Recent defenses of shaming as an effective tool for identifying bad practice and provoking social change appear compatible with feminism. I complicate this picture by examining two instances of online feminist shaming that resulted in shame backlashes. Shaming requires the assertion of social and epistemic authority on behalf of a larger community, and is dependent upon an audience that will be receptive to the shaming testimony. In cases where marginally situated knowers attempt to “shame up,” it presents challenges for feminist (...) uses. (shrink)

This book explains how gossip contributes to knowledge. Karen Adkins marshals scholarship and case studies spanning centuries and disciplines to show that although gossip is a constant activity in human history, it has rarely been studied as a source of knowledge. People gossip for many reasons, but most often out of desire to make sense of the world while lacking access to better options for obtaining knowledge. This volume explores how, when our access to knowledge is blocked, gossip becomes a (...) viable path to knowledge attainment, one that involves the asking of questions, the exchange of ideas, and the challenging of preconceived notions. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on (...) a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

This paper defends the liberal arts as an effective way to acquire habits of thought (creativity, skepticism), as opposed to skills. The ability to think creatively, historically, and skeptically can only be acquired slowly, socially, and with a diverse population. While this defense of the liberal arts (as opposed to a skills-focused defense) well supports some of the hallmarks of American liberal arts education (in person, bricks and mortar, not accelerated), it also has some critical implications for how the liberal (...) arts are taught. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting (Abramson, “Turning up the Lights on Gaslighting” [2014]; McKinnon, “Allies Behaving Badly: Gaslighting as Epistemic Injustice” [2017]; Ruiz, “Spectral Phenomenologies” [2014]) by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an (...) analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

This dissertation is an attempt to loosen what I see as a chokehold by which two paramount assumptions constrict our epistemic endeavors. These Enlightenment assumptions--that we accept or refute ideas as true based on transparently clear and orderly methods and criteria, and that individuals accept or refute truth claims--are still central in epistemology, despite their many critics . Thinking about gossip as an epistemologically productive concept provides us with the means to critique those assumptions, and further attempts to broaden our (...) notion of an epistemological foundation. ;Gossip at first appears to be an unlikely candidate for such a resurrection, mainly because its treatment by academics has been dismissive; this dismissal is in part due to Enlightenment conceptions about truth and falsehood. Chapter One surveys the social science literature on gossip and rumor, revealing that social scientists begin with such restrictive definitions of what gossip is that their conclusions amount to little more than tautology. Chapter Two shows that humanists have a slightly different approach to gossip, but with roughly similar results. ;The handful of philosophers who deal directly with gossip or rumor almost as a unit accept uncritically a division between "purposive" conversation and "idle" chatter. To do so, I think, perpetuates a limiting epistemic foundation on a linguistic level. In contrast, I argue in Chapter Three that the very existence of something like gossip proves the inadequacy of the foundationalist myth , and that to attempt to understand and use gossip with foundationalist tools is simply a wrong fit. My understanding of gossip is based on this central fact: we undertake the activity of gossip or rumor-spreading because we are trying to make sense out of something--we need to collect knowledge socially. Gossip originates from dissonance; it acts as a counterweight to more official information, and can't be considered apart from official knowledge. We use gossip and rumor, along with more orthodox sources of information, to formulate our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The extent to which gossip and rumor are spread is the extent to which the analysis is shared, and not individualized. Gossip is both a genealogical tool and an speculative tool. (shrink)

This paper argues for the specific pedagogical and philosophical value of toggling between places, as experienced in service or community-based learning. Regular shifting of student perspectives by traveling from a classroom to a community service site alienates students from their assumptions about beliefs, and opens up more diverse perspectives within the classroom.

In Kate Manne’s theory of misogyny, women’s behavior is surveilled (by men and other women) so that they conform to gendered norms of behavior and care, and they are threatened or punished when they refuse to abide by norms. I seek here to extend her argument about surveillance to norms around masculinity, and to demonstrate the ways in which surveillance actually runs throughout the gendered economy of care. I assess the impacts of this surveillance (particularly on men of color, who (...) identify as gay or trans, or who are immigrants or religious minorities), and argue that misogyny and masculinity are inextricably interlinked and mutually reinforcing phenomena, that must be simultaneously demystified for progress towards gender equity. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on (...) a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)