Prospects for the Study of Anna Julia Cooper

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anna Julia Cooper was one of the most prolific and active advocates for social justice and racial and gender equality from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. Her most well-known work, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South (1892), marks a vital contribution to black women's intellectual history, philosophical thought and social theory, educational policy and pedagogy, and literary criticism. This essay outlines critical analyses of this text while suggesting new approaches and areas for scholarly investigation. From recontextualizing Cooper as a Southern writer, to considering her much wider oeuvre, to contextualizing the process through which Cooper's writings were both preserved and passed down by black critics, bibliographers, and historians, as well as suppressed and obscured by a pernicious race and gender politics, this essay maps areas of critical engagement that can advance the future of Cooper studies.