This paper is an overview of a variety of results, all centered around a common theme, namely embedding of non-classical logics into first order logic and resolution theorem proving. We present several classes of non-classical logics, many of which are of great practical relevance in knowledge representation, which can be translated into tractable and relatively simple fragments of classical logic. In this context, we show that refinements of resolution can often be used successfully for automated theorem proving, and in many interesting cases yield optimal decision procedures