There is a ton of information out there about Victorian literature. AND there's a ton of information on bodies, minds, and disability studies. Where do you even start?!
This guide offers some "best bets" for finding scholarly sources.
It may seem counterintuitive that logging into several different databases to conduct research is more efficient than, say, just Googling it. But in fact, once you know how these databases work, you'll see that they're designed to help you find and evaluate sources much more effectively and quickly! (If you're anything like me, you'll still end up with 50 tabs open at a time, though.)
You have a great idea for a paper. You've found a fresh, new angle, and you CAN'T WAIT to tell people about it.
So what?
The trick to writing a great paper is the "so-what" of it all: Convincing your readers that your argument matters. How do you do that? By demonstrating how your insights develop on existing ideas, challenge accepted interpretation, and open up new avenues for research--that is, by entering the scholarly conversation.
This means being attentive to the purpose that your sources serve: to help you shape and situate your own argument. And different kinds of resources are organized help you do that in different ways.
The chart below offers one possible path a researcher might take through the network of available resources, using different resources to answer different purposes. In combination, the sources identified through this research process can help the author make the case that their interpretation matters on many different levels.
To establish a text's relationship to existing literary circles & historical context:
To identify adjacent scholarly conversations:
To connect a text to adjacent literary & historical conventions and history of genre:
You're using a lot of sources at this point! You might want to consider using a citation manager to keep track of them (and to generate bibliographies automatically).
Can't find what you're looking for? "Find It! at CUNY" doesn't actually, well, find it? That's OK! We have agreements with other libraries to get you the resources you need.