DR48: African American Theater and Film
Professor Monica White Ndounou, Fall 2008
  A broad range of possible research paper topics:
   
  • themes from plays (racism, identity politics, colorism);
  • a specific era like the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Arts/Black Power movement;
  • a specific group like African American women playwrights, directors, actors, designers, etc.
  • the relation of African Americans to broader American, European, and Pan-African forms.

Library Research Sources & Strategies
Prepared by Chao Chen, Reference Librarian at Tisch Library
 
  • Take an inventory of the information you already have and use them to learn more about a possible research topic
    1. Authors you have read in class; their theories, arguments, and works may have interested you;
    2. Explore the bibliographies found in the recommended/assigned readings (on Blackboard or on Course Reserves by your professor);
    3. Apply with relevant new sources;
    4. Look up those books, articles and authors in Library catalogs, subject databases to learn more;
    5. Add other known sources of your own

 

chao chen
Class librarian
617-627-2057
chao.chen@tufts.edu
homepage
Social & historical backgrounds

Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history: the Black experience in the Americas. (Ref. E185 .E54 2006.)

Encyclopedia of African American history, 1619-1895:  from the colonial period to the age of Frederick Douglass. (Ref. E185 .E545 2006)

African American chronology: chronologies of the American mosaic. (Ref. E185 .K48 2006)

The African American experience:  an historiographical and bibliographical guide. (Stacks: E184.65 .A37 2001)

Oxford African American Studies Center (online)
Comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with precise search and browse capabilities. Features over 7,500 articles from Oxford's reference works, approximately 100 primary sources with specially written commentaries, over 1,300 images, over 100 maps, over 200 charts and tables, timelines to guide researchers through the history of African Americans and over 6,000 biographies. The core content includes: Africana, which presents an account of the African and African American experience in five volumes ; the Encyclopedia of African American history ; Black women in America, 2nd ed ; and the African American national biography.
 
African American and Pan-African Theater & Film

Cinematic Experience
African American films through 1959:  a comprehensive, illustrated filmography. (Ref. PN1995.9.N4 R54 1998)

Frame by frame:  a Black filmography. (Ref. PN1995.9.N4 K57)
Frame by frame II:  a filmography of the African American image, 1978-1994. (Ref. PN1995.9.N4 K58 1997)

Blacks in film and television: a Pan-African bibliography of films, filmmakers, and performers. (Stacks: PN1993.5.A35 Z999 1990)

The Afro-American cinematic experience: an annotated bibliography & filmography. (Stacks: PN1995.9.N4 H9 1983)
 
Theater Experience

Profiles of African American stage performers and theatre people, 1816-1960. (Ref. PN2286 .P46 2001)

The African American theatre directory, 1816-1960: a comprehensive guide to early Black theatre organizations, companies, theatres, and performing groups. (Ref. PN2270.A35 P48 1997)

African American writers. (Ref. PS153.N5 A344 2001)

Best literature by and about Blacks. (Ref. PS153.N5 R53 2000)

Black theatre and performance: a pan-African bibliography. (Ref. PN2969.Z99 G7 1990)

African American authors, 1745-1945: bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. (Ref. PS153.N5 A32 2000)

dvdsBlack theatre: the making of a movement. Tisch Media Center: FDV4947 

Black playwrights, 1823-1977:  an annotated bibliography of plays. (Stacks: Z1231.D7 H37)

The Concise Oxford Companion to African-American Literature  (online)

 
Movements (Tip: use these books as a starting point; consult the bibliographies in the books and other relevant titles.)

The Cambridge companion to the Harlem Renaissance. (Stacks: PS153.N5 C345 2007)

The Harlem Renaissance: an historical dictionary for the era. (Oversize: NX511.N4 H37 1984)

A sourcebook of African-American performance: plays, people, movements. (Stacks: PN2270.A35 S68 1999)

Avant-garde performance & the limits of criticism: approaching the Living Theatre, happenings/Fluxus, and the Black Arts movement. (Stacks: PN2297.L5 S45 2005)

The Black Arts Movement: literary nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. (Stacks: PS153.N5 S56 2005)

The Black power movement: rethinking the civil rights-Black power era. (Stacks: E185.61 .B6 2006)
 

Books on Themes, Movements and Individuals in African American Theater & Film: book
Access: Tisch Library website, http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/; Search Resources-->Library Catalogs
 
a Subject browse in the Catalog to gain an overview our collections on African American Theater:

sample search
There are 41 items under 19 sub-topics
search results
Note: try another subject browse on African Americans Drama
 
Subject browse on African American Films:

search sample
 
There are 109 items (including videos) under 8 sub-categories.
search sample
 
Research on individuals, filmmaker, playwright, and so on:
search

search results

African America: portrait of a people. E185.96 .E87 1994 
Summary: Influential figures from African-American history and their achievements in all aspects of life, including civil rights, medicine, motion pictures, business and music.
 
