ENGL 101: Men, S. (Fall 2025) - Autoethnography Project: Documentaries and Streaming Videos
Context
Context and Connections: For your Annotated Bibliography assignment and Autoethnography Essay, your research should include at least 3 sources, which must be scholarly sources from the TCC library databases. This could include documentaries and streaming videos! You have success to many interviews and documentaries via the streaming video library databases, which also have built-in citation tools!
Why use video/multimedia in your research?
Why Use Audio or Video Sources?
They can help provide the following:
- They can be valid sources for research
- They can give you a visual and emotional understanding of your topic
- They can allow you to hear important talks or lectures at your own convenience
- They can provide authentic, first-hand accounts of events from participants or witnesses in the film
- They are great for presentations you must give in front of a class - keep your audience interested and engaged!
- They need to be evaluated to determine if they are of good quality
Sample videos to explore - Identity topics and voices
Video: Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond
PBS, 2023, via the Films on Demand library database. This series focuses on the complexities of Asian American experiences.
Video: 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed
HBO, 2023, via Films on Demand library database. Filmmaker and comedian W. Kamau Bell tackles the joys and challenges of growing up mixed-race through conversations with kids and families.
TED Talks - Identity topic
Video playlists and TED Talks on the topic of identity. Titles include: Jioji Ravulo's "A Liberating Vision of Identity that Transcends Labels," Channing Gerard Joseph's "How Black Queer Culture Shaped History," Olivia Vinckier's "A Colorful Case for Outside-the-Box Thinking on Identity," and more!
TED Talks - Race topic
Video playlists and TED Talks on the topic of race. Titles include: Tavares Strachan's "The Encyclopedia of Invisibility - A Home for Lost Stories," Mena Fombo's "No. You Cannot Touch My Hair!," Tina Yong's "The Rise of the 'Trauma Essay' in College Applications," and more!
Video playlist: Crash Couse Sociology
40+ video playlist of sociology topics created for college level curriculum, each video ~10 mins. Titles include: Dubois & Race Conflict (#8), The Impacts of Social Class (#25), Theories of Gender (#33), Race & Ethnicity (#34), and more!
How to search for documentaries and streaming videos
Streaming Video Databases
These video databases from the TCC Library include interviews, documentaries, and more! Video databases also have citation help to help you cite these multimedia sources.
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Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Over 20,000 streaming videos appropriate for academic research. Videos can be watched in their entirety, or as individual segments. -
Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Over 67,000 videos covering a wide variety of subject areas. Programs include documentaries, interviews, performances, news, raw footage, and archival materials. Also includes The PBS Video Collection of over 600 titles.
Online Video Sites
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Browse TED Talks"TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages."
Sample search in Films on Demand:
- Type your keywords into the top search box -- keep it simple!
- You can narrow down the results by subject, specific types of films, publication date, and more.
- Click on the title of the full video/segment to watch the film
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Tools for Watching and Citing a Video from Films on Demand
Once you click on a title to watch the video, you have some tools and viewing options, including:
- View the transcript (to help copy-and-paste any direct quotes into your paper or assignment!) or click on segments to narrow down to specific parts of the full video.
- Cite the video, which provides sample citations for MLA, APA, and Chicago citation styles!
- Read the brief description to see if it may be relevant for your topic
- Review the details to help evaluate the source, including the producer, copyright date, and type of video.
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