A Bibliography

All of the items on this bibliography include accounts of teaching and learning under teachers.

Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson" (1972).
Story of a teacher who takes a group of Black children to F.A.O. Schwartz. Told from a child's viewpoint. Explores issues of class and race as well as pedagogy.

Jay S. Blanchard & Ursula Casanova, Modern Fiction About School Teaching: An Anthology (1996).
Collection of short stories about teachers, largely elementary school teachers.

Wayne C. Booth, The Vocation of a Teacher: Rhetorical Occasions 1967-88 (1988).
Collection of essays including excerpts from the journal Booth kept over fifteen years of teaching.

Robert Coles, "Stories and Theories," in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (1989).
Coles' reflections on learning with two different professors during his residency in psychiatry.

Jill Ker Conway, True North (1994).
Autobiography of Conway's graduate studies at Harvard, her teaching and move into administration at Univ. of Toronto; ends with her acceptance of the Smith College Presidency.

Kevin Coyne, Domers (1996).
Exploration of Notre Dame.

Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway (1993).
Goldberg's spiritual/writing journey; includes stories about her Zen teachers and her experiences teaching elementary school.

Rebecca Goldstein, The Late Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989).
Novel about the relationship of a philosophy professor at a small college with a student; explores "the conflicting claims of reason and desire" (from the jacket).

Gail B. Griffin, Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue (1992).
Collection of sensitive and insightful reflections on teaching at a small liberal arts college (Kalamazoo College, Michigan). Focus is the woman teacher, students' needs today, new/young faculty needs and experiences, college politics (saga of designing and winning approval for a Women's Studies program).

Alan Isler, Kraven Images (1996).
Comic novel where shy Brit Nicholas Kraven assumes his libertine cousin's position teaching at Mosholu College in the Bronx. Set in the 70s. Political and personal intrigue.

Alice Kaplan, French Lessons: A Memoir (1993).
Essays on Kaplan's journey from childhood through graduate school learning and teaching French. "A rare and moving evocation of what it feels like--and what it means--to fall in love with a language not one's own" (from the jacket). Kaplan teaches French at Duke University.

Peter Kluge, Alma Mater (1995).
A writer 's reflections on teaching creative writing and literature for a year at Kenyon College, living in the dormitory. Extensive interviews with professors, administrators; in depth discussions of teaching, politics, today's students, changes in the academy, etc.

Leo E. Litwak, "The Eleventh Edition" (O. Henry Award, 1990).
Relation of school, as represented by a particular professor, to life.

David Lodge, Changing Places (1979).
Novel where British and American (California) professors each teach for a year at the other's school. A bit dated but insightful and amusing on cultural differences, dept. politics, teachers' personal lives.

Bernard Malamud, A New Life (1961).
New Yorker Sy Levin's encounters with academic and sexual intrigue teaching at a small college in the Pacific Northwest. Novel of life, politics, heroism in academe.

Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe (1951).
A satiric view of a small experimental college staffed by liberal intellectuals. (See also The Group, 1962, a novel probing a teacher's influence on a small group of students.

Michael Moffatt, Coming of Age in New Jersey (1989).
Sociologist studies students' campus lives.

Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (1993).
Spiritual inquiry; includes stories of Norris's teaching poetry in elementary schools and of monks as her teachers. (See also Cloistered Walk, 1996.)

Joyce Carol Oates, "In the Region of Ice" (1965).
Story of a nun who's a professor teaching Shakespeare to an unusual student. Issues of teacher's responsibility to/for a student.

Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes To College ( l 996).
A journalist-turned-teacher's discoveries and attempts to grapple with community college students in the post-modern age. Not a scholarly analysis, but provocative.

May Sarton, The Small Room (1961).
Novel of Lucy Winter's first year teaching at a New England women's college; focuses on issues of academic honesty and teachers' relationships with students. A novel "that takes seriously the drive toward intellectual excellence and perceptively explores the many shaded consequences of that commitment" (from the jacket).

Jane Tompkins, A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned (1996).
Tompkins' reflections on her experiences as student and teacher and her work outside the academy, as a basis for calling for a more holistic approach to education. Tompkins is author of "Pedagogy of the Distressed," teaches English at Duke University.

Marianna de Marco Torgovnick, "The College Way" in Crossing Ocean Parkway (1994).
Torgovnick's reflections on cultural difference and feminist issues in her first teaching job, at a liberal arts college.

Scott Turow, One-L (1988).
Turow's journal of his first year at Harvard Law. Focus is on demands of learning "legal"; includes teacher stories.