LibGuides: SPAN 336: Latin American Women Writers: Articles on Your Topic

Search for Articles on Latin American Women Writers in these Databases

Below is a selection of online resources that include a vast number of articles on topics in Spanish, including literary criticism, cultural history and more. The resources on this page include articles from both scholarly and popular sources, so be sure to evaluate your sources in order to make sure they're appropriate for your project.

Academic Search Ultimate Academic Search Complete is a great place to start your search for both popular and scholarly articles, on almost any topic.

DialNET Spanish Language Journals DialNet indexes Spanish language journals (and English-language journals about relevant Spanish topics) in science, art, literature, humanities and the social sciences.

Gale Literary Sources Literature Resource Center includes resources on literary topics, authors, and their works.
JSTOR Use JSTOR to find archived articles, including literary criticism.
MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window MLA Bibliography includes two parts: MLA Bibliography and MLA Directory of Periodicals, which are both produced by the Modern Language Association. These sources are particularly strong in the areas of literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism and dramatic arts, but also include other subjects.

Open Access Directory: Languages and Literatures Identify electronic journals in the fields of Languages and Literatures that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text, and accessible without cost. This is not a searchable database.

Project MUSE Project Muse contains scholarly articles from major journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities. It includes full-text scholarly articles on literature and criticism and much more.

Database Search Strategies

Databases respond best to keyword searching. To search efficiently, turn your research question into a keyword search:

Research Question: How does Isabel Allende use magical realism to convey female spiritual power?

Search One: (Search with keywords connected by “and”):
Isabel Allende and magical realism and female and spiritual power

Search Two: (Truncate some of the keywords using *):
Isabel Allende and magic* realism and female* and spirit*

Search Three: (Add alternate words into the search with “(or)”):
Isabel Allende and magic* realism and (female* or feminin* or women) and spirit*

Truncate keywords where applicable. Truncation uses the asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term. Truncation can also be used to find the singular and plural forms of a term. Example: educat* will find educate, educates, education, educators, educating and more.

Female*	Feminin*	Spirit*
	Will Find:
Female Females Female's	Feminine Femininity Femininity's Femininities	Spirit Spirits Spirit's Spiritual Spirituality Spiritualism

Developing Search Terms

The first step in picking a topic is to brainstorm by asking yourself a few questions. What do you already know about this topic? Are there similar ideas that you might want to explore? What are the key concepts that you're interested in pursuing?

Once you've spent a bit of time answering these questions, you can take the concepts you've identified and use the keywords and phrases to start searching for information. Keep in mind that you'll need to build a base of knowledge before you can write effectively.

Finding Full Text

You can find the full text of an article in a number of ways, including direct links to HTML Full Text and PDF Full Text in the database you're searching as well as linked full text in a different databas or an online journal. See the illustrations below for where to find the full text.

Need more articles? Try Google Scholar!

Search Google Scholar for more articles on your topic. And remember to read the Using Google page in this guide to learn how to evaluate material you find on the web!