Naeem Inayatullah writes beautifully and excises our worlds with a precision and thrill that is rare, offering a perspective on pedagogy that is provocative and disquieting. Inayatullah and his interlocutors throughout lay bare the pretence at the heart of pedagogy and stare unflinching at what is found in, and through, and in the margins of, each encounter. This book is an act of courage, a testimonial, an inspiration – a gift.

Laura J. Shepherd, The University of Sydney

This is the most honest, scorching, humane book about what it’s really like to teach that I have ever read. It somehow manages to be an interrogation of a system and an interrogation of the self, which is what makes it convincing. If you want to be a professor—and by that I mean if you want to know what it means to sit every day with the souls of young people in your hands—read this.

Laura McNeal, National Book Award Finalist

How do we teach and learn? Is teaching an instruction, an activism, or is it an encounter in which both 'teacher' and 'student' learn? In this wonderful book of 120 stories of encounters Naeem Inayatullah restores 'teaching' to a human plane of interaction and discovery.

Stephen Chan, OBE, SOAS University of London

Pedagogy as Encounter is a personal quest for a deeper pedagogy rendered as an act of witnessing. An honest, erudite, and profoundly student-centered work, Inayatullah embraces the range of human behavior in the classroom, including emotions, paradox, discomfort, and spirituality. His innovative method rejects all kinds of political correctness in favor of the openness of each student's encounter with professor, text, and group.

Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University

I think of Inayatullah in this book as our modern day gadfly of pedagogy. Or he's Diogenes of Sinope relaxing at the feet of Alexander the Great, who has asked him what he might desire above all else, to which he replies, for you to step away you're blocking the sun. What's blocking the sun in this inquiry are pat, self-congratulatory paeans to the joys of teaching. Maybe not with Diogenes's derision, but the same fearlessness is here, the same subversive spirit, ever-searching for authentic answers to what we are to our students. What do they really learn? And whatever that is, how much, really, is it from anything we do or say? This is a loving, brilliant, and brave exploration.

Cory Brown, Writing Professor and author of five books of poems, the latest A Long Slow Climb

An extraordinary book that refuses to tell us how to teach but instead takes us by the hand through an encounter with the author, his students, and his remarkable method, honed across decades in the classroom. The book’s challenge extends far beyond pedagogy to our very grasp of being, and shows what a life that accepts the gift of impossibility might be. If, as mine does, your heart rebels against much it contains, the book will not let you escape the question of why. Read it if you dare.

Jenny Edkins, The University of Manchester and author of Change and the Politics of Certainty