deborah.haynes@colorado.edu
303-735-0991
office:C102B

Research and Teaching interests include intersections of ethics and aesthetics vis-à-vis the visual arts, function of the arts in contemporary society, moral philosophy of M. M. Bakhtin.

Education
PhD, Harvard University, 1991
MTS, Harvard Divinity School, 1986
MFA, University of Oregon, 1977
BFA, University of Oregon, 1972

Selected Publications
Books (Author)
On Ethical Aesthetics, in preparation
Meditations on the Artist's Vocation, under review
The Vocation of the Artist, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Bakhtin and the Visual Arts, Cambridge University Press, 1995
Bool (Editor)
Opening Our Moral Eye, by Mary Caroline Richards, Lindisfarne Press, 1996
Journal (Guest Editor)
Frontiers, A Journal of Women Studies, Issue 19 (1998), Identity, the Body, & the Menopause

Current Projects
I am currently working on my fourth book, On Ethical Aesthetics. The book addresses a range of themes at the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, including the aesthetic power of language, moral obligation, beauty, technology, place and space, and contemplation and ritual. Artists, historians, critics and theorists of art will find the book of interest, as will philosophers of art and scholars in religion. In print, the book will be approximately 220 pages and will include 25-30 images.
After working as a visual artist, I trained as a cultural theorist at Harvard University, studying art history and theory, world religions, and Slavic literature and philosophy. Much of my writing draws on this interdisciplinary training and is characterized by a combination of rigorous argument and persuasive polemic. In general, I use a "tool box" approach, searching for the most appropriate analytical tools for particular purposes. I have found other metaphors for my methodology in the notion of bricolage and in the artistic practices of collage and assemblage. I use what is at hand, as self-consciously and responsibly as possible.
We are engaged in a massive world transformation that affects not only the structures of our daily lives, but also the nature of consciousness. Developing an adequate critical perspective is imperative. On Ethical Aesthetics will contribute toward articulating such a perspective within the visual arts. Nowhere in the literature of and about contemporary visual arts has there been this type of investigation. Using description, analysis, and criticism of key concepts in aesthetics and ethics, the book develops a compelling interpretation of how they are inextricably linked. Discussion of these interconnections can have a double positive effect: to produce what Yi-Fu Tuan called "an eddy of fresh air" within philosophical discourse and to bring a unique perspective to dialogue about the visual arts.