Guides: ENG 380.72 American Political Literature (Ditmore): Home

Informational Databases

American National Biography This link opens in a new window
Access to portraits of more than 19,000 men and women, updated quarterly. Includes over 900 articles from The Oxford Companion to United States History, providing historical and social context to the biographies.
Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Access to encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Titles can be searched alone, by subject, or all titles can be searched together.

Locate Articles

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
An index of journal articles, books, and dissertations, the electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to the 1920s and contains over 2.5 million citations from more than 5,000 journals and series and 1,200 book publishers. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.
In addition, the MLA Directory of Periodicals and their proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors within the Bibliography are included.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly literature from journals, dissertations and book and media reviews on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Indexing covers 1,800 journals from 1964 to the present and approximately 16,000 entries are added each year. Coverage for some titles back to the 19th and early 20th centuries
Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Provides up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 145,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Access the journal archives and over 40,000 ebooks on the JSTOR platform; book chapters and journal articles are cross-searchable.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 600+ scholarly journals from major university presses
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides full text coverage to nearly 9,100 journals, including over 7,900 peer-reviewed titles in the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, education and more. Full-text coverage dates back to 1985 and is updated daily.
ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
A source for Congressional materials from 1789 to date.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Online research tool with more than 90 million pages of legal history available in an online, fully-searchable, image-based format. Visit HeinOnline LibGuides for tips on searching this database.
Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Accessible Archives provides full text searchable databases of primary source material from 18th and 19th Century publications including historical periodicals and books; eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records are available in an online environment.

Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans 1639-1800

Commonly referred to as the Evans Collection, this resource is comprised of a vast range of publications, including advertisements, almanacs, bibles, broadsides, catalogs, charters and by-laws, contracts, cookbooks, elegies, eulogies, laws, maps, narratives, novels, operas, pamphlets, plays, poems, primers, sermons, songs, speeches, textbooks, tracts, travelogues, treaties and more. The imprints in Series I are expertly indexed and may be browsed by genre, subjects, author, history of printing, place of publication and language.

Online Periodicals

Early American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window
Access to more than 700 historical American newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia printed between 1690 and 1876. Search Newspapers by eras in American History. Based on Clarence S. Brigham's "History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820" and other authoritative bibliographies.
American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection This link opens in a new window
This collection provides digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912.

Useful Websites

Streaming Videos

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online is the most comprehensive video subscription available, delivering almost 70,000 titles spanning subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. More than 14,000 titles are exclusive to Alexander Street.
Swank Digital Campus This link opens in a new window Digital Campus by Swank Motion Pictures, Inc.® allows students the flexibility to legally view course-assigned films outside the classroom. Providing digital access to course-related films allows educators to enhance the learning experience without taking up valuable class time. Swank does not currently support Safari on Macs. Swank recommends using the latest version of Chrome or Firefox. Visit

Search Pepperdine's eBook Collections

MLA Style

Information about the 8th edition of the MLA Style Handbook can be found in the MLA Style Center, including A Quick Guide to Works Cited, What's New and Ask the MLA

MLA instructions from Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) can be helpful

ENG 380.72 American Political Literature (Ditmore)

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