History and Hopes—Life writing Pedagogy in the twenty-first Century

However hard we may try to distinguish between what we teach, how we teach it, and why, paying close attention to pedagogy always results in adding, abandoning, blending, and adjusting as we respond and rededicate ourselves to all the task’s demands over time. As scholars, instructors, and students of life writing, addressing the three fundamental teaching questions poses further challenges, since our own lives, and the lives of others, are often quite literally at stake. In this afterword, I will offer some thoughts about what has happened to what we teach and how we teach it, then suggest in some detail why this collection of essays can inspire and direct us, largely because of the contributors’ shared commitment to life writing pedagogy as an important, and currently even necessary, concern.