ABSTRACT
Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins' Megda and Four Girls at Cottage City and Pauline Hopkins' Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South—convenes a group of women, disperses them, and reorganizes them. This chapter argues that modes of teaching and learning align and direct the communities of women, whether it is because school has brought the women together or because friendships take on a quality of intimate, mutual mentorship. It demonstrates how allegiance to such a community figures one's relationship to the nation. Kelley-Hawkins' and Hopkins' communities of women realign traditional pedagogical relations and sources of authority, and they ultimately reconfigure economic, social, and cultural relationships to and within the nation. Both Kelley-Hawkins and Hopkins, however, are clearly dedicated to teaching a readership about morals, intellect, and a certain brand of women's empowerment. Kelley-Hawkins' work also overlaps with the popular Progressive Era genre of women's college fiction as well as with women's spiritual fiction.
