ENG 380 Modern Jewish Literature: Home

A reference book can be a good starting place for an unfamiliar topic, providing an overview and key terms to use in further searches.  However, many reference books cannot be counted in your required number of sources.  Start with the collection of reference books in Gale Virtual Reference Library.

These databases are good places to start your literature-related research. If you have difficulties locating sources on your topic, remember the librarians are available to help.

Literature Resource Center contains biographical information for most authors.  You can also check these sources.

• The MLA International Bibliography contains over 2.5 million records that pertain specifically to language and literature. Material from other disciplines, like biology or political science, is not included.
• The Bibliography provides the most comprehensive listing of scholarly material in language, literature, culture, and folklore, including publications not available on the Web.
• A professional indexing staff and scholars in relevant fields review books, essay collections, journals, bibliographies, and electronic publications to create the most accurate listing possible.
• The materials covered come from reputable publishers in over one hundred countries.
• Indexers use controlled vocabulary as subject headings, enabling more precise searches than user-chosen keywords would allow.
• Each citation contains the information users need to create a bibliography as part of a research project.

Question: Why would you use Google Scholar?

Answer: Google Scholar identifies scholarly research materials from a broad range of subject areas.

Google Scholar offers a "cited by" feature - it will display a list of documents which cited the document you originally retrieved. This can be useful in determing how influential a source has been.  The list only includes documents available in Google Scholar, though.

Go into the preferences of Google Scholar and select Pepperdine University from Library Links.

In this class, we will read and discuss fiction, poetry, drama, and memoirs by prominent Jewish authors of the past century.  The reading list will include Elie Wiesel, Cynthia Ozick, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Linda Pastan, Edward Lewis Wallant, Molly Antopol, and others. In addition to close reading of the texts, we will be looking at these works in their social, religious, and historical contexts, as well as in relation to the authors’ lives.