Sharon Todd is Professor of Education at Maynooth University in Ireland. Her many books include Toward an Imperfect Education: Facing Humanity, Rethinking Cosmopolitanism and Learning from the Other: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education, also published by SUNY Press.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Why Encounters? Part One: Theoretical Framings 1. The Present Tense Incarnate: Education as Encounters/Encounters as Education2. Senses of Encounter3. Enculturation, Regimes of Perception, and the Politics of the Senses4. Forms and Formations of Encounters5. Becoming as a Time of UnfoldingPart Two: Encounters in/of Education 6. Digital Encounters: Online Education and the Space-Time of the Virtual7. Encounters with Climate Change: Teaching in the Presence of Climate SorrowAfterword: The Touch of the Present and Education as Social JusticeNotesReferencesIndex

"Sharon Todd invites readers into a robust reimagining of the sensory, sensuous, and embodied nature of teaching and learning … Her generous offering comes at a crucial time in education: amidst the lingering, deeply felt impacts of the pandemic, questions of young peoples' developing subjectivities and relationality—especially regarding touch—are a widespread concern for researchers and educators. Todd offers a thoughtful, reinvigorating book that reminds us of what it means to live in the world with others as interdependent, sensing, and feeling beings." — Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies"The Touch of the Present offers a vocabulary for articulating what many educators have long experienced: that there is 'more' to their encounters with students than parents, researchers, and school leaders either expect or acknowledge. Todd revitalizes pedagogical encounters as phenomena to be experienced, explored, and articulated, nourishing educators' imaginations and offering a fresh antidote to the 'cruel optimism' of our times." — Anne M. Phelan, coeditor of Reconceptualizing Teacher Education: A Canadian Contribution to a Global Challenge