Rethinking Emilie Francis Davis: Lesson Plans for Teaching Her Civil War Pocket Diaries

The Rethinking Emilie Frances Davis companion reader is a supplemental curriculum guide that expands the work on Emilie Davis that was started in the award-winning book Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis (USC Press, May 2014) written by Karsonya Wise Whitehead. Curriculum designers from a range of content areas and grade levels offer common core aligned lesson plan sets for middle, high school, and college students that outline the scope and sequence and frame the organization of activities and assignments in a coherent fashion. Edited by Whitehead and Conra Gist, the reader includes Whitehead’s article-Forensic Herstor-ical Investigation: Redefining Emilie-which analyzes Whitehead’s method of active engagement, close reading, and archival research; and, Gist’s article-A Black Feminist Interpretation: Reading Life, Pedagogy, and Emilie-that uses a black feminist lens to explore the life of Emilie Davis. The user-friendly design of the book allows Davis’s life to be viewed through a transdisciplinary lens enabling teachers to work both across disciplines and beyond their own discipline to help students connect to the life of a 19th century free black woman.