Literacy Heroines

Alice S. Horning is Professor Emerita of Writing & Rhetoric/Linguistics at Oakland University, where she focused on the intersection of reading and writing. Her most recent work is the co-edited Teaching Critical Reading and Writing in the Era of Fake News, published by Peter Lang (with Ellen Carillo). She is the editor of the Studies in Composition and Rhetoric book series for Peter Lang.

“Alice Horning has produced a volume that carefully highlights the critical roles twelve American women from the late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth century played as ‘literacy heroines,’ using their exceptional reading and writing abilities to enhance the skills of their own cultural contemporaries. Horning, a specialist in literacy, reading, and writing, explains how these already accomplished women, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary McLeod Bethune, Sarah Winnemucca, Jane Addams, Gertrude Buck, and Ida Wells-Barnett, drew on their literacy to develop self-improvement in others and social justice for all. These critical goals are both pertinent—and indeed urgent—today.”—Shirley Wilson Logan, Professor Emerita, University of Maryland

• List of Illustrations – Acknowledgments – Introduction – Educators – Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955) and Schooling for African American Girls – Gertrude Buck (1871–1922) and Rhetorical Theory and Practice – Cora Wilson Stewart (1875–1958) and the Moonlight Schools – Sarah Winnemucca (1844–1891) and Native American Civil Rights – Activists – Jane Addams (1860–1935) and Hull-House – Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) and the NAACP – Lillian Wald (1867–1940) and the Henry Street Settlement – Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931), Social Justice and the Antilynching Movement – Writers – Nella Larsen (1891–1964) and the Harlem Renaissance – Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924) and the Woman’s Era – Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Ida Tarbell (1857– 1944) and the Muckrakers – Lessons and Conclusions – Index.