This guide is intended for students in Professor Lisa Lowe's course and provides an overview of key resources in the Yale Library for writing your research papers this semester.

Background or "reference" sources are a great place to start in building your bibliographies. These are scholarly encyclopedias, handbooks, bibliographies, and similar sources that will often contain lengthy essays with background information on a topic and overviews of the relevant scholarship. Citations to the secondary literature will always be included, and often so too will citations to primary sources.

A Companion to Asian American Studies
This collection brings together 20 essays central to defining the field of Asian American Studies, including Professor Lowe's "Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences."

The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History
Lengthy chapters provide overviews of the historiography and suggestions for further reading. Chapters include, for example, "Empire and War in Asian American History."

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
Arranged by subfields such as 20th Century: Post-1945, 20th Century: Pre-1945, Asian American History, Late 19th-Century History, the articles here are informative with substantial discussion of the historical literature and suggestions for further reading. Examples of articles included in the encyclopedia are "Asian Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising" and "Memorializing Incarceration: The Japanese American Experience in World War II and Beyond."

A Companion to Korean American Studies
A collection of 27 essays. The final chapter, "Koreatown as Political Capital," examines Koreatown in Los Angeles.

Oxford Bibliographies
An extensive collection of annotated bibligraphies often pointing to both primary and secondary sources.

Wiley Online Library
Includes A Companion to Asian American Studies, Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, A Companion to 19th-Century America, A Companion to 20th-Century America, and other potentially useful reference works in which the chapters will provide overviews of topics and suggestions for further reading.

Cambridge Histories
A key reference collection. Relevant works here include The Cambridge World History, Volume 7 (1750-Present), Part 1 and Part 2.

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Includes the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences and other sources useful for quick references.

James Kessenides, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, Sterling Memorial Library

Bill Landis, Head of Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library

Michael Meng, Librarian for Chinese Studies, Sterling Memorial Library

Haruko Nakamura, Librarian for Japanese Studies, Sterling Memorial Library 

Jude Yang, Korean Studies Librarian and Public Services Librarian for East Asia Library, Sterling Memorial Library

To access Yale resources from off-campus, you will need to use the University's Virtual Private Network (VPN).