GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN, SCANDINAVIAN & DUTCH
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Is interdisciplinarity a threat to the existence of our separate disciplines and the study of texts as representative of fixed genres, or does it offer the potential for a truly revolutionary organization of university language/humanities studies?
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Profs. John Mowitt and Ruth-Ellen B.Joeres
CONFERENCE CO-SPONSORS:
Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature
Center for Austrian Studies
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
ADDITIONAL FINANCIAL SUPPORT:
Administrative Grants for Student Initiatives, Campus Involvement Center
CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
Increasing work in interdisciplinarity developed as a means to encourage dialogue and reconfigure knowledge particularly within the humanities. However, interdisciplinarity has also provided a justification for the merging of previously separate humanities disciplines in a time of budget cuts. The move from labeling ourselves as students of Scandinavian, Dutch or German Literature to students of Scandinavian, Dutch or German Studies is easy. The hard part comes in our day-to-day work. The questions under consideration at this conference involve further complications of genre and interdisciplinarity:
Does interdisciplinarity offer new critical avenues or does it create an overload of disciplinary methods bordering on dilettantism?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary perspectives? How does interdisciplinarity shatter old frameworks and shift established boundaries?
Can our work explore effectively the production and reception of knowledge in literary generic patterns and codes? To what extent does interdisciplinarity involve the disruption and re-establishment of power and authority positions?
How has interdisciplinarity in American language and humanities research and teaching affected or alienated related academic work in Europe (or elsewhere)?
How do these theoretical issues affect our practice? (Provide examples of comparative or interdisciplinary work exploring historical and literary analysis, psychoanalysis and literature, gender studies and film, literature and film, etc.)
These questions are intended to stimulate dialogue. We encourage the submission of panels with presentations which engage theoretical and/or practical aspects of genre and interdisciplinarity. Studies of specific texts as well as theoretical issues are welcome.
Please submit abstracts of approximately 250 words by January 15, 1999 to:
Winifred Griffin and Tim Malchow
Email: gradconf@lucix.cla.umn.edu
Copyright ©1996-2002, H-Soz-u-Kult · Humanities · Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte