ENG 101 - From Voice to Action Essay

Narrowing Your Topic

Once you've done some initial background reading on your artist, it's time to narrow down your topic to what you really want to focus on. Having a narrowed down topic will help you come up with keywords for your search.  Remember your assignment requirements and consider what you've read thus far.

Ask yourself:

Which piece (art, song, etc.) do I want to focus on?

What interests me about this particular work of art?

How did this work of art bring awareness to a social issue? 

As you start to narrow this down into a topic/thesis, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. As you research, you might tweak or adjust your topic/thesis.  In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search.

Search Tips

Think what words you might use to find information on your topic (keywords). These words could include the artist's name, the title of the work, or social issues. 

Use AND between two or more terms to find materials with all the terms.

Banksy AND inequality

Use OR between similar terms or synonyms to search for either term.

rap OR hiphop

cartoon OR comic

protest OR demonstration

Put search terms that are more than one word in quotation marks, i.e. "abstract expressionism." This will be helpful when titles are more than one word.

Banksy AND "Unwelcome Intervention"

"civil war" AND music

“rock music” OR “punk music”

Use an asterisk to find multiple endings of one word.

music* = music, musical, musicals, musician, musicians

Keywords work best by trial-and-error. Never do only one search. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search.  Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources.