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Encyclopedias and handbooks
Consult introductory material to get a broad overview of your topic and to identify key concepts, theories and researchers in the field. Introductory material may include subject or discipline specific dictionaries and encyclopedias, handbooks, introductions or guides.
Find introductory material in Library Search by combining a topic keyword with one of the material type descriptors above, for example: 'gender handbook'.
Below are a few examples of introductory material available for Gender studies in the Library. For more suggestions, check out Finding gender reference books.
A dictionary of gender studiesPublication Date: 2017
Encyclopedia of sexuality and genderPublication Date: 2020
Routledge Handbook of Gender and SecurityPublication Date: 2019
Key databases for gender studies
- Project MUSEProject MUSE is a unique collaboration between libraries and publishers providing full-text and user-friendly online access to humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers.
- Archives of sexuality & gender. LGBTQ history and culture since 1940The archive illuminates the experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community.
- Defining gender, 1450-1910 : five centuries of advice literature onlineContains images of original documents relating to gender studies sourced from libraries and archives around the world, including material from the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
- Women in the National ArchivesA finding aid to women's studies resources in the UK National Archives, Kew, combined with original documents on the suffrage question in Britain, the Empire and colonial territories
- Sociological abstractsAbstracts and indexes literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioural sciences.
- Australian public affairs full text (APAFT)Includes journal articles from published material on the social sciences and humanities.
For links to other databases of relevance to gender studies, refer to the Journal articles tab.