Introduction: halls of mirror

Autobardolatry: modernist fiction, progressive education, "creative writing"

Understanding Iowa: the religion of institutionalization

The social construction of unreality: creative writing in the open system

Our phonocentrism: finding the voice of the (minority) storyteller

The hidden injuries of craft: mass higher education and lower-middle-class modernism

Art and alma mater: the family, the nation, and the primal scene of instruction

Miniature America: or, the program in transplanetary perspective

Afterword: systematic excellence.