Hephzibah Roskelly is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She is the coauthor, with Eleanor Kutz, of An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom. Kate Ronald is Roger and Joyce L. Howe Professor in the Department of English at Miami University. Roskelly and Ronald are also the coeditors of Farther Along: Transforming Dichotomies in Rhetoric and Composition.

• Acknowledgments Preface One Is Teaching Still Possible? Two The Doctrine of Use: Seeds of Romantic/Pragmatic Rhetoric Three Romantic Dialectics and the Principle of Mediation Four Imperfect Theories: The Pragmatic Question of Experience and Belief Five A Way of Seeing is Also a Way of Not Seeing: Whatever Happened to Romanticism and Pragmatism? Six Changing the Course of the Stream: Romantic/Pragmatic Perspectives on Systems Seven What Difference Does It Make? Romantic/Pragmatic Rhetoric in Action Works Cited Index

"'How does the history of thinking about education and learning and spiritual understanding in this country...connect to the work of teachers now?' This is the question that Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald boldly raise in Reason to Believe. They show, in graceful and impassioned prose, that by honoring the romantic and pragmatic traditions of the American past, English studies in general and composition theory in specific can be revitalized. Guided by Thoreau and Emerson in the nineteenth century and by Paulo Freire and Cornel West in the twentieth century, the authors challenge the cynicism and hopelessness that currently exist among prominent literary critics and demonstrate their self-defeating consequences. Reason to Believe affirms the intimate connection between theory and practice, intellect and action, and shows how teaching extends beyond the classroom into the arena of life. To the question 'Is teaching still possible?' the authors' answer is a resounding yes. Roskelly and Ronald truly give us a reason to believe in the value of reading, writing, and teaching." — Jeffrey Berman, University at Albany, State University of New York