ENGL 160: Women's Literature

Find Scholarly Articles, Books, & Chapters

Find Scholarly Journal Articles

What should you type in?

Type in Keyword(s) and Subject Terms that capture different aspects of your analysis and research. 

  • Tip: To find peer-reviewed, scholarly articles, limit to peer-reviewed journals. 

Sample keyword searches that capture different ideas: 

  • women writers AND metamorphosis OR transformation
  • science fiction AND women
  • genre fiction AND feminism OR protest
  • shirley jackson AND daemon lover OR demon lover 
  • women authors AND genre fiction
  • gothic literature AND gender 
  • elizabeth bowen AND gender
  • "a room of one's own" AND woolf AND room OR space OR agency OR independence

Sample Subject Terms to try solo or mix and match with keywords: 

Find Academic Books & Book Chapters

Look for thoughtful and insightful discussion of your authors, topics, themes, genres, and texts in Holman Library books (print & ebook). 

  • You can use chapters, essays, introductions, and, of course, entire books if you wish. 
  • Note: Start your search - and refine as you go. Switch to advanced search and add additional search terms and limiters.

What should you type in the search field? 

Try a range of keywords and subject terms. Examples: 

  • women AND science fiction
  • romance writers AND feminism
  • genre fiction AND subversiv*
  • fairy tales AND women AND agency
  • women AND agency OR spaces AND criticism and interpretation 
  • Joanna Russ AND criticism and interpretation
  • Shirley Jackson AND horror
Sample Books in our Collection

Beyond our collection: Interlibrary Loan

Using the Interlibrary Loan Service

InterLibrary Loan: No library has it all! But the InterLibrary Loan (or ILL) is a service offered by Holman Library for borrowing books and articles from other libraries. InterLibrary Loan requests are free to current GRC students, faculty and staff.

Search Widely

For your research, it is important to search many places.

  • First, start with the books and articles available through the Holman Library.

  • Then, If you find books and articles that the Library does NOT have access to, just request them through Interlibrary Loan.

  • Using Interlibrary Loan increases the amount of resources available to you and helps you become a more thorough researcher.

Note:

  • Books and other items that require mailing may take 1-2 weeks.

  • Articles and other digital items may arrive within 2-5 days. Use your email as your contact info and the article will be sent directly to you.

If you need help filling out this form, call the library reference desk at (253) 931-6480.

Other places you can search...

Use the links below to look for books, articles and more beyond our collection:

hidden - sample

Sample Search (women AND fairy tales) - limited to peer reviewed journals only: 

one search-peer reviewed only women AND fairy tales

Sample article: "Fairy- Tale Fan Fiction and Questions of Women's Consent" by Jaime W Roots, in The German Quarterly, 2021

"Studying Internet fan fiction on a large scale is not within the scope of this article; rather, I will focus on one of the largest strictly German-language sites, FanFiktion.de, and its stories classified under the fandom of "Grimms Märchen" to both explore the fandom itself and its metanarrative engagement with the genre as a space for feminist critique. I look specifically at how feminist reimaginings foreground the often-problematic treatment of feminine consent (or lack thereof) to male advances in traditional fairy-tale versions of "Rotkäppchen" [Red Riding Hood] and "Dornröschen [Sleeping Beaity] ." 

First, what is Scholarly Literary Criticism?

What is Literary Criticism?

LITERARY CRITICISM IS analysis, interpretation and evaluation of authors and their works of literature, which can include novels, short stories, essays, plays and poetry. 

Critical analysis is often written by literary critics and is found in essays, articles and books.

Literary "criticism" is not generally negative. Instead, "criticism" refers to the thoughtful critique of an author's work, whether style, ideas, themes, etc., in order to better understand the meaning, symbolism, influences, and/or impacts of a particular piece or a body of literature.