Girls and Literacy in America

An exploration of the fascinating and controversial history of girls' education in America from the colonial era to the computer age.

Girls and Literacy in America offers a tour of opportunities, obstacles, and achievements in girls' education from the limited possibilities of colonial days to the wide-open potential of the Internet generation.

Six essays, written by historians and focused on particular historical periods, examine the extensive range of girls' literacies in both educational and extracurricular settings. Girls from various ethnic and racial backgrounds, social classes, religions, and geographic areas of the nation are included. A host of primary documents, including such items as an 18th century hornbook to excerpts from girls' "conversations" in Internet chat rooms allow readers an opportunity to evaluate for themselves some of the materials mentioned in the volume's opening essays. And finally, an extensive bibliography will be invaluable to students expected to conduct more extensive primary research.



Contributors are experts on literacy including E. Jennifer Monaghan (Brooklyn College), Amy Goodburn (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), and Andrea A. Lunsford (Stanford University)

Primary documents printed in full or excerpted include diaries, letters, school assignments, newspaper advice columns, short stories, and poems, all targeted to or written by girls

A chronology of the reading and writing done by girls is presented in six essays beginning in the colonial period and ending in the 21st century

An extensive bibliography includes archival holdings, secondary scholarship, and online resources