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Black Studies - Article Databases, Journals and Primary Sources

Interdisciplinary databases

  • Project Muse
    A database of full-text scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The collection currently includes over 800 journals and over 80 000 books.
  • SocINDEX
    Articles related to sociology, and related fields.
  • America: History & Life
    Journal article database covering all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present.

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Subject-specific database subcollections

  • Oxford Bibliographies: African Studies and Atlantic History
    Subject-based groupings of bibliographic articles about important figures, events, geographic areas, historical periods and other concepts. The African Studies subject group contains 195 bibliographies, while Atlantic History counts 365.

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Selected journal titles

Explore these specific journals with Black Studies content to find articles that you might not otherwise find in database searches. Use your topic keywords to search within each journal and look for issues with special topics and themes that match your research interests. You can also browse issues by date.

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Primary source databases

Primary Sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced or observed the events or conditions being documented. These sources are often created at the time when the events or conditions are happening, but they can also include autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later.

The primary sources found in these databases and digital collections were largely recorded and written about, rather than by, Black Canadians and will reflect those biases, perspectives and worldviews. Due to the colonial history and current organization of academic libraries, archives and other memory institutions, searching for materials in library databases and catalogues may involve using offensive, problematic and out of date terms. 

African American Poetry contains nearly 3,000 poems by African American poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It provides a comprehensive survey of the early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American to the major poets of the nineteenth century.

Collection of approximately 15 000 primary source documents created by Black abolitionists in North America and Western Europe (primarily the UK) between 1830 and 1865. Includes articles, manuscripts, correspondence, and literary works.

Curated collection of approximately 1200 English-language plays, representing the work of over 200 Black playwrights from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean, dating between the mid-1800s and the present.

  • Black Thought and Culture
    Collection of over 100 000 pages of writing by over 1000 important Black American leaders, covering the last 250 years. The collection includes non-fiction writing such as correspondence, essays, periodicals and leaflets, and trial transcripts.
  • Canadiana Online
    This collection consists of three themed collections: Monographs; Government Publications; and Serials (periodicals, annuals, and newspapers). Coverage from 17th century to early 20th century.
  • Colonial State Papers A collection of 7000 hand-written documents on Colonial History: American history, British colonial history, Caribbean history, Atlantic trade, plantations, and slavery.

Assembled from hundreds of primary sources, this project documents the relationships among peoples from 1534 to 1850. The collection presents the perspectives of traders, enslaved peoples, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, officials, and others.

  • JSTOR: Independent Voices An open-access collection of radical periodicals produced by groups across the political spectrum from the second half of the 20th century, including Black Power advocates, Indigenous people, feminists, right-wing thinkers, and LGBT activists.
  • Oral History Online
    A database of over 2700 oral history collections in English from across the world. Includes audio and video files, full text transcripts, and bibliographic records.
  • Slavery, abolition & social justice
    A collection of primary source documents and secondary research and teaching documents about the Atlantic world. Includes digitized documents, essays about documents in the collection, and links to other resources, grouped by theme. This resource covers the period between 1490 and 2007.

Legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. Includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.

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