Resources for students in The American Dream in Literature and Film seminar, particularly those looking for film and literary criticism. In addition to the online resources below, search the library catalog for relevant books.
Book and Film/Movie Reviews
Along with open sources like IMDB, Metacritic, and those listed below, databases contain back issues of newspapers and magazines with book, film/movie reviews.
Note: You may filter search results in AP Source, JSTOR, PowerSearch, and GenderWatch / Historical Newspapers by the document or source type of review(s) or movie review.
- Explora includes (mostly 1985-present), Cineaste, Films in Review (1990-1996), Magill Book Reviews (1990-2011), The Nation, New Republic, Newsweek, Time, and Women’s Review of Books
- Google Books includes archives of several magazines with reviews, including The Advocate (1994-2006), Black Digest (1961-1976), The Crisis (1911-2011), Ebony (1959-2008), Jet (1951-2008), Life Magazine (1936-1972), and New York Magazine (1968-1997), as well as magazines that provide cultural context, such as Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1945-1998)
- Genderwatch and Historical Newspapers include the New York Times (1851-2013), the Wall Street Journal (1889-2000), London’s Guardian/Observer (1791-2003), and several alternative and independent newspapers (in Genderwatch)
- Hollywood Studio System Collection (Media History Digital Library) – use their Lantern interface to search digitized issues of Variety and other publications
- JSTOR – film reviews appear in journals within the Film Studies group
- Movie Review Query Engine
- PowerSearch includes many U.S. newspapers, The New Yorker (2002-present), and Variety (1997-2017)
Film and Literature Resources in Databases
- Explora – magazines and journals include Afterimage, Cineaste, Cinema Journal, European Journal of American Culture, Film Comment, Studies in French Cinema, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Velvet Light Trap, and many sources of literary criticism
- Explora – related eBooks (more than 120 of them) include Bloom’s Literary Themes: The American Dream (with essays on Franklin, Death of a Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun), The Language and Style of Film Criticism, Encyclopedia of Religion and Film, American Horror Film, Movies in American History, American Film in the Digital Age, and Routledge Companion of Film History
- Gale eBooks – includes American Decades series, two reference guides: Filmography of Social Issues (2003) and Multicultural Films (2005), and several books related to literary criticism, such as Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream (essays on several subtopics, as well as Franklin, Death of Salesman, Grapes of Wrath, and On the Road), Literature and Its Times, Drama for Students, Novels for Students, Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature, and Twenty-First Century Novels: The First Decade (includes The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)
- JSTOR – subject groups include Film Studies (19 journals) and Language and Literature (341 journals); you may limit to either or both in Advanced Search
- PowerSearch – magazines and journals include Cinema Journal, Film Criticism, Film History, Film and History, Film Journal International, Literature-Film Quarterly (Oct. 2005 to Jan. 2016), Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Religion and Film, Science Fiction Film and Television (UK), and several in literary criticism
- PowerSearch – related reference books include Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema, History of American Cinema (The Emergence of Cinema to 1907 and The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915), Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, The Columbia Companion to American History on Film, and several in literary criticism.
- Salem Press Reference – includes the Decades in America series useful for understanding historical and cultural context
Open Source Journals in Film and Media Studies
Web Sites for Film and Media Studies
- Alliance of Women Film Journalists
- American Jewish Committee Archives – more than a million documents and hundreds of movies and radio shows
- Bad Lit: Underground Film Journal (written and maintained by Mike Everleth) – covers the world of creative independent filmmaking, featuring movie reviews, movie trailers, film festival lineups, filmmaker interviews, image galleries, short films, news and more.
- Black Film Center / Archive (Indiana U)
- Black Film Research Online: Scholars – list of scholars in this field
- Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) – photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and more
- Film Literature Index – indexes 150 film and television periodicals from 30 countries cover-to-cover and 200 other periodicals selectively for articles on film and television. The periodicals range from the scholarly and critical to the popular, so of which are open source, others that are in subscription databases.
- Getty Research Portal – free online search platform providing worldwide access to an extensive collection of digitized art history texts from a range of institutions
- Margaret Herrick Library: Digital Collections – library focused on film history with an online collection of historic film-related Periodicals, Books, and Pamphlets
- Media History Digital Library – non-profit initiative, led by David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound
- Movies, Race, and Ethnicity – videographies from UCLA – cross-search for books using Google Books (then Find in a Library), cross-search journal articles using Google Scholar, or check journal availability in VCU’s Journal Finder
- Museum of the Moving Image: Criticism and Theory – website devoted to the history of film, television, and digital media; features original articles by leading critics, authors, and scholars
- UCLA Library: Center for Oral History Research – Film and Television– for additional recordings, search the center’s series list for words like Hollywood, entertainment, film, media, and motion picture
MLWGS Library 