This dissertation is an exploration of the role of Euro-North American Philosophy of Education discourse in the genealogy of race struggle. I examine how the reliable narration of Philosophy of Education functions as a project of racial rule premised on moral/temporal/spatial notions of (White) civility and respectability. Tracing the history of race war from the 17th century to present day, I look at how racism has shifted from sovereign power to disciplinary power to biopower as a mode of population management, operating not only through race but through gender and class distinctions as well. I analyze the racialized narrative conventions of liberal modern Enlightenment philosophy and the role these conventions continue to play in the creation and maintenance of a violent racial state. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory, feminist epistemologies, narrative theory, and the work of Michel Foucault, I look at what reliable narration does for philosophers, educators, and students, examining what we/they might have invested in maintaining a distinction between ‘reliability’ and ‘unreliability.’ I ask: How is reliable narration used as a tool by philosophers, educators, and ultimately, the state to distinguish between the civil and uncivil, between those worthy and unworthy of moral consideration, political engagement, and basic human rights? How do the impartiality, univocality, universality, and dispassion of reliable narratives become tied to race and the management of racialized bodies? My aim is to examine the ways in which race as a method of governance acts on a text, its author(s), and its audience. “How are racialized subjectivities constituted through and constitutive of language and knowledge,” I ask, “and to what effect?” I want to trace the social and civil relations mapped out by particular narrative conventions and examine the consequences of failing to adhere to such conventions. I suggest that by questioning the function of reliable narration in philosophical and pedagogical practice, educators, scholars, and students can intervene in the operation of race as a mode of discipline, creating the possibility of a more equitable society in which all have the opportunity to flourish.

Rhetoricians have long praised argumentation as a productive alternative to violence, and while I agree that it can be such an alternative, my dissertation aims to complicate our understanding of both violence and coercion by illumination how the strictures of civility limit the rhetoric of dissent. This study makes two main arguments, 1), that the dominant narrative of the civil rights and Black Power movements has been insufficiently challenged by rhetoricians, and 2), that this lack can be explained in part by these scholars’ preference for civility and decorum over coercion in persuasion. I argue that both the civil rights and Black Power movements share similarities both tactically and philosophically. Looking beyond assessing these movements in terms of their alleged levels of civility allows us more fully to account for the complexity of their rhetorical situations. I use black women’s autobiographies as my focus because they allow a glimpse into the quotidian nature of the civil rights and Black Power movement’s struggles, one that lies on the margin of the media spotlight on movement leadership. In addition, these autobiographies unveil the multiple audiences activist rhetors faced in ways that major speeches, penned and delivered by men, cannot. / text

Student incivility has become a problem in nursing schools around the country. Researchers have noted that uncivil behavior that goes unaddressed may compromise the educational environment. Nursing faculty have differing standards about uncivil behavior; thus, students experience inconsistencies in approaches to incivility. The purpose of this mixed-methods explanatory study was to explore nursing faculty experiences with, understandings of, and responses to student incivility. The conceptual framework was Clark's continuum of incivility and the conceptual model for fostering civility in nursing education. Descriptive analysis of the level and frequency of uncivil behaviors of nursing faculty members (17 full-time and 15 part-time), as measured by the Incivility in Nursing Education-Revised survey, indicated that faculty most frequently experienced uncivil behaviors at the lower end of the continuum and rarely encountered those at the higher end. A purposeful sample of 12 faculty members (10 full-time and 2 part-time) participated in semistructured interviews, and data were open coded and analyzed thematically. Stress was identified as a contributing factor to student incivility, and faculty responses varied based on the learning environment. Nursing faculty expressed the need for more consistency in responding to student incivility. Based on the research findings, a 3-day professional development workshop on promoting civility in the academic environment was created. By learning practical ways to respond to, and possibly prevent, uncivil behavior in student nurses, workshop participants have the potential to positively affect the lives of future nurses, the health care personnel with whom they will work, and the patients for whom they will care.

