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Developing and maintaining a shared notion of “civility” in a community is a conversation that requires many voices. To enrich our conversation here at UC Davis, we asked scholars from across campus to address questions of civility from their disciplinary points of view in short, compelling essays that work to clarify or complicate the notion of civility, especially as it pertains to the public campus environment.

Discourse and Concourse

Mark Kessler (Design) asks us to consider the ways in which the UC Davis campus—as a real, physical space—promotes or inhibits a sense of shared space and community, and the subsequent implications for the campus as a “civil” space.

Civility and its Discontents at UC Davis

Naomi Janowitz (Religious Studies) offers an alternate set of Principles of Community, one in which the work of creating and maintaining a sense of community begins with the deeply individual enterprise of self-reflection.

Excitable Speech and
Counterconduct on the Quad

Arturo Vargas (Spanish) looks closely at a particular drama of (in)civility as it is played out on the “free” space of the Quad, and examines the ways that sociopolitical performativity in this space impacts our view of campus as a place of civil exchange.

What do you have to say about civility? Is it enough?
Add your voice to the conversation about the community we are and the one we can be.