scholarly sources

3. Evaluate Sources

Not all sources are created equal. Just because you found a source at the library does not automatically mean that it's appropriate to your research needs. Evaluate the sources you are reading to determine their relevancy and usefulness:

1. When was the source published? (do you need recent publications or do you need historical publications?)
2. Who wrote/published the source? (do they have a background in the field?)
3. Is the source academic or popular? (does it provide an academic interpretation of your topic, or is it a broadly discussed interpretation, like you would find on Twitter or in a newspaper?)
4. What is it about this source that supports/challenges your research goal?
   (Highlight quotes or phrases; make notes of important names of locations; is there a perspective that you want to incorporate in your paper; does it bring up questions in your mind as you read it)