The purpose of this dissertation project was to understand how institutions of higher education, through both punishments and rewards, ensure that dominant cultural codes are "taught" to students of color in ways that normalize whiteness ideologies. I wanted to understand racism in higher education through the lens of socialization to show the ways in which institutional members (un)intentionally conflate dominant cultural codes with the "correct" or "normal" way to think, act, or speak. Furthermore, I was interested in the ways that students of color take up, defer, resist, adapt, mix, subvert, and/or accommodate the institutional practices that (re)produce racial power within contemporary U.S. higher education. To pursue these goals, I focused on topics of racism, socialization through the white habitus, and civility utilizing critical-qualitative methodologies. I interviewed fourteen participants of various racial backgrounds a total of twenty-eight times to understand how they identified and negotiated the institutional norms of higher education. Specially, I utilized in-depth interviewing methods with narrative analysis and counterstory techniques to generate themes and present stories concerning my topics. My analysis of participants' responses generated insights related to my areas of study. First, I showed how racism manifests in a myriad of ways, including stereotypes and stereotype threats, microaggressions of invisibility, and overt forms of physical/mental violence. These themes indicate that racism still presents a significant threat to the health, well-being, and success of students of color within higher education. Second, I utilized Co-Cultural Theory to analyze participants' descriptions of higher education as a space that is dominated by the white habitus. That is, participants described specific communicative codes that constituted the practices of an idealized White identity within higher education and the ways they assimilated, accommodated, and separated from that identity. Third, I drew upon the notion of civility to understand the ways that its practice can function to perpetuate or subvert racism within higher education. Participants described appeals to covering ground and common courtesy as ways that conversations about race and racism are elided by dominant members in higher education thereby perpetuating whiteness. Additionally, I found that participants utilized purposive silence, niceness, and absurdity as ways to subvert the hegemonic dimensions of civility. Overall, my analysis points to the relationships among cultural, institutional, and individual rules and performances of race and racism. I concluded my dissertation by describing the major findings of the project and offering ways to combat racism in higher education. I offered that this dissertation can further whiteness studies by focusing attention on the cultural norms and practices that constitute the socializing mechanisms of higher education (or other institutions). This type of analysis is important because it does not rely upon essentialized racial identities (e.g., linking whiteness to White bodies); instead, it focuses attention on the institutional rules and norms that constitute yet transcend racial categories. I also drew upon Black Feminist Thought and Critical Communication Pedagogy to map out a dialogic ethic that serves as a foundation for communicating through inclusive civility to provide a guide for coalitional politics for social-justice work. I ended with the hope that such an ethic may provide a necessary step in the work to elicit institutional change and cultural renewal.

Reader comment forums of online newspapers, a relatively new feature of online journalism, have been called spaces of public deliberation. At their inception among large newspapers just five years ago, the forums were heralded as a new way for the public to advance public dialogue by sharing opinions in an unconstrained way, promoting the democratic principles of the newspaper institution itself. Rampant incivility, however, has since become one the forums' chief defining characteristics. By content analyzing comments from online newspapers that allow anonymity, this research confirms anecdotal evidence from journalists that Latinos are regularly debased in the forums by commenters following news on immigration. This study also compares the civility of anonymous comments following news on the Tea Party movement, a non-racialized but also controversial topic. Finally, civility is measured in the comments following news on immigration from online newspapers that have disallowed anonymity. In all, more than 22,000 comments from nearly 200 news stories in more than a dozen online newspapers were collected between 2010 and 2012, and a sample of 1,350 was coded. The analysis shows that online newspaper discussion boards that allow anonymity and that follow news about immigration predominantly contain comments by those who support tough immigration laws and who express themselves with emotionally laden, uncivil comments directed at Latinos. Similar discussion boards that disallow anonymity predominantly contain comments by those who support tough immigration laws and who express themselves with emotionally laden yet civil comments directed at Latinos. Overall, this research demonstrates that a racialized topic is apt to draw more uncivil anonymous comments than a non-racialized one and that removing anonymity elevates the level of dialogue. Building on the theories of the public sphere, reduced cues in anonymity and critical race theory, this paper demonstrates that in their new role in creating a new public square of open discussion, newspapers are sometimes creating forums for hate speech while also publishing content that is perpetuating negative portrayals of Latinos. Findings reveal that a new public sphere created by online newspapers, meant to promote democracy, is actually having the opposite effect for some minority groups.

