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Foreword by Wayne C. Booth
"The authors steadily relate challenging theoretical issues to pedagogical issues of the most threatening kind: how to turn nonreaders into responsible, critical readers; how to deal with the overwhelming range of abilities and interests and cultural backgrounds of present-day students; how to move students from where they are to where the teacher is, without turning ‘where the teacher is’ into a dogmatic and destructively elitist platform. . . . Rabinowitz and Smith teach me just how many of my assumptions and practices have been questionable and how much I still have to learn about a challenging, immensely difficult profession that in my (dogmatic) view is unsurpassed in its importance."
—From the Foreword
Authorizing Readers: Resistance and Respect in the Teaching of Literature is a provocative conversation between co-authors that brings to life the symbiotic relationship between theory and practice. This unique collaboration between a literary critic/college professor (Peter J. Rabinowitz) and a high school English teacher/education professor (Michael W. Smith) provides readers with a rich discussion of a central paradox faced by literature teachers: Can teachers claim to have taught well if their students have not learned to recognize (and respect) the ways authors expect them to read? But at the same time, shouldn’t students be taught the critical skills of resisting both what authors expect and what teachers see as the right reading? Though each of the authors has a somewhat different view, Rabinowitz and Smith show that what they call "authorial reading" is not only compatible with, but even essential to, progressive teaching and truly engaged readers.
