E. Jennifer Monaghan

E. Jennifer Monaghan is both an experienced educator of reading and writing and an award-winning historian. She is generally regarded as the leading expert on literacy education in early America. She has published widely on the history of reading. with three books and dozens of book chapters and journal articles. In an interview with Richard Robinson (1990), Dr. Monaghan explained why she believed it is important to study the history of reading. “Looking at the history of a subject gives us a perspective that no other approach can offer," she said. "It prevents us from falsifying the past, whether by romanticizing it or downgrading it unfairly.”