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  • Guest Editor’s Introduction:Perspectives on a Master Teacher
  • James Phelan (bio)

The public record contains much evidence that Wayne C. Booth was a master teacher. The University of Chicago bestowed upon him its Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1971. Upon his retirement in 1991, Chicago inaugurated a new teaching award and named it for him: the Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. After his retirement, he continued teaching undergraduates, to borrow a phrase from the title of his book about amateur pursuits, "for the love of it." This issue of Pedagogy goes behind that public record to gather the testimony of eight of his students about their experiences with Booth. The result is a compelling and illuminating collection of personal narrative, argument, and analysis that points to the depth and range of Booth's achievements as well as to the overall coherence of his pedagogical commitments. These essays show that Booth cared as much about the how of learning as about the what. That is, he taught not just subject matters such as "intellectual texts," "forms of the novella," and "rhetorical criticism," but also how to ask questions about these subject matters and how to test the quality of one's answers. The essays show that he cared even more about the who of learning—that is, about the intellectual projects and journeys of his students and about the special qualities they could bring to his dialogues with them. Above all, Booth taught the importance of inquiry and of dialogue, of seeking better reasons for one's positions, of never being fully satisfied with one's answers, and of always being open to the challenges of other voices. [End Page 3]

At the same time, the essays testify to the range of ways in which Booth influenced his students, and the diversity of his former students' perspectives is at least as important to our understanding of Booth's achievement as any summary of its coherence. Indeed, it is not possible to do justice in a few sentences to the distinctive emphases and interests of these rich essays, but I offer brief descriptions of each in order to provide a capsule view of this issue. William Monroe offers a compelling narrative of his transformation in Booth's classroom from Intimidated Outsider to Loving (Monroe's deliberate word choice) Convert. Robert D. Denham opens up another aspect of the art of Booth's teaching by focusing on Booth's late writing, including that in an unpublished manuscript called "The Curse of Sincerity," about the related ideas of the self as a field of selves and of hypocrisy upward. Meri-Jane Rochelson provides a revealing glimpse into how her disagreement with Booth about Henry James's novella The Aspern Papers influenced her development as both a critic and a teacher. Marshall Gregory gives an illuminating account of how his teacher-student relationship with Booth evolved first into a professional collaboration and then into a rewarding and valued friendship. Walter A. Davis shows yet another side to Booth as teacher and learner by reviewing his forty-year quarrel with Booth about the first principles of a vital literary criticism. Elizabeth Langland traces Booth's increasing engagement with feminism and feminist criticism over the course of his career and reflects on the difference that engagement made for her own journey from formalism to feminism. My essay details some of my incalculable debt to Booth by reflecting on what I learned by observing his ways of being in the profession. Frederick J. Antczak testifies to the profound influence of Booth's mentoring over almost thirty years, from their first meeting when Antczak was beginning graduate school to a phone call just a few years ago when Antczak was deciding whether to apply to become a dean.

These essays of course represent the experiences of an extremely small fraction of Booth's students, and, although I am sure that they capture elements of his achievement that many others will recognize, I am also sure that the portrait they paint is not complete. Indeed, my own sense of owing Booth an incalculable debt makes me think it could never...

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