I had a professor...who taught the introduction to tactical engineering course. He said he never bothered changing his tests from term to term to prevent cheating, because while the questions were always the same, the answers changed. I'd thought he was joking. --Miles Vorkosigan in Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

The nature of identity is a loaded question for those who deviate from the mythical norm because to see identity as anything but fixed and inherent means having to defend the value of particular choices.... This is what leads people to brandish any badge of oppression they can claim, in order to trump themselves into a position of nonresponsibility for anything. Everyone becomes done-unto, never the doer. It's dangerous to rely on an identiy founded on being innocent because none of us is ever completely innocent. --Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall, "Bitches in Solitude: Identity Politics and Lesbian Community," Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation

 

Some day soon we'll stop to ponder What on earth's this spell we're under? We made the grade, and still we wonder Who the hell we are. --Styx

Resources Online

 

Reference and Research

For good web-reference I recommend the Internet Public Library. They also keep a large collection of literary criticism online.

Evaluating Internet Research Sources by Robert Harris is a reasonably comprehensive and quite comprehensible guide.

The Thomas Library Research section links to the library's online course reserves and holdings, as well as online indexes for locating books and journals in the paper holdings.

 

Historical

Timeline of the Civil War is just what it sounds like--a very detailed names/dates/times site.

Valley of the Shadow takes a more narrative approach, detailing the Civil War via the records of two towns, one on each side. This is a fascinating site for those who already have some idea of the war's landmark events.

For the already-well-informed, Essays and Articles About the American Civil War provides opinions by history scholars on a wide range of topics.

Chronology on the History of Slavery 1619 to 1789 offers a thorough annotated timeline of slavery in North America as it related to Africans.

 

Materials Collections

Documenting the American South offers a useful supplement to survey anthologies, which tend to skimp on this area.

In a similar vein, Myths and Legends for American Indian Youth is a reasonably inclusive collection of traditional stories.

 

 

First Posted: 1/2001
Last modified: 08/23/08

Back to top

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.