Philosophy Hall,
Room 301
The ICLS Graduate Student Planning Committee would like to thank the following departments for their generous support: GSAC, GSAPP, EALAC, History, French and Romance Philology, MESAAS, and German (Image: Denis Diderot and Hean Le Rond d’Alembert’s “Tree of Knowledge” from the second edition of Encylopedie, ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des artes et des metiers).
Keynote Speaker: D. Graham Burnett (Professor of History at Princeton University and Editor of Cabinet magazine)
Concluding Panel: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor, English; ICLS Founding Director) and Lydia Liu (W.T. Tam Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures; ICLS Director of Graduate Studies) in conversation with panel Chair, Stathis Gourgouris (Professor, Classics and English; ICLS Director)
Interdisciplinary methods are often presented as responses to the tangled complexity of worldly phenomena; objects of study cut across multiple histories, languages, and geographies, and they thus require equally multivalent modes of analysis. Yet such interdisciplinary visions also have their own complex histories. As arguments about the normative structure of knowledge and the proper means of engaging and articulating it, interdisciplinary visions are inseparable from the life-worlds in which they take shape. From 1930s visions of “flexible thought” to 1950s paradigms of Area Studies to more recent developments in Cultural Studies and beyond, multidimensional perspectives themselves enfold many layers of history.
What is the relationship between these two elements, between theories of interdisciplinary practice and accounts of their histories? This conference seeks to open up a dialogue between these two dimensions of interdisciplinary thought – and it does so for a specific reason linked to the present historical moment. No longer the contentious alternatives to institutional structures that they once were, in many contemporary settings interdisciplinary visions have themselves become institutionalized paradigms. If the contemporary institutionalization of interdisciplinarity signals a shift in the relationship between the disciplines and their boundaries, what does interdisciplinarity look like in this new context? And what does this shift mean for the future of interdisciplinary practice?
Papers will cover a broad range of topics, addressing one or more of the aspects mentioned above. They will include studies of interdisciplinary institutions themselves as well as demonstrations of new directions in interdisciplinary work, especially under the aegis of an interdisciplinary institution. For more information, please contact: iclsgradconference2011@gmail.com.
PROGRAM
9:00am-9:30am | Welcome and Breakfast
PANEL 1: “Edutecture CU teachers College Collaborative” 9:30am-11:00am “Edutecture: Post-Representiationalist Design as Post-Modern Praxis.”
CU Teacher’s College collaborative Blake Victor Seidenshaw (Interdsciplinary Studies in Education, Teachers College, CU) Victoria Netanus (Sociology and Education, Teachers College, CU) Chris Moffett (Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, CU) Monica Patrice Barra (Cultural Anthropology, Graduate Center, CUNY) David Backer (Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, CU) Ethan Jucovy (Independant Scholar)
PANEL 2: “Interdisciplinarity Between Art and Science” 11:00am – 12:30pm Disscussant: Jay Gundacker, History
John R. Blakinger, UC Berkeley Models for Art and Science Collaboration: Gyorgy Kepes at MIT and the Rise of Cold War Interdisciplinarity in the Visual Arts
Matthew Ramirez, UC Berkeley Towards a Physiology of Drama: Plot Algorithms with Applications in Playwriting, Interactive Drama, and Collaborative Filtering
Robert Lewis and Matthew Luckett, Michigan State and UCLA Cowboy morality in historical mass media: Barriers to an interdisciplinary investigation of dime novels and westward expansion
12:30pm-1:30pm | Lunch
KEYNOTE LECTURE D. Graham Burnett presenting with Artist Lisa Young 1:30pm – 2:30pm
“In Lies Begins Responsibilities: Parafiction and Interdisciplinary Practice”
- Graham Burnett is a professor of History, Princeton University and Editor, CabinetMagazine Discussant: Marwa El Skakry, Associate Professor, Department of History
PANEL 3: Historical Interdisciplinarities and Interdisciplinary Histories 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Discussant: Owen Cornwall, MESAAS
Arthur Dudney, MESAAS, Columbia University “Interdisciplinarity before Disciplines, the View from Early-Modern South Asia”
Irene Plantholt, Near Eastern Languages, Columbia University “An interdisciplinary approach towards ancient Mesopotamian medicine”
3:30pm-3:45pm | Coffee
PANEL 4: Borders, Spaces, Disciplines3:45pm – 5:15pm
Discussant: Yohann Ripert, Department of French and Romance Philology
Lori Cole, Department of Comparative Literature, NYU “Reading Revista de Avance Across Disciplines”
Alvram Alpert, University of Pennsylvania “Rousseau’s Modernity and Suzuki’s Zen”
Ginger Nolan, History of Architecture, Columbia University “‘Great Books for Fat Men’ and Simple Tests for ‘Savage Minds’: How the Humanities Made a Global Humanity”
CONCLUDING PANEL: 5:15pm – 6:15pm
“On Institutionalizing Interdisciplinarity”
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University Lydia Liu, Wu Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature, EALAC, Columbia University
Moderated by Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of Classics and Director, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
