Guides: Women's &amp; Gender Studies: Reference & Primary Sources

Electronic Reference Sources

Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Access to encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender This link opens in a new window
Examines issues of identity, status, class, ethnicity, race, and nation; of sexuality and the body; of social institutions and the structures of representation.
Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America This link opens in a new window
Survey of more than 400 years of lesbian and gay history and culture in the United States.

Sage Handbook of Inclusion & Diversity in Education
This e-resource examines policy and practice from around the world, with respect to broadly conceived notions of inclusion and diversity within education.
Black Women in America by Darlene Clark Hine
Call Number: * Available as E-Book
ISBN: 9780195223750
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Celebrates the remarkable achievements of black women throughout history, highlights their ongoing contributions in America today, and represents new research on Black Women's place in history.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History by Bonnie G. Smith (Editor)
Call Number: * Available as E-Book
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Entries cover six main areas: biographies; geography and history; comparative culture and society, including adoption, abortion, performing arts; organizations and movements, such as the Egyptian Uprising, and the Paris Commune; women's and gender studies; and topics in world history that include slave trade, globalization, and disease.

Primary Sources

Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources, 2006 This link opens in a new window
Focus on social issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries including speeches, legislation, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, memoirs, letters, interviews, novels, songs, and works of art.
Accessible Archives [now available via History Commons] This link opens in a new window
Primary source material from 18th and 19th century including historical periodicals and books; eyewitness accounts of historical events, descriptions of daily life, business advertisements, and genealogical records.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists and the extreme right-wing during the latter half of the 20th century.
North American Immigrant Letters & Diaries This link opens in a new window
Access to personal narratives including several thousand indexed and searchable pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews, starting around 1840 to the present, focusing on 1920 to 1980.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Letters and diaries from colonial times to 1950 plus journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings
Human and Civil Rights: Essential Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Primary source documents on leading social issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Authoritative Biographical Sources

American National Biography This link opens in a new window
Access to portraits of more than 18,700 men and women, updated quarterly, features hyperlinked articles from The Oxford Companion to United States History.

Distinguished Women of Past and Present
This resource provides biographical sketches and links to biographies about female “writers, educators, scientists, heads of state, politicians, civil rights crusaders, artists, entertainers, and others.” This site has been selected to be archived by the Library of Congress to preserve its content for the future
National Women’s Hall of Fame
The National Women’s Hall of Fame describes itself as “the nation’s oldest membership organization dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the achievements of great American women.” Thus far, there have been 247 women inducted into the organization and the site includes detailed biographical information about each inductee.
United States House of Representatives—History, Art and Archives—Women in Congress
This online exhibit, based on the book, Women in Congress, 1917–2006, contains biographical profiles of former female Members of Congress, links to information about current female members, essays on the institutional and national events that shaped successive generations of Congresswomen, and photos
United States Senate—Women in the Senate
To date, 44 women have served in the United States Senate, with 20 serving currently. This resource provides biographical information about all women who have served as Senators, in addition to links focusing on origins and developments, Senate firsts, oral histories, and photographs.
The White House—The First Ladies
Hosted by WhiteHouse.gov, this site offers biographies on the First Ladies from the 18th century beginning with Martha Washington through the present First Lady, Michelle Obama. The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from The First Ladies of the United States of America, by Allida Black (2009).

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Coverage is international and includes 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.

Explore Pepperdine Archives

Members of Alpha Gamma, the women's honor organization, pose at the President's Home at Pepperdine College, 1938. They are joined by J. Herman Campbell, Registrar and faculty adviser to the group.

Pepperdine University Archives Photograph Collection This link opens in a new window
High-resolution digital renditions of thousands of photographic prints, slides, and negatives, capturing the history of Pepperdine University from its 1937 founding to the present.

Women's & Gender Studies

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Electronic Reference Sources

Primary Sources

Authoritative Biographical Sources

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