The Emory Woodruff General Library officially started to collect Chinese resources in Chinese in 1997, while the English language collection on Chinese Studies began much earlier. The Chinese Studies program has experienced rapid growth during the past 20 years, with expanding library collections to support such program growth. The Chinese Studies librarian has been building the Collections with books, journals, newspapers, documentary films, movies and online databases. The collections cover subject areas including Chinese language, culture, literature both classics and modern, history, politics, religion, philosophy, arts, public health and social sciences.
The Chinese Studies librarian also provides a full range of library services to support our faculty’s teaching and research, and student learning. The librarian leads library instructional sessions to educate students about library resources to benefit their research papers and projects. The librarian also conducts individual research consultations to users as needed
The South Asian Studies collection at Emory University Libraries primarily support faculty and students in the departments of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies (MESAS), Religion, and History. South Asian Studies began at Emory in 1995 and was originally part of the Asian Studies program, which also included East Asian Studies. In 2001, South Asian Studies joined Middle Eastern Studies to form the MESAS department. In addition to MESAS, there is also the West and South Asian Religions program in the Graduate Division of Religion, a course of study that focuses on Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions from a range of methodological perspectives. The South Asian Studies collection also supports the History department, particularly the PhD program in Asian History with its emphasis on colonialism, postcolonialism, and the making of the modern. Other users of the collection include the departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, English, and Political Science, as well as the Candler School of Theology.
The first bibliographer for South Asian Studies was hired in 1999 to develop collections in accordance with the research needs and strengths of faculty in a variety of South Asian languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, and Tibetan. Emory became a participant in the Library of Congress’ South Asian Cooperative Acquisitions Program (SACAP) in 2000. The Libraries’ profile for the program focuses heavily on religious texts in Sanskrit and Tibetan, Telugu literature, and English-language texts on South Asian history and religious traditions. Emory receives 53 South Asian journals as a participant in SACAP. Many other journals are available through the Libraries’ subscriptions to aggregators that provide electronic journal packages. Aside from SACAP, Emory also acquires titles from other vendors, through acquisitions trips to South Asia, and gifts to the Libraries.
Jewish Studies is the multidisciplinary field dedicated to the study of the Jewish Diaspora and Israel (past and present). In addition to scrutinizing the religious-literary-legal heritage of Jewish communities and individuals across geographical regions, it explores and produces an ever-growing circle of literary, scholarly, and artistic resources written in multiple languages and developed in multiple formats, that is in conversation with the rich Jewish intellectual and cultural heritage and with sources from outside the realm of Jewish studies.
The resources supporting study and research in Jewish Studies at Emory reach beyond the categories of Judaica (traditionally understood Jewish literature closely related to the study of Judaism) and Hebraica (sources related to the cultivation of the Hebrew language and sources, scriptural sources included). This guide focuses on Jewish Studies-related works pertaining to Jewish experiences, cultures, thought, religiosity, and creativity, often explored within broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Part of the works listed here explore Jewish lives and consciousness and Judaism as their primary scope of study. Also mentioned here are items that articulate and promote Jewish agency and Jewish voices. Items described as related tangentially or not exclusively contribute to Jewish Studies. Works on traditional anti-Judaism or Jew-hatred and antisemitism, the modern, racialized sentiment and political movement targeting Jews, as well as the Holocaust are also included in this library guide for their importance in shaping Jewish thought, experience, and religiosity throughout the centuries.
The collection, integrated into Emory’s holdings, illustrates that, by participating in the scholarly explorations of Emory’s various departments and colleges, faculty members and students at Emory continue to broaden the scope of the modern academic field of Jewish Studies that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century.
