Elizabeth McHenry, 1998–1999

Fellowship Work Summary

Elizabeth McHenry completed her book Forgotten Readers: African-American Literary Societies, 1830-1940, and wrote a chapter entitled “Reading and Race Pride: The Literary Activism of Black Clubwomen,” for volume 4 of A History of the Book in America, edited by Janice Radway and Carl Kaestle (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). She lectured on “Why Black Readers Matter,” at the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke University, and on “Rereading Literary Legacy: Reconsiderations of Nineteenth-Century African-American Readers and Writers,” at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and gave a talk for a Friends of the Center luncheon, on African-American literary societies and the history of black readers in the United States.