ENGL 7000: Seminar in Cultural Studies:

Art, Ethics and Justice

Professor L. Bolton
Spring 2015
In 1949, poet Muriel Rukeyser first published, The Life of Poetry, her treatise
on the transformative valueand powerof poetry, as art.
It is there that she argues, art is action, that art is intellectual, that art is
not a world, but a knowing of the world. Art prepares us.
For Rukeyser, Art is practiced by the artist and the audience, and, indeed,
the experience of art not only applies to ones life, it is more than likely to
lead you to thought or action, that is, you are likely to want to go further into
the world, further into yourself, toward further experience. And in the case
of Rukeysers art of poetry, it led her to Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, in
1936, where she initiated a literary poetics that documented the odious
politics of Southern racism and the blatantly unethical practices of industrial
greed.
This seminar aspires to examine the path that Rukeysers work envisioned: to
explore the efficacy of art in the pursuit of the ethical ideal of justice. We will
ground our study in the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, pursuing the
paradox that informs Levinasian ethics: how does a philosophy of generosity
and hopefulness emerge from the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust?
Having established a foundation for understanding what ethics entails, we
will explore the efficacy of ethics as it informs the artistic event.

Professor Linda Bolton

Office: 462 EPB

Office Hours: Monday, 1-3 pm, Tuesday, 12:30-1:30 pm. And by appointment.
Telephone: 335-041 or 335-0454 (messages)
Email: linda-bolton@uiowa.edu
English DEO: Jonathan Wilcox
Email: jonathan-wilcox@uiowa.edu

Required Texts (available at Prairie Lights Bookstore)

Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
----.Book of the Dead (scanned copy, please PRINT)
Levinas, Totality and Infinity
----. Is It Righteous To Be?
Derrida, Adieu To Emmanuel Levinas

Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz

Levi, The Drowned and the Saved
Amery, At The Minds Limits: Contemplation By A Survivor on Auschwitz and
Its Realities
Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?
Momaday, House Made of Dawn
Trethewey, Thrall
Rankine, Citizen
Smith and Place, Guantanamo
Selected Essays provided by the Professor

Course Requirements (Specific Instructions for each component to be

Handed Out):
Active and engaged participation in class discussions
Preparatory participation in the ICON discussion site prior to each class
meeting, which includes leading the discussion and responding to each
weeks inquiries
Critical response journalsome of which will be assigned as critical
essays
Annotated Bibliography of sources for your critical essay
Proposal/Abstract of the essay
Final Seminar Essay
Grades:
You will earn your best grade in this course by choosing to be a
careful and astute listener-reader of the assigned texts and an
intellectually engaged and respectful participant in class
discussions.
Class participation and Response Journal: 50%
Annotated Bibliography, Proposal and Abstract: 25%
Seminar Essay: 25%
This Professor does utilize plus and minus grading, although the A+ grade will
only be used to indicate rare and extraordinary academic achievement.

Schedule of Assigned Readings;

Iteration #1
1.22: Introductions; T&I, 33-52.
1.29: Levinas, T&I, 53-101 and 109-142
2/5; Levinas, T&I, 143-183 and 194-219
2.12: Levinas, T&I, 220-255 and Is It Righteous To Be?, 1-19
2.19: Levi, The Drowned and The Saved
Amery, At the Minds Limit
2.26: Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz
Reznikoff, Poems (Hand Out)
3.5: Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas
3.12: Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be?
Spring Break
3.26: Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
---. Book of the Dead (HO)
4.2: Momaday, House Made of Dawn
4.9: Trethewey, Thrall AND Klepfisz, Poems (HO)
Bakhtin, Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art (HO)
4.16: Butler, Frames of War, Introduction and Ch. 1 & 2 AND
Vizenor, Fugitive Poses (HO)
4.23: Butler, Frames of War, Ch. 3-5 AND
Smith & Place, Guantanamo
4.30: Rankine, Citizen
5.7: TBA