The collection is currently estimated to include about 90,000 items housed in different library units: the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Pitts Theological Library, and the Law Library. It is comprised of physical and electronic resources, archival materials and rare books, music and oral history recordings, DVDs, and more, widely ranging in genre, language, geographical origin, and age. From an early modern Middle Eastern Torah scroll, through the first printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, the papers of the civil rights activist Atlanta religious leader, Rabbi Jacob M. Rothchild, Yemenite and Bukharan Jewish music recordings and recent Israeli movies, these records enrich and entertain the whole Emory community and visitors alike, while directly supporting the work of the TAM Institute for Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel. Some of the resources are available in digital form to non-Emory affiliates via the Emory Digital Collections. Likewise, the Holocaust Denial on Trial online project offers unique resources on the David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt trial and Holocaust denial.
For more information, please visit the Jewish Studies Research Guide.
Woodruff Library’s Japanese and Korean Studies materials have gradually been added to the collection to support the research and teaching needs of faculty in the East Asian Studies Program. Emory’s Japanese Studies program started in 1991, and courses in Korean language were first offered in 2007. These collections continue to evolve based on faculty and student needs across programs.
The strengths of the Japanese Studies collection align with the research interests of current and past faculty, and are largely found in Japanese culture, history and literature. Specific strengths include: history of the early modern and modern (especially the Edo/Meiji) periods, with a focus on international relations; haiku; twentieth-century women’s writings, both fictional and non-fictional; feminism; and education. The library also has extensive holdings in Japanese language and linguistics and a substantial collection of manga, as well as feature-length Japanese films. The Korean Studies collection, being established much more recently and therefore significantly smaller, focuses primarily on the Korean language, though materials continue to be added in the areas of political and social movements and popular culture.
Holdings of print journals in Japanese and Korean Studies deal with literature, political science, religion, economics, and the arts. Emory subscribes to Japanese electronic databases of reference texts, article indexes, and newspaper archives; English-language articles relevant to Japanese and Korean Studies can also be found in larger integrated databases such as JSTOR.
The Latin American & Caribbean collections of Emory University Libraries originally developed in support of the Spanish Department. Emory hired its first dedicated Latin American & Caribbean Studies bibliographer in 2001. This dedicated position is principally responsible for the fields of Latin American history and Iberian & Latin American literatures and languages. The collections also support the undergraduate and doctoral programs of a number of departments, most notably: Anthropology, Political Science, Art History, French, English, Comparative Literature, and Religion. Other departments and schools are users of the collection, these include: Music, Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies, Sociology, Environmental Studies, Public Health, and the Gozuieta Business School.
The Latin American & Caribbean Studies collections strongest holdings are for Latin American literature and Latin American history. Other traditional strengths of the collections are the Rio de la Plata region, slavery and the African presence in Latin America, as well as materials on Jewish Latin America. Since 2000, Emory has made a commitment to substantially increase the size of its Brazilian holdings. A more recent emphasis is collecting materials from Mexico especially concerning history of the colonial period and works on indigenous peoples. The Caribbean region (Spanish, English and French speaking nations) continues to be of importance for the collection. The film & video holdings are another strength of the collection totaling at least 2500 items (films and documentaries).
The Middle East and Islamic Collection at Emory University mainly support students and faculties in the Middle East and Islamic Studies Department whose areas of expertise include archeology, anthropology, gender studies, history, linguistics, literature, and religion. the study of the region integrally, focusing on historical, cultural, linguistic, and religious continuities from the Ancient Mediterranean and Indo-Pakistani sub-continent, through the Islamic period up to the present day in the fields of language studies, Islamic studies, history, and literature. In addition, the materials are mostly in Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu.
To support Emory's Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program (REEES), Emory Libraries collect important English language materials as well as some resources in other European languages including journals and media. The library first had a subject librarian for REEES in the 1980's.
Emory library began collecting Russian language materials more intensively in the 1980's with the establishment of an approval plan. The approval plan with MIPP International covers history, politics, international relations, sociology, communication, language and linguistics, literature, film studies, philosophy, religion, gender studies, and art and architecture and books published in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other regions of Russia and former Soviet Union. In the 1980's the libraries purchased and processed a large collection of retrospective materials including serial back files to fill in gaps from the 1960's and 1970's.
The collection is currently estimated to include more than 50,000 titles.