Subject browse on groups:
search sample
search results
 
Subject browse on broader Pan-Arican forms in Theater and Films:
search
Subjects (1-6 of 6) Entries
8 Found
1 Black Theater. 2
2 Black Theater -- Africa -- Bibliography. : Gray, John,  1
3 Black Theater -- Caribbean Area -- Bibliography. : Gray, John,  1
4 Black Theater -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th Century. : Goddard, Lynette,  1
5 Black Theater -- Peru -- History. : Feldman, Heidi Carolyn,  1
6 Black Theater -- South Africa. 2
 
 
 

search sample
Subjects (1-5 of 5) Entries
20 Found
1 Blacks In Motion Pictures. . 12
2 Blacks In Motion Pictures -- Congresses.: Black & White in Colour Conference  1
3 Blacks In Motion Pictures -- Great Britain. : Bourne, Stephen.  1
4 Blacks In Motion Pictures -- United States.    1
5 Blacks In Motion Pictures -- Video Recordings. 5
 
Research on a theme: Blackness/colorism in African American Theater:
Tips:
1. The quotation marks, " " ensures a phrase search.
2. * is truncation symbol, and it searches for all forms of the word, black, blacks, blackness.
3. Or and ( ) used together to search for any or all of the related concepts and expressions.

search sample
 

The above search will find books such as the following titles:

Tisch Book Stacks/Call No.
Black feminism in contemporary drama.   
PS338.N4 A48 2008 
Best black plays: the Theodore Ward Prize for African American Playwriting.  
PS627.N4 B47 2007 
Forgeries of memory and meaning: Blacks and the regimes of race in American theater and film before World War II.     
PN1995.9.N4 R58 2007 
Staging race: black performers in turn of the century America.    
PN2270.A35 S67 2006 
The plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson: from the new Negro renaissance to the civil rights movement.  
PS3519.O253 A6 2006 
Bodies in dissent: spectacular performances of race and freedom, 1850-1910.  
PN2270.A35 B77 2006 
 
             

 

Journal Articles
Access: Tisch Library Web site, http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/; select Articles via Databases)
Tip: these databases overlap, but some are better starting points than others in the contexts of specific research needs and focuses of topics.
General/Multidisciplinary Race Relations and Ethnic Studies
Theater/Performing Art & Music Film Studies

 

Drama/Literature

 
African Studies & History Critics' Reviews in Newspapers and Popular Magazines

Offers multidisciplinary information and provides the opportunity to search across 40 integrated databases sourced worldwide. Combining South African Studies and African Studies
Note: this is NOT an easy database as a starting point; try other options first, and/or consult your class librarian, chao.chen, or
ask a librarian

 

 

Finding the full text.

Online Sources
Current:

Historical:

  • In Black and white: a guide to magazine articles, newspaper articles, and books concerning more than 15,000 Black individuals and groups. (Ref. Z1361.N39 S655 1980)
  • African American Newspapers - 19th Century  

Print Sources

  • New York Theatre Critics' Reviews (1944 to 1994) (Ref. PN1601 .N4)
    Continued by National Theatre Critics Reviews (Ref. PN 2000 .N3).
    Tip: Use the Year End Index, either in the front or in the back page in the binder.
  • Theatre Record 1985- (Bound Periodicals PN2596 .L6 L66)
    Presents cast and production details for London’s West End and fringe shows, and reviews from many British daily and weekly drama critics.

 
Finding Plays:
Play Index
Citations to over 30,000 plays written or translated into English, from Antiquity to the present, published in collections since 1949.

Film Studies (Look under the Stills tab for film posters)

  • A separate cinema: fifty years of black-cast posters. (Stacks: PN1995.9.p5 K57)
  • Black Film Center/Archive (Indiana University)

Images

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