How to Find Books and Dissertations on Film History and Criticism
Selected Subject Headings for Searching Orbis
Search strategies modeled on the examples below will identify books and article collections for film history and criticism. Most books of this sort provide general overviews, though some are more specific than the subject heading indicates. Sometimes these subject headings are also useful for searching journal indexes for Scholarly Articles.
- Motion pictures--History
- Motion pictures--Germany--History
- Motion pictures--History and criticism
- Motion pictures, French--Criticism and interpretation
- Motion pictures, American--History and criticism
- Historical films--History and criticism
- Silent films--Japan--History and criticism
- Motion picture plays--History and criticism
- Film criticism
- Micheaux, Oscar, 1884-1951--Criticism and interpretation
- Motion pictures--Spain--Chronology
You can save yourself considerable work by looking at existing bibliographies, which list books and articles on a particular subject (up to a certain date).
See also Selected Resources by Topic, especially Film Genres and Themes and Social and Other Aspects of Cinema.
Dissertations
Dissertations can can useful since they may discuss very specialized topics or introduce new approaches to film studies. However, they are sometimes hard to obtain through Interlibrary Loan; often you must purchase a copy, which you can do on the Web. Abstracts help to identify which dissertations are likely to be on your topic.
Dissertation Abstracts International (Ann Arbor, MI: University
Microfilms International, 1861- .) SML, Reference Z5055 +U49 +D57
(LC)*
*the volumes in Reference are Section A and Section C. Section B
is in the SML stacks at the same call number.
Lists Dissertations accepted for the Ph.D. and other doctoral
degrees by American and Canadian degree-granting institutions.
Dates of coverage 1861 to the present. Coverage is identical for
all formats, although the online version of the database does
not include abstracts for dissertations prior to 1981. Issued
in three parts after 1969:
- Dissertation Abstracts International. Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences (1969-present)
- Dissertation Abstracts International. Section B: Sciences and Engineering (1969-present)
- Dissertation Abstracts International. Section C: European Abstracts (1976-1988), and Dissertation Abstracts International. Section C: Worldwide (1989-present)
