Research Guides: HIST 150: The Family in Premodern Europe (Spring 2024): Parts of an Article

What are the Parts of an Article's Database Record?

Suppose you search in America: History and Life and find a potentially interesting article. Is it worth reading?
Looking at the article's entry in the database tells you a lot. The record will tell you:

Who wrote the article
when it was written
the major subjects it covers
where it was published
how to access it at Swem
What it's about

Example:

Airlie, Stuart. “Private Bodies and the Body Politic in the Divorce Case of Lothar II.” Past & Present 161, no. 1 (November 1998): 3. doi:10.1093/past/161.1.3.
The divorce case of Lothar II was a key political issue in the Carolingian world in the 850s and 860s. Four kings, two popes and a host of bishops and secular aristocrats were caught up in its ramifications.4 The details of the case were lurid, even sensa- tional: the queen was accused of having committed incest with her brother, Hubert; this incest was alleged to have taken the form of sodomite intercourse which resulted in pregnancy, with the queen aborting the foetus. The case was notorious: King Lothar found that its details were being discussed in Burgundy and Italy; the archbishop of Rheims found that it was being discussed even at the lower levels of society.5 If the case was important for contemporaries, it remains so for us, as it casts a searching light on a whole range of topics in early medieval political culture. A full consideration of this complex case cannot be undertaken here. Specifically, this article will focus on what the case reveals about the representation of Christian royalty and, turning as it does on the relationship between a king and a queen, about the role of gender therein

What are the parts of an article?

Academic articles are written in a very specific manner.
Articles will include an introduction, review of the topic, analysis of information, conclusion, and work cited section.
As a researcher, each of these sections are important to you because they: summarize the field, provide new information, offer a new interpretation of the topic, then provide a list of other sources to consult.

Example:

Ferrer, Marlen. 2012. “State Formation and Courtly Culture in the Scandinavian Kingdoms in the High Middle Ages.” Scandinavian Journal of History 37 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1080/03468755.2011.640174.
This article offers a comparative approach to the emergence of a courtly culture in the Scandinavian kingdoms in the High Middle Ages. Such a perspective has not been studied before on this topic, and the author proposes that it clarifies the correlation between state formation and courtly culture. The article argues that the two major explanations on courtly culture are complementary, suggesting that the one offered by Stephen Jaeger explains the courtly culture in Norway, while the second model of explanation, by Georges Duby, is more suited to explain the emergence of a courtly culture in Denmark and Sweden