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FREN 380: Studies in French and Francophone Culture

Resources for your research project!

Research Strategies

As you work on your research project, you may wish to use a "funnel approach" to your topic:

  1. Start with broad overviews.
  2. Identify one or more primary sources to analyze and interpret.
  3. Identify and select secondary sources to help fill in the details.

Featured Books

Here are some examples of scholarly works with a broader focus.

Search Primo

Search Collins+Summit+Articles

Background and Overviews

Search Primo for broad overviews on your research topic.

  • Switch the scope to "Collins and Summit" so that your results are limited to just books; it's too early in the process to look at articles.
  • Start with keyword searches, but when you find a title in the results that is particularly promising, look for its Library of Congress Subject Heading to find similar items. Click on "item details" to discover these clickable subject headings.
  • You can use the facets on the right navigation bar to limit the results to French-language titles.
  • Remember that you don't need to read these broad overviews from cover to cover! Instead, you're using them to browse and skim for general context and ideas about key figures, movements, and ideas.

Online Reference Collections

Need more basic background information? Each of these online collections will introduce you to a wealth of dictionaries and encyclopedias. These can be especially useful when you initially can't find an overview in Primo.