While the proliferation of literature on the subject of growing incivility in society demonstrates the increasing importance given to civility by corporate America, there has been little academic investigation of the concept. The limited number of academic studies on civility reveals immense negative consequences for uncivil behavior. One question for marketers of businesses is whether lack of civility among front-end personnel can negatively influence sales. This dissertation is an attempt to fill this research gap by exploring responses to uncivil behavior under the theoretical framework of attribution theory. Using the CDSII scale based on attribution theory, experimental research design was used with current civil and uncivil behavior by the store employees and past experiences (positive, negative, and no-experience) with the store as stimulus. The consumers' perception of civility, attributions and behavioral intentions were measured and used as dependent variables. The results of the experiment showed that when a customer discerns employee behavior to be uncivil, the customer's perception of the level of the ability of the employee to control his own behavior decreases. The results of the study enhance the knowledge of two important consumer behaviors, namely complaining and switching behaviors by empirically studying their antecedents in a particular market interaction context. The results imply that it is important to eliminate or minimize any experience that the customer may construe as negative at a store. If practitioners can work towards eliminating or decreasing certain attributions of consumers, they can reduce the switching behaviors and thus impact customer retention rates and future sales. Though this study contributes to marketing theory and provides vital insights to practitioners, this study is but a starting point for further examination of the role of civility in consumer behavior and decision making.

<p>My dissertation is divided into five relatively freestanding yet thematically linked essays, investigating a number of ways in which social norms and the question of racism are related. In these chapters, I aim to show the vital influence of social norms on our interpersonal relationships, going beyond the futile binary between individual (moral philosophy) and state (political philosophy), thereby affirming the primacy of the social over the political. Considering social norms can help us to see how individual agents are socially and culturally mediated, shaped, and distorted. In the dissertation, I discuss the racial contract (John Rawls and Charles Mills), racism as volitional states (Jorge Garcia), racism as ideology (Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger), and anti-racism through social movements (Elizabeth Anderson). By engaging them, I argue that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood in the context of broader social environments. My thesis is that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood as a manifestation in broad social environments where the mechanisms of social norms function structurally. In conclusion, I argue for the relevance of social critique instead of a narrow moral critique of racism. In this regard, my solution is not intended as a complete solution for the termination of all forms of racism, rather as certainly a needed viable approach both morally warranted and pragmatically efficacious.</p>

Very little empirical data exists on the topic of civility in schools, although much theory and philosophy are proffered in the literature. Literature on moral education and character education also informs the study of civility. Many of the philosophical theories mention education as a way of increasing civility in society. Some schools have attempted to implement various civility interventions and research supports the use of similar interventions to teach social skills; however, none have systematically collected data for these interventions to evaluate their effectiveness for teaching civility. The present research systematically gathered data on perceptions of civility and incivility in schools by surveying the alumni of a school of education using a web-based questionnaire. Results revealed that participants perceived that students' civil behaviors occurred more frequently than uncivil behaviors. However, participants also indicated a need to increase civility and decrease incivility in schools. They gave suggestions to accomplish this goal including direct instruction, school professionals modeling civil behavior, incorporating the ideology of positive behavior support, and setting rules and expectations.

Wayne Booth's neologism rhetorology, introduced in 1981, hasn't caught on in rhetorical scholarship. Nevertheless, in this essay I hope to revive rhetorology by harmonizing it with Paul Woodruff's work on reverence. I show how harmonizing these terms makes each more comprehensible. In order to illustrate how reverence and rhetorology might be made more practical I also analyze two arguments in the health care debate leading up to the passing of the Affordable Health Care for America Act in early 2010. Ultimately I hope to show that rhetorology is a reverent rhetorical practice, one that can help us restore a needed sense of communal reverence in contemporary democracy.

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