Critical Social Inquiry 0251 - Ethical Imagining

In his last interview Fluxus artist Dick Higgins said, ".one of the areas that has been understated since the immediate post-war era has been ethics. Exploring the nature of kindness or of cruelty, or of the various implications of Bosnia or of militarism or things like that. Ethical exploration is an area of subject matter that has to be dealt with." More recently, Canadian cultural critic and psychoanalyst Jeanne Randolph has explored how we act morally and ethically while participating in a culture of abundance, opulence and consumerism. This course will explore ethics as a subject in the work of contemporary artists and thinkers in different media and disciplines, and across different cultures. It will explore ethical imagining as a cultural practice-how the imagination is elusive, contingent, yet exceedingly precious, and how it helps us understand changes in human relations and in culture that have evolved with 20C and 21C materialism.

Arts, Design, and Media Culture, Humanities, and Languages Power, Community and Social Justice Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research Pre-requisite: Open for Division II and III students; Division I with permission of instructor. Students are expected to spend at least eight hours a week of preparation and work outside of class time.