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A Guide to World History

Reference Works - A Place to Begin

Catholic Encyclopedia

New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003 - a multi-volume reference work on Roman Catholic history and belief edited by the faculty of The Catholic University of America. eBook

Slavery - World
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History. Damian A. Pargas, Juliane Schiel, eds. Cham: Springer International Publishing: Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023 eBook

The Cambridge world history of slavery. David Eltis & Stanley L. Engerman, eds.Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011- Print

The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery. Junius P. Rodriguez, ed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997. Print

Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery. Paul Finkelman & Joseph C. Miller, eds. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, Simon & Schuster Macmillan; London: Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International, 1998. Print

Slavery - United States
Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the colonial period to the age of Frederick Douglass. Paul Finkelman, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 eBook

US - Material culture
World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the material life of slaves in the United States. Martha B. Katz-Hyman & Kym S. Rice, eds. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011 eBook  

US - slave rebellions
Walters, Kerry S. American Slave Revolts and Conspiracies: A reference guide. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015 Print 

US - Underground Railroad
Hudson, J. Blaine. Encyclopedia of the Underground Railroad. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006 Print

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. The Underground Railroad: An encyclopedia of people, places, and operations. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008 Print

African-American Reference resources

Oxford African American Studies Center - over 7,500 articles by top scholars in the field. Includes the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895, Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present, and more.

Oxford Bibliographies Online

Gerbner, Katharine "Church and Slavery". In OBO in Atlantic History, https://www-oxfordbibliographies-com.libproxy.wustl.edu/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0361.xml

Library of Congress Subject Headings

The two, major Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) for this class are "Slavery" (670 entries, >1700 different subheadings) and "Catholic Church" (265 entries, >4000 different subheadings). Performing an Advanced Search for both subject headings produces a list like this (35 entries). Another broad but integral LCSH is Slavery and the church -- Catholic Church.

While there may be some useful information in these broad subject headings, most of you will be researching spatiotemporally and thematically limited topics. Scrolling through the various subheadings of "Slavery" and "Catholic Church" can reveal formula for finding more specific content. 

* Look for Subheadings like "historiography" (discussion and debate within the historical profession; the history of history) and "bibliography" in the LCSH strings. 

* Move beyond WUSTL Libraries to explore MOBIUS and WorldCat.

Academic Journal Databases

Subject-Specific

Historical Abstracts - historical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada), from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

America: History & Life -  a complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. 

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) - Jjournal, essay, and book review index. Contains thousands of citations from international titles and multi-author works in the field of religion.

Multidisciplinary

JSTOR - a popular humanities and social science databases with extensive holdings of full text journal articles and book chapters

Google Scholar - the world's largest indexer of academic journal articles

State & Local History

Find the local historical societies' web collections, journals, and newsletters you don't know based upon what you do. Example: Missouri Historical Review