system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do you find articles talking about specific things when writing essays?

I've always had difficulty when writing papers because of the fact that most of my knowledge is built on the reading we are given, so when it comes to write an essay for a class, I am at a loss to write about besides just reiterating what the reading says in my own words. This seems sophomoric at best.

I want to broaden my horizons when I write papers, look at things in a way the readings for my class have not considered. For example, I am writing a paper on Confucianism and Guanxi, our reading that dealt with that specific topic was few and far between. Hence, I don't have very much to talk about, even though it is a topic that interests me very much.

I figure will be many papers on this topic, but I wouldn't know where to start. Any advice?
gpt
So there is the direct method: go to your library's website, under "databases" you'll find The Philosopher's Index. Put your search terms in there.

The other method is to look at your readings / relevant SEP articles and examine the citations found there. This is probably your best place to start: the stuff cited in SEP articles / the articles you're reading are those most likely to be relevant to your subject.