ENGL 251: Asian American Literature

Why read Scholarly Criticism?

A 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.

Explication of Literary Texts

The Explicator is a literary criticism journal that offers brief close readings and analysis of select literary texts. 

Search The Explicator for analysis of your texts and for examples of how academics interpret works of literature.

Find Scholarly Criticism

Use a library database to search for and find scholarly articles.

  • Remember to limit your search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal articles.

To find relevant and useful articles, you will need to consider many more.

  • Try different keywords, subject terms, and multiple databases.

See the illustration below:

click on image to enlarge

screenshot of an advanced search

Books can be Scholarly too

Books may be scholarly, though since we cannot limit to Peer Reviewed Scholarly sources for books, you need to assess each book individually.

  • Look for depth of analysis, credentials, tone, and other characteristics of scholarly journal articles. 
  • To find, try typing in author, title of a work, idea AND literature criticism, literary criticism or criticism. 

Limit to book/ ebooks as needed.