LibGuides: Intellectual, Academic, and Expressive Freedoms at the University of Wyoming: Constructive Dialogue

Borrowing Items from UW Libraries

For information on library circulation services, such as borrowing, renewals, library account, fines, due dates, and more, please visit this link: Circulation Policies | UW Libraries.

Check It Out at Your Library

Library privileges are automatically extended to all registered University of Wyoming students, appointed or emeritus faculty, and permanent staff with a valid WyoOne card. Privileges include:

Access to all University Libraries materials; borrowing of all circulating University Libraries items
Access to Prospector
Access to Interlibrary Loan
Access to electronic subscriptions and databases
Prospector access is limited to on campus patrons. UW distance and outreach patrons may request materials from other libraries via Interlibrary Loan.

All current citizens of Wyoming can access a number of library databases through the Wyoming State Library's WYLD website. Users must have a current Wyoming public library card in order to use WYLD resources.

On-site free access to most of UW Libraries' electronic resources, such as databases and electronic journals, is available from public access terminals in Coe Library.

Community and courtesy library cards are available by request at any library Help Desk and provide borrowing privileges (excluding Prospector or Request It services) to:

Wyoming residents and spouses/dependents of University of Wyoming affiliates with a Wyoming driver's license, state ID card, WyoOne campus ID card, or government-issued photo ID and proof of residency. Residents under 18 years of age must have a signed parental permission form (PDF) on file. Registration must be updated annually.
Non-Wyoming residents with a driver's license, state ID card, or government-issued photo ID. A $20 account registration fee is assessed annually.
Campus workshop participants with authorization from the workshop coordinator, a parent/legal guardian permission form if under 18, and a photo ID. Registration is limited to the term of the workshop.

Books

Books listed without a call number are only available as eBooks. The eBooks listed here are only available to UW students and employees. Many of books and ebooks are available at public libraries in Wyoming.

Beyond Civility by William Keith; Robert Danisch
Call Number: JC337 .K45 2020
ISBN: 9780271088044
Publication Date: 2020-07-06
From the pundits to the polls, nearly everyone seems to agree that US politics have rarely been more fractious, and calls for a return to "civil discourse" abound. Yet it is also true that the requirements of polite discourse effectively silence those who are not in power, gaming the system against the disenfranchised. What, then, should a democracy do? This book makes a case for understanding civility in a different light. Examining the history of the concept and its basis in communication and political theory, William Keith and Robert Danisch present a clear, robust analysis of civil discourse. Distinguishing it from politeness, they claim that civil argument must be redirected from the goal of political comity to that of building and maintaining relationships of minimal respect in the public sphere. They also take into account how civility enables discrimination, indicating conditions under which uncivil resistance is called for. When viewed as a communication practice for uniting people with differences and making them more equal, civility is transformed from a preferable way of speaking into an essential component of democratic life. Guarding against uncritical endorsement of civility as well as skepticism, Keith and Danisch show with rigor, nuance, and care that the practice of civil communication is both paradoxical and sorely needed. Beyond Civility is necessary reading for our times.
Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring by Lisa Fain; Lois Zachary
ISBN: 9781523085897
Publication Date: 2020-02-25
This first comprehensive guide to helping mentors and mentees bridge gaps between and among cultures--a growing issue in today's diverse workplace--is coauthored by the founder and CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence. As the workplace has become more diverse, mentoring has become more challenging. Mentors and mentees may come from very different backgrounds and have limited understanding of each other's cultures and outlooks. But mentoring remains the most powerful tool for creating meaningful relationships, furthering professional development, and increasing engagement and retention. Younger workers and emerging leaders in particular are demanding it. Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a timely, evidence-based, practical guide for helping mentors develop the level of cultural competency needed to bridge differences. Firmly rooted in Zachary's well-known four-part mentoring model, the book uses three fictional scenarios featuring three pairs of diverse mentors and mentees to illustrate how key concepts can play out in real life. It offers an array of accessible tools and strategies designed to help you increase your self-awareness and prepare you to embrace and leverage differences in your mentoring relationships. But beyond tips and techniques, Fain and Zachary emphasize that authenticity is the key--the ultimate purpose of this book is to help the mentor and mentee make a genuine connection and learn from each other. That's when the magic really happens.
The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch
ISBN: 9780815738862
Publication Date: 2021-06-22
Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts "In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism." --Newsweek A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn't even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: "cancel culture." At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony. In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the "Constitution of Knowledge"--our social system for turning disagreement into truth. By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do--and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson; Joseph Grenny; Ron McMillan; Al Switzler
ISBN: 9780071401944
Publication Date: 2002-07-09
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation badly and suffer the consequences; or read Crucial Conversations and discover how to communicate best when it matters most. This wise and witty guide gives you the tools you need to step up to life's most difficult and important conversations, say what's on your mind, and achieve positive outcomes that will amaze you.
Dialogue by William Isaacs
ISBN: 9780385479998
Publication Date: 1999-09-14
Dialogue provides practical guidelines for one of the essential elements of true partnership--learning how to talk together in honest and effective ways. Reveals how problems between managers and employees, and between companies or divisions within a larger corporation, stem from an inability to conduct a successful dialogue.
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone; Bruce Patton; Sheila Heen; Roger Fisher (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780143118442
Publication Date: 2010-11-02
The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask" We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to: · Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation · Start a conversation without defensiveness · Listen for the meaning of what is not said · Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations · Move from emotion to productive problem solving
Mere Civility by Teresa M. Bejan
ISBN: 9780674545496
Publication Date: 2017-01-02
Today, politicians and intellectuals warn that we face a crisis of civility and a veritable war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating diversity as well as active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this conversational virtue appears critical. But is civility really a virtue? Or is it, as critics claim, a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on our predicament and the impasse between "civilitarians" and their opponents by examining early modern debates about religious toleration. As concerns about uncivil disagreement achieved new prominence after the Reformation, seventeenth-century figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the war of words would be necessary. But they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution. In their efforts to reconcile diversity with disagreement, they developed competing conceptions of civility as the social bond of tolerant societies that still resonate. Most modern appeals to civility follow either Hobbes or Locke by proposing to suppress disagreement or exclude persons and positions deemed "uncivil" for the sake of social concord. Compared with his contemporaries' more robust ideals, Williams's unabashedly mere civility-a minimal, occasionally contemptuous adherence to culturally contingent rules of respectful behavior-is easily overlooked. Yet Teresa Bejan argues that Williams offers a promising path forward in confronting our own crisis of civility, one that fundamentally challenges our assumptions about what a tolerant-and civil-society should look like.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
ISBN: 9780307377906
Publication Date: 2012-03-13
Why can't our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition--the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim--that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

