Taught by Literature's New Website Launches

The Taught by Literature project has a new website full of interesting content that Villanova students, both undergraduate and graduate, have helped produce.

Founded in 2021 and funded by the Idol Family Fellows Program of the McNulty Center for Women’s Leadership at Villanova, the Taught by Literature Project honors the legacy of Black author, educator, and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935). In partnership with the University of Delaware’s Department of Special Collections, the project is producing a freely accessible digital edition of “The Annals of ‘Steenth Street,” a short-story collection Dunbar-Nelson wrote based on her work teaching Black children at the White Rose Mission in New York City in the 1890s. The project also conducts professional development training on early Black women writers for teachers in the School District of Philadelphia, and is collaborating with award-winning producer and director Hezekiah Lewis, a Communication professor at Villanova, to produce short videos featuring contemporary Black women scholars reading speeches written by nineteenth-century Black women. 

The project’s co-founders are Denise Burgher, senior team leader for curriculum and community engagement with the Colored Conventions Project and co-director of Douglass Day at the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State; Brigitte Fielder, associate professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Jean Lutes, Luckow Family Endowed Chair of English Literature, Villanova University.

Since 2021 the project has employed a graduate assistant (currently Matt Villanueva, MA '24). Prospective students interested specifically in the Taught by Literature assistantship are encouraged to mention the project in their personal statements.

You can read more YAWP coverage about the Taught by Literature project here and here.

Portrait of Alice Dunbar-Nelson by Shadra Strickland