Communication 797N - ST-Theor/Interdisciplinarity
Fall
2019
01
3.00
Anne Ciecko
TU 7:00PM 9:45PM
UMass Amherst
35265
Integ. Learning Center N345
ciecko@comm.umass.edu
This seminar aims to explore the generative possibilities and challenges of disciplinary border-crossing. How can the humanities and arts illuminate and complicate the social, natural, and physical sciences (and vice versa)? Why and how have such divisions been constructed and enforced? Integrating collaborative methods and dialogism, the course format will discussion of diverse readings and case studies; exploratory and experimental individual and group projects; and seminar visits by faculty across specializations, fields, disciplines, departments, and colleges. Final course projects are fully customizable to student interests and needs.
Our course readings, discussions, and activities -- while grounded in academic theory, research, and pedagogy -- will also necessarily extend to other forms of creative application, praxis, engagement, and transformational scholarly activity (e.g., artistic production, curation, criticism, activism). Informed by cultural studies, poststructuralism, aesthetics, intellectual history, postcolonial theory, intersectionality, perception psychology, debates in academic journalism, and more, the course readings will enable us to examine the conceptualization and frameworks of interdisciplinarity (and related terms and tropes such as multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, postdisciplinarity, undisciplined knowledge, etc.) through investigations of the following: 1) the historical foundations and contestations of academic institutions, disciplines, and canonicity; 2) insider/outsider dialectics and liminality; 3) questions of epistemology, meta-cognition, taxonomy, and knowledge formation; and 4) initiatives and reading strategies that facilitate mutual intelligibility.
Our course readings, discussions, and activities -- while grounded in academic theory, research, and pedagogy -- will also necessarily extend to other forms of creative application, praxis, engagement, and transformational scholarly activity (e.g., artistic production, curation, criticism, activism). Informed by cultural studies, poststructuralism, aesthetics, intellectual history, postcolonial theory, intersectionality, perception psychology, debates in academic journalism, and more, the course readings will enable us to examine the conceptualization and frameworks of interdisciplinarity (and related terms and tropes such as multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, postdisciplinarity, undisciplined knowledge, etc.) through investigations of the following: 1) the historical foundations and contestations of academic institutions, disciplines, and canonicity; 2) insider/outsider dialectics and liminality; 3) questions of epistemology, meta-cognition, taxonomy, and knowledge formation; and 4) initiatives and reading strategies that facilitate mutual intelligibility.
Open to Graduate students only. This course can count toward the Graduate Film Certificate, with appropriate customizations.