African American Studies

Twentieth-Century African American Poetry is a unparalleled collection of poetry written by the most important and influential African American poets of the twentieth century. Coverage begins with the key writers of the early decades (James Weldon Johnson, Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson, Claude McKay), continues with major figures of the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Arna Bontemps and Sterling Brown) and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s (Imamu Amiri Baraka, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez), and concludes with a considerable body of writing of the 1980s and 1990s, including major figures such as Ai, Rita Dove and Yusef Komunyakaa alongside young writers who have gained recognition through national poetry awards or inclusion within leading print anthologies.

Containing more than 1,500 dramatic works from the colonial period to the beginning of the twentieth century, American Drama 1714–1915 is the largest electronic collection of American dramatic writing of its kind. It provides literary researchers and historians with a comprehensive survey of American dramaturgy from its origins up to the era of sensational melodrama and manners comedy exemplified by the work of such playwrights as David Belasco, Clyde Fitch and William Vaughn Moody. Full details of the works included in American Drama 1714–1915 are given in the bibliography. Early landmark texts represented in the collection include Robert Hunter's satire Androboros (1714), the earliest printed American play, and Thomas Godfrey's tragedy The Prince of Parthia (1765), the first American play professionally performed on an American stage. Highlights from the nineteenth century include George Aiken's stage adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most popular dramatic works of its period both in America and Europe, The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1857) by William Wells Brown, and The Octoroon (1859), widely recognised as Dion Boucicault's most important American-themed play. American Drama 1714–1915 provides exhaustive coverage of the printed record of African American drama to 1915, allowing users to cross-search plays by Ira Aldridge, William Wells Brown, F. B. Coffin, Will Marion Cook, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Pauline E. Hopkins, Jesse Shipp and Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman with the complete canon of American drama. Frequently-studied plays by major dramatists are placed in the context provided by the dramatic writings of lesser-known contemporaries and canonical authors not primarily remembered for their dramatic works, such as Louisa May Alcott and Emma Lazarus.

African American Poetry contains nearly 3,000 poems by African American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It provides a comprehensive survey of the early history of African American poetry, from the earliest published African American poems to the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African American poet to achieve national success and recognition. The authors and works included in the collection show the huge variety of this relatively unexplored area of American literary history: coverage includes writers from both North and South, from rural and urban backgrounds, and ranges from University-educated professionals to those for whom the very acts of reading and writing constituted a defiance of Southern slave laws. Generically, poems range from ballads, broadsides and humorous verse to Romantic odes, sonnets and historical epics.

It is primarily the formal education of the previously enslaved that this encyclopedia addresses—from preschool through professional school. This encyclopedia is the first reference work to address the topic both historically and in the context of the 21st century. Ed. by Kofi Lomotey.

2009

The Encyclopedia of Black Studies has brought together the work of nearly 200 scholars with the objective of securing a baseline for the establishment of a canon of the field. Our intention has been to convey a sense of the research activity, conceptualization, and pedagogy of Black Studies scholars. Thus, we have created an encyclopedia that is conceptually driven rather than personality driven; that is, the ideas and concepts of the field are thrust into the forefront and create the context within which individuals' contributions are acknowledged. Ed. by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama.

2005

This two-volume reference work details the ways in which the tenets and foundations of African American culture have given rise to today’s society. Approaching the field from a “street level” perspective, these two volumes cover topics such as rap music, sports, television, cinema, racism, religion, literature, among others. Included as part of the SAGE e-Reference Library.

Sage Reference Online is a searchable collection of over 130 scholarly encyclopedias in the social sciences and other fields, including: anthropology, communication, education, geography, health, history, law, management, politics, psychology, and sociology.

2002-2011

World Newspaper Archive is a fully-searchable, digital collection of historical newspapers newspapers from around the world. It includes a gradually expanding digitized backfiles of 19th and 20th century newspapers from Africa (1800-1922), East Europe (1835-1922), Latin America and Latin America Series 2 (1805-1922) and South Asia (1864-1922). As the project expands, it will grow to include newspapers from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Follow the links above to see title lists for each collection.

 

1800s - 1900s

Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile from 1893-1988. Includes original page images digitized from microfilm.

1893 - 1988

Provides online access to the complete full text of over 100 reference works from Gale, Macmillan, and other publishers. Includes: African American Almanac, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Datapedia of the U.S., Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia Judaica, Encylopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, World Press Encyclopedia, and many more. Articles can be displayed in HTML with active hyperlinks, or as PDF facsimiles of pages from the original print edition. Individual titles are arranged by subject category (see keywords below), and also appear in Search Tools and Mirlyn separately. Searching can be done within an individual title, or across the entire collection.

Recent editions.