Laura R. Fisher is associate professor of English at Ryerson University.

"At once richly archival and theoretically nuanced, Reading for Reform investigates a neglected period of U.S. literary history by exploring how settlement houses, working girls’ clubs, and African American colleges influenced the era’s fiction. It is necessary reading for any student of Progressive Era literature and print culture."-Mary Chapman, author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism"Reading for Reform is an extraordinary exploration not only of the possibility but also the limits of empathy. Arguing that Progressive Era reform institutions took reading literature to be instrumental, not merely persuasive, Laura R. Fisher suggests that negative reactions to this task-oriented idea about reading paved the way for new modes of storytelling in subsequent decades."-Brad Evans, Rutgers University"Elegantly written, Reading for Reform breaks important new ground in United States literary studies, contributing to vital contemporary conversations about labor, class, working-class women’s literary cultures, and U.S. literary aesthetics. Laura R. Fisher carefully examines the role of Progressive Era institutions in authorizing certain forms of literary expression and offers richly detailed case studies of how particular reform institutions generate versions of the ‘literary’ and uphold distinctions in the literary field. It is a revisionist work of fine-grained literary history of a very high quality."-Lori Merish, author of Archives of Labor: Working-Class Women and Literary Culture in the Antebellum

• ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Proximity1. Sites of Contact: The Settlement House2. The Problem with Comparison: The Working Girls’ Club3. Correlation and Conformity: From the African American College to the Harlem Renaissance4. Forms of Mediation: Undercover LiteratureCoda: Twenty-First Century AfterlivesAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Laura R. Fisher is associate professor of English at Ryerson University.

"At once richly archival and theoretically nuanced, Reading for Reform investigates a neglected period of U.S. literary history by exploring how settlement houses, working girls’ clubs, and African American colleges influenced the era’s fiction. It is necessary reading for any student of Progressive Era literature and print culture."-Mary Chapman, author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism"Reading for Reform is an extraordinary exploration not only of the possibility but also the limits of empathy. Arguing that Progressive Era reform institutions took reading literature to be instrumental, not merely persuasive, Laura R. Fisher suggests that negative reactions to this task-oriented idea about reading paved the way for new modes of storytelling in subsequent decades."-Brad Evans, Rutgers University"Elegantly written, Reading for Reform breaks important new ground in United States literary studies, contributing to vital contemporary conversations about labor, class, working-class women’s literary cultures, and U.S. literary aesthetics. Laura R. Fisher carefully examines the role of Progressive Era institutions in authorizing certain forms of literary expression and offers richly detailed case studies of how particular reform institutions generate versions of the ‘literary’ and uphold distinctions in the literary field. It is a revisionist work of fine-grained literary history of a very high quality."-Lori Merish, author of Archives of Labor: Working-Class Women and Literary Culture in the Antebellum

• ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Proximity1. Sites of Contact: The Settlement House2. The Problem with Comparison: The Working Girls’ Club3. Correlation and Conformity: From the African American College to the Harlem Renaissance4. Forms of Mediation: Undercover LiteratureCoda: Twenty-First Century AfterlivesAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Laura R. Fisher is associate professor of English at Ryerson University.

"At once richly archival and theoretically nuanced, Reading for Reform investigates a neglected period of U.S. literary history by exploring how settlement houses, working girls’ clubs, and African American colleges influenced the era’s fiction. It is necessary reading for any student of Progressive Era literature and print culture."-Mary Chapman, author of Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism"Reading for Reform is an extraordinary exploration not only of the possibility but also the limits of empathy. Arguing that Progressive Era reform institutions took reading literature to be instrumental, not merely persuasive, Laura R. Fisher suggests that negative reactions to this task-oriented idea about reading paved the way for new modes of storytelling in subsequent decades."-Brad Evans, Rutgers University"Elegantly written, Reading for Reform breaks important new ground in United States literary studies, contributing to vital contemporary conversations about labor, class, working-class women’s literary cultures, and U.S. literary aesthetics. Laura R. Fisher carefully examines the role of Progressive Era institutions in authorizing certain forms of literary expression and offers richly detailed case studies of how particular reform institutions generate versions of the ‘literary’ and uphold distinctions in the literary field. It is a revisionist work of fine-grained literary history of a very high quality."-Lori Merish, author of Archives of Labor: Working-Class Women and Literary Culture in the Antebellum

• ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Proximity1. Sites of Contact: The Settlement House2. The Problem with Comparison: The Working Girls’ Club3. Correlation and Conformity: From the African American College to the Harlem Renaissance4. Forms of Mediation: Undercover LiteratureCoda: Twenty-First Century AfterlivesAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex