The eighth issue of Crossings aims at addressing the ambiguous relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. The binary between ethicism (the notion of art as a guide to morality) and aestheticism (the notion that art and morality are autonomous spheres) has historically framed the thinking about art and ethics, but what is at stake in limiting our thinking to this framework? We invite people to think beyond and across this gulf and to imagine other possibilities of art's power. Assuming that art exercises power in the realms of the social and the ethical, we may ask the question: what should art do, or what is the work of art? We know that art can instigate social change, but art's power may reach further, actually determining the social and the ethical in some way. Philosophers have long discussed thought's dependence on the construction of images, or what might be termed "the imagination". Given this relationship between thinking and the imagination, are moral and political philosophy, along with other forms of thinking, forms of art or literature? What is the transformative power of image-making in relation to thinking and the construction of a social reality? Do aesthetics and the imagination hold the radical potential to burst the solidity of the normative structures of "universal" modes of perception and fundamentally change the way we construct and relate to our world and one another? What are the implications of this complex network that encompasses thinking, the imagination, the aesthetic, and the political, social, and ethical? All forms of art are open for discussion. We invite essays from practicing artists in all mediums, in addition to scholars from various fields.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Aestheticizing politics and politicizing art
Journalism
"Body Art": Piercing, Tattoos, Body Building
Happenings
Politically "committed" literature
Indigenous art
The instrumentalization of art
Art and violence
The institutionalization of art
Art and revolution
Ethics as art/Art as ethics
Art and pornography
Info-tainment
Fetishism
Testimonial
Art and authenticity
Exposure to alterity or the political through art
Myth
The art market
Photography
Grafitti
Performance art
Image-making and thinking
Religion and popular literature
The gesture of art's work in relation to language
Protest art forms
Pedagogical possibilities: Art and the ethical in the classroom

Submissions should be in MSWord or WordPerfect format, double-spaced, and conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, endnote citation format. Hard copy manuscripts should be submitted in duplicate and should be accompanied by a disk version (IBM compatible 3 1/2" disk). Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. A style sheet is available in Adobe Acrobat format on-line at:
http://crossings.binghamton.edu/style.pdf.
Additional information can be found at:
http://crossings.binghamton.edu
Send all manuscripts and inquiries by December 1, 2005 to:
Amy Smith at xings_at_binghamton.edu
Or,
Crossings
Department of English
P.O. Box 6000
Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York 13902-6000