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This chapter is a tribute to GOAT (Greatest of All Time) scholar/teacher/mentor, Norman K. Denzin. Honoring Denzin's use of song lyrics (2018a, 2015, 2011, 2008), I use a fishing theme. Why fishing? When asked to write a Festschrift, I immediately remembered Denzin's essay, Searching for Yellowstone (2003a). Though Denzin mentions fishing in an earlier work (1999a, p. 153), I identified with his story of his grandfather's love of fishing (p. 307). Later, I came to understand, through his stories and life experiences how something that was once unpleasant – fishing – became a sport that he loves. Denzin often employs song lyrics to show how theory and the site of memory influence poststructural, qualitative inquiry. His exceptional use of critical cultural and social theories, and exemplary performative autoethnographic teaching, writing and mentorship has influenced students and scholars since 1966 – the year I was born. Reflecting on Norman K. Denzin's body of work – emphasizing teaching and mentorship from 1998 to present – through fishing, seems fitting.

The First International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry took place at the campus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), in May 2005. At the invitation of the conference organizer, Norman Denzin, a special panel was formed to recognize the recent publication of A Methodology of the Heart: Evoking Academic and Daily Life, by Ronald J. Pelias (Pelias, 2004). The distinguished panelists were four of Pelias’ colleagues: Carolyn Ellis, Denise Menchaca, Lesa Lockford, and Norman Denzin. A day earlier, many members of the audience had also attended one of the congress’ featured panels entitled “Performing Autoethnography.” This session, chaired by Pelias, had standing room only, and showcased performances by three of his current doctoral students at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (SIUC). That these performance studies scholars had reached the hearts and minds of those present was evidenced in the passionate responses to each presentation, and the audience calls to Pelias and his students to share this methodology widely and make it a more visible presence and practice within qualitative research circles.

Communications professor, Norman Denzin, describes interactional moments that create potentially transformational experiences as epiphanies, which are subdivided into the major, the minor, the cumulative, the illuminative, and the relived. In his paradigm for the examination of racialized identity formation, psychologist William Cross offers a Nigrescence Model with a four-stage approach to understand the development of Black racial identity. Cross’ model has been modified to assess other aspects of identity formation such as gender consciousness. My story illuminates how the convergence of these theories offers a new lens through which to view the maturation of raced and gendered subjectivities. This performance text uses an Africana feminism performance pedagogy rooted in Yoruba feminist philosophy to expose the reproductive violence perpetuated against Black women and recover the healing, generative force of female power.

This chapter focuses on Norman K. Denzin's vast and enduring contributions to sociology and the study of research methods and methodology, particularly with respect to “us[ing] the tools of the critical sociological imagination” (Denzin, 1989) as we conduct our research. Through revisiting and extending lessons and principles from his book The Research Act (1989) – especially the need for “triangulation” – in relation to C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination (1959), this chapter explores how cultivated critical sociological imaginations can help researchers best meet our “obligations to change the world, to engage in ethical work that makes a positive difference” (Denzin, 1989) throughout all phases of the research act.

In this performance autoethnography, through a layered text with a blurred aesthetic format, which mixes life stories and academic scholarship, the author offers visceral knowledge of his encounters with Professor Denzin the person, as well as his scholarly work. How the author leaned from Denzin the possibilities to try to advance decolonizing discourses that may lead to more inclusive notions of social justice questioning the uncontrolled desire to categorize and control the Other. It is a personal narrative full of hope and love, where the author tries to demonstrate, from his arrival at the University of Illinois in August of 1999 to the present day, his deepest gratitude to his advisor, his muse. The blessing of having Denzin in his life.

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.

We know that the lifespan of a human being is but a dot on eternity. Despite this fact, there are some lives who, by their very existence, have generated a better world, a curiosity that is gentle and nonobtrusive, welcoming, and generous. As Walter Pater (1873) wrote, “to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life” (p. 1326). These lives, coming into being, may, through their relationship with others, with the physical world, with the world of ideas, create pathways on which others following may flourish. Such a hard, gemlike life, I posit respectfully, is the life of Norman Denzin. As an invited offering for this Festschrift in celebration of the intellectual genius, the caring impact, the kind and generous humanity of NKD, this piece draws upon the effect(s) his career and example have had upon my immediate circle of scholars as well as upon academia writ large. As an aspect of his unfailing curiosity and humility, Norman has shown us – characteristically, not told, but shown – what it means to celebrate life when, after all, as Raymond Carver so famously put it, it's “all gravy” (1989, p. 118).