Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice

Series Editor’s Preface

series editor’s preface In Trained Capacities, editors Brian Jackson and Gregory Clark have brought together a group of leading rhetorical scholars to consider the contexts of John Dewey’s work as it contributes to rhetorical theory, rhetorical practice, and rhetorical education. The American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) has long been of interest to teachers of rhetoric and communication. The essays in Trained Capacities explore broad themes of Dewey’s reflections on science, religion, pragmatism, war and peace, education, knowledge, theories of the public, and democratic practice. A key feature of the book is found in essays exploring Dewey as compared with and in conversation with other thinkers on these themes—some of them his contemporaries , some not: Kenneth Burke, William Jennings Bryan, Randolph Bourne, Thomas Jefferson, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter Lippmann, and James Baldwin. The contributors also examine the reception and interpretation of Dewey by his successors and offer a balanced and informative introduction to recent scholarship on the work of John Dewey by rhetorical scholars. This page intentionally left blank ...