This article examines the role, meaning, and practice of letter writing in the lives of two Finnish girls during the Second World War (WWII). We use a particular set of letters (N = 41) from the wartime letter collection kept in the Tampere University Folklife Archives and argue that they give us an interesting perspective on not only the girls'…

In this paper the author looks at the letters of two renowned women mathematicians and scientists of the Victorian period, Mary Somerville and Ada Lovelace, while also considering the imperceptibility of Sophie Germain, an important French mathematician and philosopher in their epistolary exchanges and philosophical writings. Drawing on the…

Heeding Gloria Anzaldúa's (2012) call to cultivate, "new theories with new theorizing methods," this article articulates the contours of a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis (CRFEP). CRFEP, a writing-based methodological intervention nestled within anti-racist and social justice traditions, fosters opportunities for Women of Color…

"Pieces of Magic" is a letter examining the three coincidences that resulted in a 20-year friendship between UK-based Trisha Lee (author of Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories) and Chicago-based Vivian Gussin Paley. From letters to meeting face to face in both the United States and the United Kingdom, Trisha talks about the many…

Migration and global displacement of populations in Latin America and the Caribbean have increased US Latinxs intergroup diversity, propelling fields like Chicanx Studies and Latinx Studies (CSLS) to question the taken-for-granted homogeneity of Latinidad and Chicanismo. Inter-group oppression within these imagined collectives has also shed light…

In October 2022, New Brunswick Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development Dominic Cardy publicly resigned and widely disclosed his disappointment with Premier Blaine Higgs' leadership. Using Cardy's unprecedented public resignation letter as a primary source, this paper explores the inner workings of neoliberal governance and…

There is a need for intervention to support friendship for people living with aphasia. The purpose of this article is to describe a stakeholder engagement process that involved researchers, clinicians, people living with aphasia, and care partners to inform such intervention. Through reflection and firsthand accounts of non-university-based…

Drawing from a network case study, this article traces enactments of a letter writing enquiry in one Kindergarten public school classroom in New York City, and in doing so, explores both the affordances and limitations of sociomaterial approaches employed by the researcher towards school literacies. Looking down at one morning meeting revealed…

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) was an English educationist, artist, philanthropist, and feminist. Her personal correspondence is quite extensive, containing letters exchanged with her family, friends, and acquaintances. The bulk of her epistolary archive though consists of letters sent to her. Instead of viewing this fragmentation and…

As preparation for the rhetoric and composition job market becomes more readily available through multiple sources, some cover letter writers may need clarification on the well-meaning but perhaps conflicting responses to writing given to them by mentors from differing backgrounds, statuses, and epistemes. This article seeks to illuminate the…

In this paper, we utilize poetic methods that seek to surface, but not overdetermine, the unanticipated relational excess produced through literacy practices. Karen, a queer white woman, and Jordan, a cis-gendered heterosexual Black man, wrote a series of letters to one another throughout the Spring 2020 semester. We turned to critical poetic…

This article focuses on the concept of "letter" in oral folklore. The main research material is examples from the older folk songs of Seto, where a letter, a book and other items referring to literacy are mentioned. Texts under consideration are poetical and the meaning conveyed in them is not always very clear. The term…

In 2018, New America partnered with uAspire, a nonprofit focused on college access and affordability, to review thousands of financial aid offers from over 500 colleges and universities. The resulting report, "Decoding the Cost of College: The Case for Transparent Financial Aid Award Letters," recommended several minimum bars financial…

Education in Japan has drawn attention widely from overseas, including a quantity of research pointing out that the context of Japan's modernization and its present-day advanced science and technology can be found in the high literacy rates and prevalent education of Japanese society. However, there has been insufficient examination of the effect…

This paper explores the narrative process identified in the Whitehorn Letters, written by Doris Lessing from 1944 to 1949, as historical documents that form a single, coherent whole. Their significance is assessed by means of an epistemological reflection that sheds light on the path by which the young Lessing established her identity as an author…