Through an account of how his own students analyzed Ira Sher's short story "The Man in the Well," the author calls for teachers of literature to value and attend to their classes' misreadings rather than replace them with corrective interpretations. He argues that probing these misreadings enables one to see the limits imposed by any single…

The dogma that art is beyond politics has cut off literary criticism from the full activities of our culture. (JH)

The only way English teachers and their students can have an appreciation for literature by black writers is to have appreciation for the writers themselves and for the world, past and present, they occupy. (MM)

Considers how the arrival of "Twentieth-Century Literature" is exciting because it produces not a dead object but a newly live one, one that is just coming into being and whose final shape we can only guess. Presents seven educators' opinions of what "Twentieth-Century Literature" will be. (SG)

A paper presented at convention of National Council of Teachers of English (Washington, D.C., November 28, 1969) and a shortened version of the final chapter of With Respect to Readers." (Author/RD)

Includes a comment by Ann Berthoff on Ross Winterowd's "The Purification of Literature and Rhetoric," with a response by Winterowd. Also includes Jeanie C. Crain's comment on "The Wyoming Conference Resolution: Opposing Unfair Salaries and Working Conditions for Post-Secondary Teachers of Writing." (MM)