ABSTRACT
This chapter examines antecedents to the scholarship represented in Women and Literacy. It explores how contributors treat the rewards of literacy, comparing accounts of emotional and material change. The chapter provides a comparative analysis of our authors' treatment of major issues in literacy studies: economy, technology, language, geography, and politics. Then the chapter briefly looks at how Logan, Royster, and Gere situate women in relation to literacy before turning to consider how Miller implicates literacy in the formation of gender. Rather, the effort must be about putting diverse representations of women's literate practice on display so that we can begin to understand how literacy rewards women and what it costs them. Examinations of women’s literacy in Central and South America seem to us to be of crucial importance.
