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Dear colleagues, I would like to return to the issue of a "canon" and perhaps change the words a bit. Dick Buchanan, in my estimation, is right when he raises questions about core readings in a field. I believe this is true. The literature of a field is its actual foundation and the current issues arise from those that have emerged in the past. We need not use the word 'canon' which is too restrictive but we can certainly talk about a body of core texts. Successive generations of researchers engage with the issues that were central to their predecessors and either take some of them farther or refute others. Certainly, some design historians have begun to engage with the literature of their field. Most whom I know do not use Pevsner as a core text nor do they feel the need to do battle with him anymore. Design history has incorporated many other themes and methods and the field is just beginning to become interesting by virtue of occasional polemical articles about methodology (Cheryl Buckley's work for example, particularly her intervention at the recent Milan conference) and demonstrations of research that go well beyond Pevsner's concerns (Judy Attfield's edited volume on British utility design for example). What, I believe we face in trying to develop a field of design studies, a term that some might consider to be part of design research in that design research might include research for designing rather than for studying design) is precisely the question of an existing literature base; what are the sub-fields and their literatures; how many of them should we expect a PhD or design doctor to be familiar with. I find in design discussions that the discussions frequently go round and round simply because they are not based in any shared body of literature. People present points of view with no reference to others who have presented similar views previously. Then the discussion goes on until exhausted and eventually starts up all over again. The question of ethics is a good example. There has been some interesting literature on ethics related to design (i.e. Carl Mitchum's essay in Discovering Design) and the role of ethics in other professions. I think we might move the ethical issue into a realm where we can deal with it in some mode that is other than imperative; i.e. what types of designing would be considered ethical. Ethics is not innately opposed to the market, as much as Victor Papanek polemically asserted that it was. Yet, how do we get into a nuanced discussion of what constitutes ethical design? I would be interested in further discussion about how others on this list feel about the idea of a design studies component of any design PhD. How much should an advanced design student read? I believe that any PhD practitioner should have read a lot and should be able to make her or his way through the issues in the field and even be able to help shape debates about the field's future. At what point do we have a field of design studies? What do we need to agree on before we can say that we are all working in a common field? How do we create some sense of an intellectual space that "contains" a history of the arguments that interest us and that we can use as a frame of reference for moving forward? Victor %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%