2006

Harry Brown (Assistant Professor of English) – to develop a course: “Literature of Reform”

This course will explore the convergence of American literature and the ethical controversies that have shaped the history of social reform in the United States. It will focus mainly on the period between the expansion of the early republic and the Great Depression, surveying literature from 1820-1940. Specific sections of the course will consider the “Indian Question,” the “Woman Question,” slavery and abolition, conservation and the environment, and labor and wealth.

Mary Dixon (Associate Professor of Economics and Management) – to develop a course: “Ethics and Leadership in Film”

This course will be based on about 10 films, several texts, selected readings and class discussion. Ethics and leadership are inextricably intertwined, so the discussion of leadership must include a healthy discussion of ethical issues. The films, texts and readings would highlight issues of ethical and moral choice, leadership strategies and how these issues and strategies affect our own value system, ethical choice and leadership methods.

Lori Miles (Assistant Professor of Art) – “Art and Ethics”

This course is designed to address the ethics of fine art and artists. Although the course will cover a range of historical case studies, emphasis will be placed on the contemporary art world and public art in particular. It will consist of studying the ethical codes in place for current arts organizations, including the College Arts Association, The Smithsonian, and the Dia Foundation, historical and contemporary case studies, such as the removal and subsequent destruction of Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc,” and an examination of arts funding, the percent-for-arts program and funding by the NEA.

Jonathan Nichols-Pethick (Assistant Professor of Communication and Theatre) – to develop a course: “Documentary Film and Television”

This course will be a basic introduction to the various forms of documentary film and television that have, since the earliest days of motion pictures, informed and responded to American society. But more centrally, it will be a critical engagement with the ethical role of documentary in representing (and shaping) “reality.” With so much mediated “reality” competing for our attention (especially on television), we all need to be able to approach these texts with a degree of awareness and analytical rigor that is often missing in the daily rush of news and entertainment. And, most importantly, we need to be able to interrogate our own pleasure in watching these images: Why do we watch them? Where do we watch them? When do we watch them? How do we watch them? And, of course, what do we do with the knowledge and/or information that we’ve gained from watching them? These kinds of questions can help us come closer to understanding that sometimes we have a contradictory relationship to documentary films.

David Worthington (Instructor of Communication and Theatre) – to develop a course: “The Ethics of Rhetoric and The Rhetoric of Ethics”

This course will explore the multiple ways in which ethics and rhetoric intersect. Starting with the assumption that the course will have two major divisions, students will direct their classroom energies towards developing a robust sense of the way “ethics” are rhetorically constructed and the ways in which rhetoric has had to confront questions of ethics since Plato outlined his attacks against the art form in both Phaedrus and Gorgias.