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AAAS 155: Hip-Hop History and Culture

Recommended resources and strategies for research in Professor Chad William's class, AAAS 155: Hip-Hop History and Culture

Search Tips

Start by brainstorming keywords and search terms. Use subject headings or descriptors to help generate search terms.

When you find a good article, look at its References or Works Cited list. That will often lead you to other useful sources.

If you see an article you'd like to read but you don't see a PDF for the article, click on the  "GET IT" button. This will open a new window that will allow you to see if Brandeis has access to the article through another database or if Brandeis has the article in print. If Brandeis doesn't have the article online or in print, you'll see an option to request the article through Interlibrary Loan

Finding Books for Your Research

Try exploring the Library OneSearch for books related to your topic. If Brandeis does not have a book you need, you can use WorldCat to search for books from other libraries and then request these books through Interlibrary Loan.

Search tip: Search for books by either Keywords or Subject Headings. Start with a Keyword search and identify some relevant books. Then look at the subject headings for those books. You can follow the subject heading links in the catalog to find similar books, or you can use the terms in the subject headings to identify other keywords to try.

Examples of Subject Headings related to this class:

  • Rap (Music) -- Social aspects
  • Rap (Music) -- History and criticism
  • Hip-hop -- Social aspects

For research in this class, you may find relevant titles in the ML section of the library in Farber, Level 4. 

Recommended Databases

For a broad search, start with the Library OneSearch to search across many of our subscription academic databases to find individual articles from journals, newspapers, magazines, and more. 

For a more focused search, try one of these recommended databases: