This course guide is intended to assist students in their exhibition essays and related work for the course "Photographing the City: Urban Pictures, Urban Places," taught by Kristin Hankins during Fall term 2022 at Yale University. The selection of resources included in this guide is not intended to be comprehensive.
Students in AMST 331 should feel free to contact any of the following librarians as a starting point for research assistance with their projects for this course.
The main search tools for finding books, articles, databases, archival collections, and more at Yale (and beyond) can all be found on the "Find, Request, and Use" page of the library's website. Here are a few quick refreshers, but be sure to visit the page for a full overview:
Background or "reference" sources are a great place to start your research. Reference works include bibliographies, scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and other sources that provide overviews of topics and suggestions for further reading.
For instance, includes the chapter by Anthony Vidler, "Photourbanism: Planning the City from Above and Below," though other chapters could be helpful, too.
A gateway offering users the ability to search multiple Grove and Oxford artreference sources on one platform, including: Grove Art Online, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Includes image partnerships with ARTstor, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Images for College Teaching, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society and international art galleries and artists.
An extensive collection of annotated bibliographies often pointing to both primary and secondary sources. There is an "Art History" module that includes the article "History of Photography," but there may be relevant articles in other modules, too.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
A scholarly encyclopedia that includes a set of articles in Urban History -- just one example being "The Central Business District in American Cities."
Many of the articles here discuss aspects of photography and visual culture.
Provides access to the content of select Birkhäuser manuals in typological order. Includes case studies by experts, architectural drawings, and photographs of the buildings. Browsable by building type, urban context, morphological type, context type, and author. Thematic articles provide background information on individual building types or explain specific aspects such as lighting, acoustics, urban considerations, access types, or planning processes.
Oxford Handbooks Online
Lengthy chapters in the Oxford Handbooks usually provide helpful overviews of scholarly topics and historical literature, along with suggestions for further reading. A number of the handbooks may be helpful depending on your research topic.
In addition to the online library catalog (Books+ and Orbis), reference sources, and footnotes in sources you've already found (etc.), subject-specific databases are another extremely helpful resource for finding secondary literature, including the latest scholarly journal articles in the field, and some key ones are:
Searching these databases will allow you to check for the latest scholarly articles, reviews of books, citations to book chapters, and more in historical journals such as The American Historical Review and Journal of American History.