The 1966 Anglo-American Seminar at Dartmouth certainly stands as a landmark event in the history of English teaching. For the purposes of this Special Issue, however, I want to unsettle some familiar interpretations of Dartmouth by reading with and against a range of American responses to the conference published in the late 1960s and 1970s. As an American now working in Australia, I hope that my perspectives on Dartmouth will both complicate English educators' views of the past and sensitise us to historical struggles from the (post)Dartmouth-era that have influenced present struggles over the teaching of English in several countries, including Australia