Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 00:15:54 +0100
Subject: interdisciplinary work


Coming from an institution where many 'subjects' are studied together under
the faculty rubric of 'education studies', interdisciplinary work is more
the rule than not, especially where it really counts i.e. in teaching. For
instance, an Arts and Performance course took the subject of Faust through
Marlowe, Goethe, Gounod and Mann with contributions from literary, musical
and dramatic disciplines. Students seem to find this 'natural' and
unproblematic, and teachers find it extremely vivifying. That this could
lead to interdisciplinary  research seems clea. Indeed I have found myself
working (rather to my surprise) on the visual significance of language in
graphic novels (OK, yes I do mean Batman). I'm sure that for all of us
Literary Studies regularly cohabit shamelessly with History, Art, Music,
Drama, Sociology, Psychology (which seems to me much wider as a discipline
than the therapeutic model spoken of recently in this forum, and for me
would still unapologetically retain the great moral psychologists -
Schopenhauer, Nietszche, Freud and Lacan, despite his awful prose), not to
mention Geography (Moretti on maps, Ogborn on 18th London). I can't easily
imagine studying literature - and modernism in particular - without this
interdisciplinarity. And if that means being less than expert on the
disciplines melded with then that's why we have colleagues - to put us right
and argue for their specialism's individual way of working, challenging the
assumption that interdisciplinarity equals the interchangeability of all
forms and methodologies.

When I started this communication i think I had a point to make but the
meditation rather took over and I can't now remember what it was. Still,
other people's thinking out loud is what I have most valued on this list, so
I hope you'll put up with mine.

Steve Watts
Homerton College
Cambridge