University of Utah Library Guides
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LEAP: Issues of Life & Death + War & Peace

Library guide to support the examination of contemporary issues of life & death, war & peace; through multifaceted approaches (a library speciality!) to problem solving and ethical dilemmas.

Objectives

1. Students will learn how to critically assess books, stories, films, television from our everyday lives (and from growing up) to critically review their value (that's a big objective!)

2. Students will learn about criticism on the formal level of humanities scholarship.

3. Students will learn how to perform 21st century humanities research and understand its role at a university.

sample

1. Hellboy (from the comic and movie)
secret librarian note: I used Bard/Gemini to ask "what communities or identities identify with Hellboy" and got some keywords for the databases to try

2A. topic Punk music has been overly represented in white identity/culture/context -but the historical record indicates more diverse voices existed and exist.
2B. quote "The overwhelming majority of punk rock musicians are white males and a staggering number of them end up focusing on stale, homogenized social politics and a rote "punk" stance and style. The ultimate goal of this project, then, is to bring together articulations of gender and race within punk genealogies, and to locate a "simultaneity of discourse." "
2C. citation Stinson, E. (2012). Means of detection: A critical archiving of Black Feminism and Punk performance. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory22(2–3), 275–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2012.720827

secret librarian note: I used the database called MLA Bibliography -and searched: other OR otherness OR outsider AND punk OR goth -in the advanced search

Introduction

Dark Horse Comics. “Hellboy: The midnight circus profile.” Dark Horse Comics, 23 Oct. 2013, https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/20-175/Hellboy-The-Midnight-Circus-HC.

Why are some films/books/works celebrated as meaningful across communities and cultures, while others (that I thought were pretty good) fall by the wayside and are never heard from again?  How are books, apart from how much money they make, viewed as having an impact on the world?  Humanities scholars from a variety of disciplines (film studies, dance, writing & rhetoric, history, etc.) actively participate in scholarship -asking (and answering) these questions. [remember the 2 big questions: What exists? What matters?]

Criticism:not the cringy kind
Analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work -using methods supported by well-developed (literary, fine arts, film, etc.) theories.

Good Library Databases to Start:
Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography

Project MUSE

JSTOR

America: History & Life
Historical Abstracts
Art Full Text  (also, the library catalog rocks for art)

 

Media-Specific Places to Look
Film and Television Literature Index 

Humanities & Social Sciences Index 
(published before 1984)

New York Review of Books 

Poetry and Short Story Reference Center 

Scribner & Twayne eBooks
 (this one is pretty good for finding a book on your topic)

assignment sample

sample

Marriott Library Eccles Library Quinney Law Library