UNV-101: Plato to the Hunger Games (Dean de la Motte): Home

For this paper, your research process might look something like this:

• Step 1: Come up with a general topic, for example, medicine and dystopia
• Step 2: Try searches in several tools, such as the library's general article search and the library catalog.
  • When you see the articles that come back from your search, look for synonyms and other search words you might use.
  • Skim the summaries of the articles you found.
  • Try your search again using the new words.
  • Read, take notes.
• Step 3: Create a more specific research question, such as “how does the representation of medicine in The Hunger Games mirror problems in American health care today?"
• Step 4: Try searching again using more specific search words.

Another search strategy would be to try your search in a journal that is exclusively related to part of your topic, for example, the journal Utopian Studies.

Tools to try:

The library's catalog is the place to go for books and ebooks. 

This video gives some tips for finding ebooks through the library's catalog. 

The library's article search is a good place to start when looking for scholarly articles on your topic. 

Below is a short video showing how to search for articles. 

Rosefeld, Peggy. “A History of the Paper Pattern Industry/Fashion in the Time of The Great Gatsby.” TD&T: Theatre Design & Technology, vol. 50, no. 3, Summer 2014, pp. 67–70. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aax&AN=99015568&site=ehost-live.

Burcikova, Mila. “Introduction: Fashion in Utopia, Utopia in Fashion.” Utopian Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 2017, pp. 381–97. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.28.3.0381. Accessed 6 Nov. 2023.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Edited by James L. W West, Scribner, 2018.

The below is from the Purdue OWL

When deciding how to cite your source, start by consulting the list of core elements. These are the general pieces of information that MLA suggests including in each Works Cited entry. In your citation, the elements should be listed in the following order:

1. Author.
2. Title of source.
3. Title of container,
4. Other contributors,
5. Version,
6. Number,
7. Publisher,
8. Publication date,
9. Location.

Each element should be followed by the corresponding punctuation mark shown above. Earlier editions of the handbook included the place of publication and required different punctuation (such as journal editions in parentheses and colons after issue numbers) depending on the type of source. In the current version, punctuation is simpler (only commas and periods separate the elements), and information about the source is kept to the basics.

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