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World History by Topic: Home

How to Use this Guide

This guide provides tips and links to help you with your world history research, when that history is more focused on a topic, than bound by time or place.


The tabs at left list links (for online resources) and call numbers (for print resources) that you might find useful.

The Library Research Strategies page gives a quick overview on how to do library research.

The topics of history (or areas of research focus) covered on this guide are:

▪ Commerce, Commodities & Material Culture
▪ Empires, Borderlands & their Legacies
▪ Gender & Sexualities
▪ Public History
▪ History of Public Policy
▪ Race & Ethnicity
▪ Religion, Culture & Society
▪ Science & Technology

Each topic tab has lists of links (for online resources) and call numbers (for print resources) that you may find useful for your research.  There are lists of Background & Reference Information Sources, as well as Primary Source resources, Scholarly Article Sources, and other sources of information that you can access in the UCSB Library and via its online resource links.

Related History Research Guides

While this guide focuses specifically on world history by topic (or research focus), the UCSB Library has related history research guides for: 
You may need to consult more than one of these guides to locate the information resources that best cover your topic.

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543.

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543.

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543.
Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0

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