International Education Week (Nov. 16-20, 2020) is a joint initiative of the US Department of State and the US Department of Education designed to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. In honor of International Education Week, the IU East Library wants to highlight some of the databases available that support study abroad programs, international exchange, and cross cultural research. We have databases that focus specifically on a particular country or on travel and culture in general and they are organized as such below. Almost all these databases predominantly feature primary source resources, such as travel diaries, newspapers, photographs, brochures, government records, guidebooks, videos, and more.
Worldwide Culture, Music, Food
One of the best things about traveling is the food. Food Studies Online focuses on the social, historical, economic, cultural, religious, and political implications that reach far beyond what is consumed at the dinner table. Examples of topics covered in the collection: Organic Farming/Small Farms, Marketing and advertising, Packaging, Famine, Vegetarianism, Labor practices, Food safety, Wine making, Gender roles through history, Food habits around the world and more.
Food and Drinks in History explore five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race, and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition, and food production.
Both music and dance also play very important roles in many cultures across the globe. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online is the first comprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world’s peoples. More than 9,000 pages of material, combined with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world, make this the most complete body of work focused on world music.
Dance Online: Dance in Video provides 900 hours of video content covering the full scope of 20th and 21st century dance. The collection includes performances, documentaries, interviews, and instructional videos from the most influential performers and companies. The diverse content supports a wide range of courses, from dance history and dance appreciation to choreography, dance composition, and improvisation.
Religion & Philosophy Collection provides extensive coverage of such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. With more than 300 full text journals, the Religion & Philosophy Collection is an essential tool for researchers and students of theology and philosophical studies.
We also have access to the National Geographics Magazine Digital Archive. Through the world’s best scientists, photographers, journalists, and filmmakers, National Geographic captivates and entertains a global community. The magazine archives cover articles, global topics, and images from 1888 to the present.
Central and South America
Researching Mexico is an open access resource tool that supports research in Mexican Studies, and is both a bibliographic database and a gateway to online resources relevant to this field of inquiry. The site provides a searchable index of Mexican scholarly journals, as well as access to full-text dissertations from Mexican institutions. Additional relevant resources include online directories of researchers and institutions, online bibliographies, quantitative data sets, and selected web sites relevant to researchers.
Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture is a database containing the collection of Manoel de Oliveira Lima. Oliveira Lima was a Brazilian diplomat, journalist, historian, and book collector whose career spanned Brazil’s transition from empire to republic. Born in 1867 in Recife, Pernambuco, and educated from the age of six in Portugal, he dedicated himself to the study of Brazilian and Portuguese culture. Brazilian history and literature was the central focus of his writing and collecting. Oliveira Lima’s twenty-three-year diplomatic career included postings in five European capitals—Lisbon, Berlin, London, Brussels, and Stockholm—as well as in Washington, Tokyo, and Caracas. His travels in Europe and the Americas afforded him privileged access to dealers in books, manuscripts, works of art, and other materials for the study of Brazil, Portugal, and the Ibero-American world.
World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean serves the needs of students and researchers by bringing together in a single place a rich collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video; and more.
The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social, and economic research and we have a few of these listed in this blog. Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 focuses on South American countries covering revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe and relations with indigenous peoples, amongst other topics, the documents in this title form a vital resource for any scholar of Latin American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Asia
Meiji Japan collection contains Edward S. Morse’s documentation of life in Japan during the 19th and 20th century. Morse’s original diaries kept during his time in Japan amounting to over 3,000 pages and 1,300 sketches. Journals of visits to England, France, and Germany in the 1880s show the interest of Europeans in gaining authentic insights into ordinary life in Japan and China. Scrapbooks contain a wealth of rare and ephemeral material on myriad subjects. Records of his publications and lectures as well as extensive correspondence reveal his interests in archaeology, art, astronomy, ethnology, religion, and zoology, as well as his desire to encourage an American audience to appreciate Asian society and culture.
India has played a crucial role in global trading networks for centuries and was central to the story of Empire. More recently it has emerged as a vibrant democracy and a major economic power. The India, Raj and Empire collection documents India’s history from the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 to the granting of independence for India and Pakistan in 1947. The sources are extremely varied ranging from the papers of key East India Company representatives and colonial officials to records of daily life in Agra, Bombay, Lahore, and Madras. There are original Indian manuscripts containing histories and literary works, as well as accounts of wars, discussions of Indian Nationalism and papers of tea and coffee planters.
China: Trade, Politics, and Culture 1793-1980 is a database comprised of unique manuscript material relating to the activities and observations of British and American diplomats, missionaries, business people, and tourists in China between the 18th and 20th Centuries. Together with rare periodicals, color paintings, maps, photographs and drawings as well as original source materials from China’s interaction with the West from Macartney’s first Embassy to China in 1793 to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74.
Much of the knowledge of China written for consumption by the English-speaking world appeared first in pamphlets written by diplomats, merchants, academics, and travelers working in or passing through China. Spanning three centuries (c1750-1929), the China Culture and Society digital collection makes available rare materials from the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia, one of the oldest and most distinctive collections of its kind, as well as essays and journals detailing topics including colonial rule, literature, education, politics, religion and everyday life in China
Africa and the Middle East
Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 collection consists of the Confidential Print for the countries of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan. Beginning with the Egyptian reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 1830s, the documents trace the events of the following 150 years, including the Middle East Conference of 1921, the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia, the partition of Palestine, the 1956 Suez Crisis and post-Suez Western foreign policy, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The documents in Confidential Print Africa, 1834-1966 begin with coastal trading in the early nineteenth century and the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa. They then follow the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy’s defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence. Together they cover the whole of the modern period of European colonization of the continent from the British Government’s perspective.
From the Ottoman Empire to the Arab Spring, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have witnessed their fair share of history. The Middle Eastern & North African Newspapers collection includes publications from across this dynamic region, providing unique insights into the history of individual countries, as well as broad viewpoints on key historic events from the late nineteenth century through the present. Key topics include the decline of colonialism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Suez Crisis, the Cold War, the rise of the petroleum industry, twentieth-century pan-Arab movements, both World Wars, the establishment of the state of Israel, the Iran-Iraq War, and the recent Arab Spring. Please note that this database is partially open access. In-copyright titles are currently available to CRL members only.
International Education Week at IU East November 16-20,2020
If you are an IU East faculty member or student and want to participate, please click here to self-enroll in the IEW@IUE 2020 Canvas Site. Once you’ve enrolled, you will be able to access a selection of short video presentations with discussion-starter questions prepared by IU East International Studies Program faculty, the Office of Study Abroad, and, with the generous support of the Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center, competitively selected advanced graduate students from the interdisciplinary Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.
If you need any assistance in accessing these databases or in conducting research, Ask Us! iueref@iue.edu