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COM 108: Do they love or hate America?

Evidence assignment: Gathering and using evidence

Finding materials about American people, society,
culture, politics, etc. written by foreign authors

Finding materials written about America and/or Americans by persons in foreign countries can be difficult without some rather precise search words and phrases.

The easiest method of searching would be to have the name of a known author who has written about Americans or America. An example is that of the well-known Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled extensively through America in the 19th century, producing his classics Democracy in America and Journey to America.

But short of knowing one or more foreign authors who specifically wrote on American life from a non-American perspective, one soon discovers the difficulty in finding these sources. There is no easy or single way to search for writings about Americans by non-Americans.

Follow the suggestions below to obtain fairly generous amounts of sources on writings about America by authors who are not residents of the United States.

BOOKS

A. There is a small selection of mostly relevant books on the 6th Floor in the “E 165”call number area. They consist predominantly of visitors’ journals and diaries recounting their travels through America.

B. Using the Library catalog, do a SUBJECT search (not keyword) by selecting for SUBJECT in the pull down menu for the phrase “United States – Foreign public opinion.” Results produce over 50 books.

C. Close to 500 books can be found in the LINK+ book request service (see http://www.csupomona.edu/~library/circulation/linkplus.html) by clicking on the green LINK+ button from the results list of search “B” above. This will perform an identical SUBJECT search, but in the LINK+ multi-library catalog.

D. Perform identical searching techniques as above, but use the phrase “Anti-Americanism.”
E. Give these books a try:
Abroad in America: Visitors to the New Nation, 1776-1914
6th Floor. Call number E 164 A27

America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 17th Century.
6th Floor. Call number E 162 A98

America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 18th Century.
6th Floor. Call number E 162 A97

America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 19th Century.
6th Floor. Call number E 165 B25

America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 20th Century.
6th Floor. Call number E 169.1  O29

Images of the U.S. Around the World: A Multicultural Perspective.
6th Floor. Call number E 840.2 I55 1999

ARTICLE DATABASES

Run searches in article databases http://www.csupomona.edu/~library/databases/  such as Academic Search Elite, Omnifile Full Text Mega, Newspapers, and Social Sciences Full Text. Try using the phrases below in the SUBJECT search box. The number of relevant results is less than ideal, but some useful articles can be retrieved.
Anti-Americanism
Foreign public opinion
United States foreign opinion                                                          

INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPERS

There are a number of sources of international newspapers available on the Internet. Try World-Newspapers at http://www.world-newspapers.com/ or Onlinenewspapers at http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
You will need to alter your choice of search terms from those given above. In the examples already given, the search is oriented towards “others” living beyond the borders of the United States writing about “us.” In searching international newspapers, the orientation is now reversed, from the points of view of residents of various countries looking at America.
When browsing the world newspapers lists, choose those published outside the United States. Try searching the opinion/editorial (“op/ed”) sections of these newspapers, including words such as America, Americans, United States.

ADDITIONAL SEARCH TERMINOLOGY

Try using the words exile, exiled, expatriate, expatriated, expat, émigré, émigrés, emigrant, or immigrant combined with such terms as author, authors, writing, writings, diary, diaries, etc. Your results will vary widely due to the fact that what may be retrieved are authored works by Americans who lived in exile or American expatriates. You may also retrieve a large assortment of authored works by persons living in exile or expatriated from their home country writing about either their home country and/or the country they moved to. Such writers may not be writing about America at all.  For example, a Filipino/a living as an expatriate in Saudi Arabia writing about his/her experiences in their new resident country. Also, you may retrieve more relevant writings by persons who emigrated from their home country to move to America and have written about their experiences while living in America. The content of these various works may also be influenced by whether the author is in exile or an expatriate. Exiled usually implies leaving one’s country involuntarily, whereas being expatriated is generally a voluntary separation.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE & CORRESPONDENCE

Look through the list of materials from Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide To Published Sources compiled by the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/bib_guid/immigrant/personal.html. Although these titles are personal narratives and correspondence by immigrants in America, they nevertheless will contain observations about America from an “outsider” point of view. You will need to search these book titles in our own catalog, including LINK+. Note that the call numbers shown in this website are books owned by the Library of Congress. If Cal Poly Pomona owns any of these titles, the call numbers may be slightly different. The immigrant narratives include writings by persons from the following countries and regions: Africa, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Palestine, Philippines, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, and Turkey.

djp, June 26, 2008