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In this chapter, I return to a conference I organized with Michael Flaherty in 1990 and transcribe an exchange I had there with Norman Denzin about lived experience and emotions. I develop this conversation as a starting point for honoring Norman's many contributions to my life and career and to the interpretive community in general. This discussion provides a view into the concerns of symbolic interactionists and scholars of emotions, as well as a glimpse of Norman in action and my coming into my own, during the 1990s. I interpret this dialogue as an epiphany in the development of my relationship with Norman, in my self-confidence as a scholar, and in evocative autoethnography as an appreciated qualitative perspective and approach.

I was a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, from 1977 until 1982, and Norman K. Denzin was my mentor. In this essay, I review what I learned from him in two graduate seminars as well as his own research during this period. His theoretical framework drew from the writings of Simmel, Mead, Blumer, Schutz, Goffman, and Garfinkel, but, for Denzin, theory was never divorced from empirical inquiry. The logic of naturalistic inquiry, his fundamental approach to methodology, provided the procedural framework for the formulation and assessment of theory. In addition, Denzin made important contributions to the study of self, socialization, social interaction, emotions, and deviance (especially criminogenic processes in the alcohol industry and the dynamics of domestic violence).

In the Introduction to this Festschrift honoring Norman K. Denzin, the author chronicles Denzin's contributions to the academy over the last 55 years. In so doing, he provides personal reflections on numerous interactions with Denzin, particularly as it relates to mentorship and the forging of community within qualitative inquiry. Also included are brief overviews of all of the articles that comprise the Festschrift.