Pirates Past, Present, and Fictional
A pirate Halloween costume is as easy as an eye-patch and a plastic hook. Pirate-centric movies, video games, and tv shows are consistently popular. In this class, we will explore how the stereotype of swashbuckling pirates with peg legs drinking rum and hoarding pieces of eight formed and consider how they influence our reactions to contemporary piracy. The course will include historical pirates - like privateer Sir Francis Drake, the notorious Blackbeard, and pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao - and fictional pirates like Captain Hook and Long John Silver. We will look beyond the Caribbean and read about the pirates of the Mediterranean and Pacific. In addition to historical perspectives, the class will consider contemporary pirates and piracy. This material will provide a foundation of shared knowledge and interconnecting questions, while serving as a springboard for your own research projects.
Suggested Search Strings
Here are some example searches on your class topic in the library catalog. To conduct your own searches, go to the library homepage.
Featured Books
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Maritime Security: Counter-Terrorism Lessons from Maritime Piracy and Narcotics Interdiction
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781643680897Publication Date: 2020 -
Piracy and the Origins of Universal Jurisdiction : On Stranger Tides?
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9004390464Publication Date: 2019 -
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Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780520958784Publication Date: 2015 -
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Small Boats and Daring Men: Maritime Raiding, Irregular Warfare, and the Early American Navy
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780806163178Publication Date: 2019 -
Gather Background Information
Use broad reference materials to find out background information about your topic. This will help you narrow your future searches and will also give you keywords to find the most relevant sources. Credo can be a good place to start for that first step in research.
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Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference provides access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology.
Databases
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Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Includes searchable PDF content going back as far as 1887.
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Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Provides full text for nearly 3,800 scholarly business journals, including full text for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed business publications.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides articles from 1,900+ scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, and sciences and around 5,000 ebooks. Coverage dates for journals are from the very first issue of each journal (the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries for many) and continues to 2 – 5 years prior to the current year (moving wall).
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Military & Government Collection This link opens in a new window
Designed to offer current news pertaining to all branches of the military and government, this collection provides cover-to-cover full text for nearly 300 journals and periodicals and indexing and abstracts for more than 400 titles.
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MLA This link opens in a new window
The MLA International Bibliography is a subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature.
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Sociological Collection This link opens in a new window
Access to more than 500 full text journals, including nearly 500 peer-reviewed titles. Sociological Collection offers information in all areas of sociology, including social behavior, human tendencies, interaction, relationships, community development, culture and social structure.
Scholarly Articles
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Born in Jamaica, of Very Creditable Parents’ or ‘A Bristol Man Born’? Excavating the Real Edward Thache, ‘Blackbeard the Pirate.’Brooks, Baylus C. “‘Born in Jamaica, of Very Creditable Parents’ or ‘A Bristol Man Born’? Excavating the Real Edward Thache, ‘Blackbeard the Pirate.’” The North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 92, no. 3, 2015, pp. 235–77. JSTOR.
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How Did Maritime Piracy Affect Trade in Southeast Asia?Morabito, Giacomo, and Bruno S. Sergi. “How Did Maritime Piracy Affect Trade in Southeast Asia?” Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, July 2018, pp. 255–65. EBSCOhost.
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Imperial Boyhood: Piracy and the Play EthicDeane, Bradley. “Imperial Boyhood: Piracy and the Play Ethic.” Victorian Studies, vol. 53, no. 4, 2011, pp. 689–714. JSTOR.
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Laundering Treasure in Stevenson’s Treasure IslandRhee, Suk Koo. “Laundering Treasure in Stevenson’s Treasure Island.” International Research in Children’s Literature, vol. 13, no. 1, July 2020, pp. 15–30. EBSCOhost.
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Piracy Studies Coming of Age: A Window on the Making of Maritime Intervention ActorsJacobsen, Katja Lindskov, and Jessica Larsen. “Piracy Studies Coming of Age: A Window on the Making of Maritime Intervention Actors.” International Affairs, vol. 95, no. 5, Sept. 2019, pp. 1037–54. EBSCOhost.
Library Session Materials
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Session 1 SlidesResources, Narrowing Topics, and Search Strategies
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Session 2 SlidesEvaluating Sources
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Session 3 DocVisual Mapping
Additional Resources
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Stable SeasProvides research on "threats to peace at sea."
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United Nations News--PiracyGlobal news stories published by the United Nations. This link covers stories about piracy.
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United Nations - Global Maritime Crime ProgramThe UNODC Global Maritime Crime Programme assists Member States in enhancing and coordinating their efforts against maritime crime
Citation Information
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Citation HelpThese library videos and resources will help you know how to cite in MLA format.
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"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL, Purdue U Writing Lab, 2022This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
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Zotero"Zotero is a free easy-to-use tool that helps you collect, organize, cite, and share research content (e.g. articles, books, reports)."
