The W. W. Norton Composition team sat down with editors of The Norton Reader to discuss its growing legacy at Norton and what instructors can look forward to in the Sixteenth Edition, publishing this summer.
Why do you think The Norton Reader has endured for six decades?
Joseph Bizup: John Brereton, a former editor of The Norton Reader and a wonderful scholar and teacher, used to describe the book as “a liberal education between two covers,” and I think that’s true. Over the years, it has included readings from figures ranging from Aristotle and Gloria Anzaldúa to Zora Neale Hurston and William Zinsser.
As you revise a reader with this much history, how do you balance tradition with keeping things fresh?
Melissa A. Goldthwaite: When we revise every four years, each member of the editorial team provides feedback on what pieces should stay in the collection and which ones we can let go—and why. We also carefully review recommendations from teachers across the country, especially from those who have taught The Norton Reader, and add roughly one-third new readings in each edition.
Anne E. Fernald: It’s also true that we aim, with each revision, to retain—and sometimes bring back—old essays that still matter and to ask ourselves if the new essays speak both to our moment and to a longer sweep of time. Loving the history of the essay as I do, I love thinking about that continuity and working on retaining a sense of tradition while collaborating with my coeditors on making new changes.
JB: Those mainstays themselves are refreshed when placed in the context of newer selections. James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” or Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” take on a new resonance when read alongside Teju Cole’s “Black Body” or Malala Yousafzai’s Nobel speech.
What were some of your goals for the revision of the Sixteenth Edition?
MG: My preparation for this Sixteenth Edition came directly from my experience of teaching during the pandemic. For example, the Sixteenth Edition includes a new chapter “Caring for Self, Caring for Others.” When we entered lockdown, my course goals shifted; I asked students to develop projects in which they identified and researched a problem in their own lives or communities and offered a solution. I did the project with my students, and we worked in online groups to help each other problem-solve. We offered each other ideas and resources. One student sewed masks during the mask shortage; another student worked with a friend to pick up prescriptions for elderly people in his apartment complex; another student learned how to cook, so he could prepare meals for his parents who were both medical professionals working long hours. These projects gave each of us a sense of agency in a time when we felt little control and reminded us that acts of caring for ourselves and caring for others can be connected. After that semester, I started leaving open spaces on my syllabus and asking students to vote on topics that we would explore together. The topics most frequently chosen by my students were mental health and the environment, which we’ve included in the Sixteenth Edition.
AF: The new chapter “Insider Knowledge” speaks to something important to me right now: How, why, and when do we need to turn to an expert? The essays here have a wide-ranging and diverse understanding of what expertise means—whether it’s being a waitress in a diner or studying the way viruses spread and mutate—but they all place value on what it means to become educated in something quite specific.
How do you come up with the new themes for new editions?
MG: We allow themes to emerge from the essays we choose, and consider what is going on in our world, our communities, and our classrooms.
JB: We also pay careful attention to what those who read and use the Reader, especially our teachers, tell us. And, I think we try to have a bit of humility. I know that I’ve suggested ideas for chapters that I thought would be great but that turned out not to be particularly popular with the book’s users. If things aren’t working, we change them. I’m very excited about the way we’ve organized the Sixteenth Edition. We’ve shifted away somewhat from focusing the chapters on specific topics like “Food” or “Sports” and toward creating groupings that emphasize broad, deep, and even sometimes surprising thematic connections among the readings, such as “Body Language” and “Declarations.” I’m very eager to see how students and teachers receive this change, which I hope and expect will spark some exciting class discussions and opportunities for writing.
What’s your favorite reading in The Norton Reader, and why?
MG: I especially admire essays that combine personal narrative, cultural critique, and reflection. Two examples of this type of essay are Scott Russell Sanders’s “Under the Influence” and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “In the Kitchen.” Even though these pieces are older (they’ve been in the book for decades!), the writing—grounded in specific detail and revealing an understanding of the cultures in which the writers developed a sense of self in relation to others—holds up. Contemporary writers can use similar approaches.
JB: I find that I’m most drawn to readings that are sharply written and intellectually challenging, that lead me to new perspectives, and that repay rereading. My favorites are those that have all of these qualities but that also respond to other selections in the Reader, such as Teju Cole’s “Black Body,” which responds to James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village,” or Scott Russell Sanders’s “Hooks Baited with Darkness,” which responds to Thoreau’s “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”
AF: I’ll offer two essays that bring me delight and challenge me. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Nils Bubandt’s “Swimming with Crocodiles” amazes me because it details the process of how we research and think about things we are curious about: they set out to study sea cucumbers and ended up studying crocodile attacks. It’s exciting, a bit scary, and it also details the way writers think. In a different way, Virginia Woolf’s “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid” describes, in tense and suspenseful detail, the challenges of trying to think when your life is in danger.
Why assign The Norton Reader?
MG: In reading, discussing, and writing about essays from The Norton Reader, students become part of a larger conversation, one informed by writers who have lived and written long before them, as well as ones who are writing now and speaking to important current issues. In providing a range of forms, voices, and approaches, The Norton Reader encourages students to enter into these conversations and to practice the kinds of writing and thinking that can help them gain the confidence and skills to make their own voices heard, even as they listen to and learn from others.
The covers of the recent editions have featured original artwork. What do you think about the Sixteenth Edition’s cover art?
MG: The new cover looks a little wilder and more organic than some of the previous ones; in rethinking some of the chapters and reading placements in the Sixteenth Edition, the connections were wilder and more organic too, so the cover fits.
JB: I love it. It’s contemporary while nodding to tradition. In this sense it captures a balance I think we try to maintain in and among the selections in the Reader themselves. I can also see allusions to some of the readings, which will be fun for students to recognize!
AF: To me, it’s an exciting and symbolic cover—like a tarot card or a visual index. It’s fun to try to decipher which essays go with which of the little icons and doodles. I think it invites curiosity.
Visit this link to explore an interactive version of the Sixteenth Edition cover.
Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Ph.D., The Ohio State University), General Editor, is Professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, where she teaches composition, creative writing, and rhetorical theory.
Image Credit: Melissa Goldthwaite
Joseph Bizup (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an Associate Professor of English and former Director of the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University. He previously taught and directed writing programs at Yale University and Columbia University in the City of New York.
Image Credit: Joseph Bizup
Anne E. Fernald (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor of English at Fordham University where she teaches writing, women’s and gender studies, and literature. For more than ten years, she directed first-year writing at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus and then led the Provost’s Office Initiative on Inclusive Pedagogy and Student Engagement.
Image Credit: Olivia Morgan