CHIN 242: Supernatural China

This guide provides some useful starting points for your research in CHIN 242. Use the tabs to start exploring the variety of tools and resources available to you. I am happy to help with finding, evaluating, or citing sources, or to chat with you about any aspect of your research. You can make an appointment with me here.

Developing good search terms and combining them in meaningful ways can be key to finding the most relevant results. Make note of keywords and subject terms that come up in your initial searches and readings, and try a variety of search combinations. The following strategies work in SuperSearch and most library databases.

• Use quotation marks " " to search words as a phrase. This will narrow your results.

"tang dynasty"

• Use AND to combine multiple concepts in your search. This will narrow your results.

"tang dynasty" AND women

• Use OR to find different ways your search terms might be expressed or different aspects of a topic that might be interchangeable for your purposes. This will expand your results. Group these related terms in parentheses, so the database interprets them first. The following search will find results that contain any of the phrases in parentheses along with "tang dynasty."

(women OR females OR gender) AND ("tang dynasty")

• Use an asterisk * to find variant endings (e.g., gender, gendered, feminine, femininity, etc.). This will expand your results, because again, you're providing more options.

(gender* OR feminin* OR masculin* OR queer)  AND ("tang dynasty")