Roaming the Great Divides
BY HAL JACOBS
Have you heard the one about the Emory
professors of sociology, public health, and psychiatry? Just
as they were leaving a reception, a hard rain began to fall,
so they decided to wait out the storm. Soon they were joined
by colleagues from law, linguistics, business, and Yerkes. And
the next thing you know, Emory had a new interdisciplinary program.
Okay, so we're exaggerating. But interdisciplinary projects--in
the words of their Emory disciples--have opened umbrellas, created
tapestries, built bridges, cross-fertilized fields, and opened
doors all over campus.
For the overview that follows, we gathered information on Emory's
interdisciplinary projects from a variety of sources--web pages,
news articles, word of mouth, and course atlases, to name a few--and
grouped it into three categories: programs that break from tradition
and stray across the great divide of humanities, social sciences,
and sciences; those that draw primarily from one of the aforementioned
areas; and those that emphasize global, ethnic, or area studies.
Physics professor Sidney Perkowitz told us he sees "nothing
wrong with your categories and in fact think it is helpful to
have them defined as you do."But Perkowitz adds that his
Communicating Science course, cross-listed among physics, English,
and journalism, is a small part of Emory's interdisciplinary
activity, and he wonders if a biomedical scientist might feel
differently. If you feel differently, or if you know of projects
we've inevitably missed, let us know.
CONNECTING
THE HUMANITIES, SCIENCES, AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
The Center for the Study of Health, Culture, and Society offers
programs that merge the social and biomedical sciences, as well
as address a global perspective on health issues. Along with
the Center for Ethics in Public Policy and the Professions, the
two groups are individually directing Sawyer Seminars that explore
complex health problems and cultural,
political, and economic responses.
The Institute for Women's Studies, the Institute of African Studies,
and the Linguistics Program include faculty throughout the humanities,
social sciences, and sciences. Pursuing "a unique interdisciplinary
synthesis" is also the intent of the neuroscience and behavioral
biology major, with faculty from anthropology, biology, and psychology.
In 1997, The Living Links Center was established at Yerkes to
compare the social life, ecology, cognition, neurology, and molecular
genetics of apes and humans. Cross-listed in the nursing and
theology schools, a child advocacy policy development course
led to a fall 1998 conference titled "Child Protection in
the 21st Century: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Advocacy for
Children."
The goal of the new Faculty Science Council is to address the
future of science and interdisciplinary initiatives. Plans call
for a Science and Society Program and a lecture series that connects
science and the humanities.
The Environmental Studies Program represents faculty in disciplines
ranging from the natural sciences to the social sciences and
the humanities. Meanwhile, the Graduate Division of Biological
and Biomedical Sciences crosses bridges tothe anthropology, chemistry,
medicine, neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, and
surgery departments.
At the Goizueta Business School, the Executive mba Program recently
launched a Health Care track, which joins other interdisciplinary
programs such as the MBA and Doctor of Law, MBA and Master of
Public Health, and MBA and Master of Divinity.
The Program in Violence Studies involves more than seventy faculty
from twenty departments, programs, and schools, including the
arts and sciences, the epidemiology department, the school of
public health, and The Carter Center.
WITHIN
THE "SUPERDISCIPLINES"
One of the oldest interdisciplinary programs in the United States
is Emory's Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts (ILA). Since
the 1950s, the ILA has encouraged comparative and interdisciplinary
studies across the social sciences and humanities. Its Center
for the Study of Public Scholarship recently awarded four semester-long
Rockefeller Human-ities Fellowships.
Thanks to supplementary funding and specific initiatives from
the Center for Language, Literature, and Culture, faculty from
languages, history, art history, and philosophy may choose from
among many interdisciplinary lectures and presentations. Nearby
is the Program in Classical Studies, which is funding a spring
conference on "Shifting Frontiers in Antiquity."
History, English, political science, and American studies receive
support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to present the Southern
Studies Colloquium, as well as offer dissertation fellowships
and a post-doctoral fellowship each year in Southern Studies.
At the Medieval Roundtable, Emory's medievalists include faculty
and graduate students in history, art history, German, English,
Spanish, religion, Middle Eastern studies, and philosophy.
The religion department interacts with other disciplines in its
Ethics and Society Program, a special concentration in religion
and American culture, and courses like Comparative Sacred Texts.
The Law and Religion Program is winding down a three-year project
that brought together 125 scholars and activists from around
the world to research religious proselytizing globally. On another
front, the Psychoanalytic Studies Program offers courses like
"Theology and Personality" and ventures into legal
territory with a course titled "Law and the Unconscious
Mind."
Faculty from the medical, public health, and nursing schools
interact at the Emory Center for Outcomes Research, which studies
the effects of cardiovascular medicine.
BUILDING
GLOBAL AND CULTURAL BRIDGES
On the global front, The Arts and Sciences Institute for Comparative
and International Studies (icis) funds new initiatives relating
both to scholarship and to the curriculum. The Emory Center for
International Studies, now incorporated within icis, has received
a Ford Foundation grant to develop a program to foster closer
collaboration between academics in area studies and those in
international research. The Halle Institute promotes global education
by funding a visiting professorship, graduate fellowships and
conferences. Providing a central conduit of information on Emory's
international academic programs is the Office of International
Affairs.
As we prepared this issue for publication, the Institute for
Jewish Studies was created to offer another broadly based dialogue
such as that being offered in area programs devoted to African
American, German, Latin American and Caribbean, Middle Eastern,
Asian, and Russian and East European Studies.
Hal Jacobs is a freelance writer
in Atlanta.