Rockford alumna Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940) may be one of America’s most important under-studied figures of the early 20th Century. Side by side with her lifelong friend, alumna and Nobel Laureate, Jane Addams (1860-1935), she co-founded Chicago’s famous Hull-House. Part of this story is her role as an articulate conveyor of ideas, both directions, between the Progressive Midwest and the Britain of the Suffrage Movement, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Social Gospel and Modern literary circles. Dr. Annie Storr is a Resident Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Research Study Center and teaches Gallery-Based Teaching and Learning in the Museum Studies Program at Harvard.