Symposium #3

"Have the Humanistic Disciplines Collapsed?"

April 23-24, 1999

Humanities Center Annex

Description

In the 1980s and 1990s "interdisciplinarity" became the order of the day in the humanities. It was never entirely clear, however, what that term meant. Did it mean metadisciplinary reflection on the nature of problems and constructs common to many of the disciplines, humanistic or otherwise? (The first conference presented by the Humanities Center in 1982, for example, was devoted to "Order and Disorder" as an organizing trope in the humanities and the sciences.) Or did the term mean extra- or trans-disciplinary research on topics that seemed to fall between the cracks created by disciplinary divisions? Or did it mean interdisciplinary research in a stricter sense: a conscious effort to bring distinct disciplinary methodologies to bear on the understanding of a particular phenomenon, issue, or problem, on the assumption that these different methodologies would in some sense offer complementary accounts? In fact much of the work currently done in the humanities seems to be interdisciplinary in none of these senses. Instead, it might be better described as "postdisciplinary" -- as work that could be done by historians, literary scholars, or anthropologists (even some sociologists) almost indistinguishably. The collapse of the traditional boundaries between the humanistic disciplines seems to be an increasingly clear feature of current intellectual life.

In this concluding symposium we will explore why this phenomenon has occurred and what are its implications, intellectual and organizational. We wish to probe the ramifications of a situation in which the study of English, for example, has expanded to include anything from physiology to psychology, from sexuality to politics, from economics to metaphysics. We wish to ask why all the humanities disciplines (except philosophy) seem at the same time to be collapsing into history (repackaged and frequently politicized as "cultural studies"). What do historians now do that literary scholars do not, and vice versa? Is the current situation a result of the culture wars and the loss of consensus over a canon of classic works? Were the traditional boundaries between the disciplines sustained in some way by conceptions of the "literary" and the "timeless" built into the notion of a canon? Since disciplines have functioned as systems of specialization and professionalization, hence of authority, what happens to the humanities if they are seen to be increasingly "dedisciplinized," "despecialized," and "deprofessionalized"? What can humanists claim if they no longer serve as guardians of the canon? Should departmental divisions be redrawn?

 

Schedule

Friday, April 23

9:30am Welcome

Keith Michael Baker, Anthony and Linda Meier Director, Stanford Humanities Center and J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History

10:00am Panel #1: The Question of "History"

Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, Department of History, University of California-Los Angeles

"Why History Is In No Danger"

Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor and Chair, Department of History, University of California-Berkeley

"The Menace of Consilience: Keeping the Disciplines Unreconciled"

Chair: Aron Rodrigue, Department of History and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

 

1:30pm Panel #2: The Question of "Literature"

Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, Department of English, Stanford University

"After the Collapse: Reconfiguring the Study of Arts and Letters"

Louis Menand, Department of English, The Graduate School of the City University of New York

"Have the Humanistic Disciplines Collapsed?"

Chair: Bliss Carnochan, Acting Director, Stanford Humanities Center and Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus

 

4:00pm Panel #3: The Question of "Culture"

Richard Handler, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

"The Anthropology/History Border, Viewed from Anthropology"

James Clifford, Department of the History of Consciousness, University of California-Santa Cruz

"(Re)Articulating the Disciplines"

Chair: Donald Carter, Department of Anthropology, The Johns Hopkins University, and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

Reception to follow

 

Saturday, April 24

10:00am Roundtable: The Question of "Interdisciplinarity"

Kathleen Biddick, Department of History, University of Notre Dame and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

Susan E. Dunn, Associate Director, Stanford Humanities Center

Mark Seltzer, Department of English, Cornell University and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

Cynthia Steele, Department of Romance Languages and Literature, University of Washington and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

Chair: Nancy Kollman, Department of History and Humanities Center Fellow, Stanford University

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Last updated 4/20/99