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LIT 499: Tracing the Trope of Epiphanal Blackness In African American Literature: Find Books

ILL (for Books) and WorldCat

Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to request books and book chapters not held by our library. Chapters typically arrive within hours. Physical books take days.

WorldCat is a "union catalog" of millions of records for books held by thousands of libraries. Search WorldCat to find more books about your topic.


Identify e-books available to read or borrow immediately by conducting an Advanced search. Look for the Library Code box toward the bottom of the page. Enter one of the following library codes:

  • INARC (e-books from Internet Archive)
  • HATHI (e-books from HathiTrust)
  • NJT (books/e-books from our Gitenstein Library)
  • OAPEN (open access e-books)

Find Books: Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

Search the TCNJ Library catalog to find books about canons and related literary concepts. Improve your results by taking just a few minutes to understand Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH for short. Subject headings are terms assigned by cataloging librarians to the records (or descriptions) of library books and other sources. LCSH communicate to researchers both what a source is (e.g., an encyclopedia, periodical, or primary source), and what it is about (i.e., its subject). Conceptually, LCSH function similarly to the hashtags we are familiar with on Twitter and Instagram. But unlike tags on social networking sites, LCSH are very consistently applied and incredibly precise. The tags are pre-determined, that is to say cataloging librarians cannot make up tags. Rather catalogers draw from a list of terms already approved and in use. The search term "literary collections" can be useful for identifying primary works of literature.

Relevant Library of Congress Subject Headings, among others, include the following:

  1. [KEYWORD]
    1. literature AND "criticism and interpretation" AND (black? OR Africa?)
    2. literature AND "history and criticism"AND (black? OR Africa?)
  2. [SUBJECT] American Literature — African American Authors
  3. [SUBJECT] American Literature — Minority Authors
  4. [SUBJECT] African Americans in Literature
  5. [SUBJECT] Black people in Literature
  6. [SUBJECT] White people in Literature

Featured Literary Criticism (Secondary)

Humanities Librarian

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David C. Murray
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TCNJ Library,
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