Intersections Working Group presents a Book Club Meeting of: Reading for Reform; The Social Work of Literature in the Progressive Era by Laura R. Fisher 

An unprecedented examination of class-bridging reform and U.S. literary history at the turn of the twentieth century

Reading for Reform rewrites the literary history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America, putting social reform institutions at the center of literary and cultural analysis. It tells a new story about the fate of literary practice, and the idea of literature’s practical value, during the very years that modernist authors were proclaiming art’s autonomy from concepts of social utility.