ENGL 126 Research Writing: Humanities (Barrington)

Literature of Prison and the Incarceral State

The Scholarly Conversation

For sustained and deeper literary criticism, find relevant scholarly articles in library databases.

Think of scholarship as a conversation - a conversation between critic, text, and other critics. Use the Works Cited to track down sources engaged by a critic.

Build your own conversation, integrating sources and voices that participate in your original analysis.

Sample Search Strategies

To find relevant ideas, sometimes it works to search for articles and books on your specific topic and other times a more general approach works. Here are a few samples searches and sources. Be sure to try others! 

Orange is the New Black:

  • Orange is the new black 
  • Orange is the new black AND gender
  • Orange is the new black AND race OR racism
  • Orange is the new black AND sex* 

The Nickel Boys:

  • nickel boys AND whitehead
  • colson whitehead
  • whitehead AND underground railroad
  • colson whitehead AND history

Ideas:

  • African american literature AND (manhood OR masculinity)
  • african american literature AND Criticism and Interpretation (as subject) 
  • prison AND african american literature
  • prison memoir
  • prison memoir AND (manhood OR masculinity)
  • whiteness AND literary studies
  • prison literature AND women
  • prisons AND "literary criticism"
  • "political prisoners" AND writings

Article Databases

Finding Scholarly Articles

The databases below all contain scholarly literary criticism. If an option, limit to scholarly peer-reviewed journals. 

See the image below for more details. 

Sample Search
  • Remember to try different keywords, subject terms, and multiple databases.

(click on image to enlarge)screenshot of an advanced search

You can limit your One Search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal articles. Just select Peer Reviewed Journals from the results page.  

  • You can also refine your search to include sources that are not full text, by date, and more.  

Thinking outside the box

What to do when you cannot find much written about your story or author

When you do research on current authors and works, sometimes there has not yet been a lot written about them. That's okay!

Scholarship represents your original thinking about a text or theme in literature. As part of your analysis you can integrate relevant sources, even if they are not about your specific text. Think about:

  • larger themes or issues, such as race, racism, identity, gender identity, gender roles, the intersection of race and gender, etc. 
  • other works by your author
  • analysis of the work of another author that you can apply to your interpretation of your text
  • a literary movement, genre or body of literature, such as postcolonial theory, feminist theory, critical race theory, prison literature, etc.

Here is an example of ideas and analysis about masculinity in the prison writing of Canadian men which I could apply to my reading of "How to Kill Someone" or The Nickel Boys. . 

Please click on the image below to enlarge it.

Excerpt- In this Inverted Garden: Masculinities in Canadian Prison Writing

Example: The highlighted sections of this article abstract (I would then read the whole article) might support an analysis of how masculinity is explored and constructed in other works of prison literature, not just Canadian texts.

Books can be scholarly too

Search the library collection and beyond for scholarly analysis of literary texts in books. 

To find the scholarly conversation, try adding criticism, literary criticism, criticism and interpretation, or literature criticism as keyword or subject term. 

Sample book titles