New Articles - Constructive Dialog

Access to the articles linked below is restricted to University of Wyoming students and employees. Access may be available to Wyoming residents through the WYLD Network's Academic Search Premier subscription.

Open Access Essays & Scholarship

Rights in Conflict: The First Amendment’s Third Century O'Neil has witnessed the resolution, or at least the clarification, of many free speech and press issues. There are, however, persistent issues that deserve particularly close scrutiny. Three such issues are tensions between free expression and privacy, civility, and equality
From Culture War to Difficult Dialogue: Exploring Distinct Frames for Citizen Exchange about Social Problems While the precise nature of socio-cultural conflict in the United States remains contested, there is growing scholarly agreement that elite (media/governmental) framings may be significantly aggravating public animosities. In order to better understand how actual citizens frame meaningful issues in such an atmosphere, we collaborated as socially liberal and conservative-leaning researchers in a joint study of twenty citizens across the political spectrum, from a conservative pastor and a traditional family advocate to a socialist activist and a leader of a feminist organization. This paper reports our analysis of citizen comments on fundamental problems facing society and their proposed solutions. Themes are organized within three general categories: 1) Talking about citizen exchange: What is the essence of “good” public discourse? 2) Defining social problems: What is the nature of fundamental challenges facing society? and 3) Delimiting solutions: What is the scope of needed social change? Within each category, patterns across citizen comments are identified and explored in light of prevailing stereotypes about “liberals” and “conservatives.” Based on this examination, possible shifts in the framing of liberal-conservative exchange are proposed as a potential contribution to a more nuanced and productive public deliberation across the partisan divide.
Tough Talks: Student-Led Programs to Facilitate Civil Discourse These student-led, co-curricular programs are designed to give honors students the opportunity to learn and practice civil discourse through difficult conversations. Issues such as race, religion, politics, gender, and sexual orientation are carefully curated to help students practice and hone their dialogue skills outside the classroom where grades are not a factor. A brave spaces ideology provides the foundation for shared pools of meaning, encouraging students to move from certainty to curiosity with the shared understanding that discomfort is an opportunity for growth. By teaching students how to engage in controversy with civility, Tough Talks support an honors ethos of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion. Fast becoming the college's signature program, authors suggest that with the proper infrastructure and support, Tough Talks can be implemented at other institutions.

Intellectual, Academic, and Expressive Freedoms at the University of Wyoming: Constructive Dialogue

Constructive Dialogue Defined

Borrowing Items from UW Libraries

Check It Out at Your Library

Books

New Articles - Constructive Dialog

Open Access Essays & Scholarship

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