Founder and the first chair of the English Composition Board, Daniel N. Fader is recognized as the father of the writing-across-the-curriculum movement in the United States. A member of the University faculty for 34 years, Professor Fader still teaches with passion. He is deeply committed to his students and to perfecting the art of teaching.
Professor Fader is the author of the widely acclaimed Hooked on Books and two follow-up works. He has spent a great deal of time working with teachers and students in inner-city and small-community venues and is a master at making literature appealing and important to his students.
The range of Professor Fader’s teaching has both breadth and a clearly discernible focus on the undergraduate level. He teaches Shakespeare’s plays with a vigor and wealth of insight that is infectious. He teaches as much by contagion as by precept. In addition to his courses in Renaissance literature, Professor Fader also offers exciting curricula in material that crosses over eras and genres. A course titled “Bigotry, Damnation, Sexuality, and Maturity” traces these themes in plays and novels of the past 40 years and parallels each of those modern works with a pertinent play by Shakespeare.
In his courses about reading and writing poetry, Professor Fader turns neophyte readers of verse into fans of the genre. Professor Fader invites local authors to his class to discuss their poetry; poems become dynamic works of art connected with lives, with the experience of the readers and the poets.
Professor Fader infuses his instruction with a personable quality by learning and using students’ names. During class discussions, he emphasizes that his views, while carefully cultivated during thirty years of teaching, are always open to new considerations. Professor Fader also expresses sincere interest in assisting and interacting with his students outside of class, thereby making each student feel individually welcome and important. He has even on occasion provided class texts for students who couldn’t afford them.
Professor Fader has been honored for his teaching and his innovative contributions to pedagogy by dozens of universities, colleges, and schools throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and the West Indies. His achievements have been recognized by the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Office of the Vice President of the United States, the U.S. Senate, and the British House of Commons.
For his many years of energetic, thoughtful, inventive, and successful teaching, and for the example he has set as a person seeking truth and relevance with intelligence, originality, good sense, and good humor, the University of Michigan is proud to confer upon Daniel Fader its Amoco Foundation Faculty Teaching Award.
