Virginia M. Burke

Virginia M. Burke (May 19, 1916 – 1978) was a pioneering scholar of composition and Black literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was a previous president of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English. Burke expressed She served on the advisory board of the Black American Literature Forum. and works on writing program administration (The Lay Reader Program in Action, The Lay Reader Program: Backgrounds and Procedures, "A Candid Opinion on Lay Readers").

Because English teachers were often charged with teaching dialect to minorities in the 1950s, Burke also engaged in work respecting African-American Vernacular English. These works include Burke's co-authored "Research Critiques: Review of Problems in Oral English," reviews on dialectology books, and A Various Language: Perspectives on American Dialects (co-written with Juanita V. Williamson).

Burke also promoted diversifying the readings students were exposed to in literature courses. Her articles on the subject include "Pupils and Books," "Black Literature for Whom?", "Mummy Didn't Mean No Harm," and "The Veil and the Vision." She also encouraged studies of Zora Neale Hurston. See "Zora Neale Hurston and Fannie Hurst as They Saw Each Other" and her review of Robert Hemenway and Alice Walker's Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography).