J. Peter Euben, political science research professor, is about to partake in an extra-currricular activity, watching movies with students.
Euben, in conjunction with the Kenan Institute for Ethics, will kick off a new film series Wednesday entitled "The Morality of Power." The series will feature a number of ethically-charged, primarily studio, films to spark broad discussions on such topics as war, race, gender and torture.
Each showing will be followed by a discussion mediated by Euben, who is also a Kenan distinguished faculty fellow, and KIE Assistant Director Melanie Mitchell. In showing these films and in hosting these adjoining forums, the Institute is attempting to spark-and to sustain-a debate on ethics in the Duke community, said Mitchell.
"The series is an attempt to broaden conversations," Mitchell added.
Specifically, the series is interested in feeling out what exactly constitutes a moral issue, Euban said. Discussions on the films will be structured around a question the professor posed:
"How do we think ethically about issues that don't seem ethical?"
Each film is meant to generate a specific discussion. Munich, for instance, is meant to prompt a conversation focusing on vengeance and justice. Still, Euben and Mitchell insist, these conversations are intended to be as ranging and as fluid as possible. The conversation is designed to attract not only undergraduates, but also graduate students, faculty, staff and members of the local community.
"We don't want this to be for film scholars," Euben said. "It's about exploring what sort of issues are raised by popular culture."
Above all, the series is meant to act as an intervention. It is designed to be an opportunity for participants to pause and to evaluate what ethics are contained in popular culture or conversations and to unwrap and evaluate their meanings, both Mitchell and Euben agreed.
"Morality and Power" has been in the works for a long time and predates the lacrosse case, Euben said. Mitchell said that he's not looking to bring up the Campus Culture Initiative, or the group of eighty-eight.
"I don't think we should force it. How do you think it applies? Maybe it doesn't," Euben added.
The series is meant, he and Mitchell said, to draw attention to the ways in which we spend our time, and to what we chose to pay attention. Discussions of ethics often tend towards the metaphysical, but very basic daily choices are in the end, the organizers agree, at the heart of the series.
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