Seminar Directors

Christina Nadler CUNY Graduate Center

Patricia Clough CUNY Graduate Center

Seminar Description

As interdisciplinary studies continue to disrupt notions of disciplinarity, what might it mean to have a new interdisciplinarity that interweaves more than academic disciplines? What if practices with which we are engaged outside academia were more explicitly brought to bear on, and expressed in, our academic work? Such practices include being a patient or practitioner of psychoanalysis, being an artist or musician, practicing yoga, parenting, and participating in religious worship and activism. How might we begin to consider the role of other discourses and practices often over looked because of their place outside the academy? For this seminar, we will consider how other ‘non-academic’ discourses and practices inform our work (and ourselves). How do ways we define ourselves outside the academy come to (i/e)nter our work? What would it mean to be more thoughtful about the way aspects of our lives intertwine and shape our work. Seminar activities will primarily be structured around discussing a set of required readings that will be circulated in advance, as well as participants' own writing, which will also be shared in advance.

In advance of the seminar, participants will be asked to submit a brief set of materials that include a discussion of the following (1-2 pages each): your academic work, a practice or discourse outside academia that you are either engaged with or interested in, a discussion of how your interest or engagement with this practice or discourse serves as a resource or challenge for your academic work and/or a discussion of any of the questions below. You may also choose to include reading suggestions for the group to read and discuss. Once participants are selected, the Seminar Directors will set up a website/blog where participants will be able to share materials and engage in discussion before and after the seminar is conducted.

Possible lines of inquiry include:

• How do we negotiate boundaries that inform our work and what can we term this negotiation (as interdisciplinarity beyond disciplines is admittedly and deliberately problematic)?

• How might we begin to consider the role of other discourses and practices often over looked because of their place outside the academy?

• How do ways we define ourselves outside the academy come to (i/e)nter our work?

• What would it mean to be more thoughtful about the way aspects of our lives intertwine and shape our work?

• Where do our public, private and academic lives intersect? What would it look like if we placed those moments at the center of our work? Of our pedagogy? How would it challenge existing structures of power or reshape discourses surrounding the role of the university and academia more broadly?

Application Process

Prospective participants should send both Christina Nadler and Patricia Clough a cv, a brief statement of interest, and a short summary of the set of documents you will produce to fulfill the seminar requirements (1-2 paragraphs each).