Please join us on June 4th in Humanities I, room 210 as we take the opportunity presented by the current state of crisis to evaluate and re-imagine interdisciplinary work as both a project and an enterprise. Now that interdisciplinarity has itself become something of a philosopher’s stone, a general panacea for the woes and wiles of University research, what is it that those of us engaged in interdisciplinary research are doing and how does that fit in the remaking of University research and education? As the disciplines themselves seek to dissolve their disciplinary boundaries, what sort of work could justify the continued existence of a space and a program that aims to investigate what is left out or discouraged in disciplinary work? And, further, what is the status of disciplinary work itself? As cuts to public higher education and shifting administrative priorities threaten to sink Interdisciplinary programs across the country, we might use this occasion as an opportunity to grasp the foundations and delicate lineaments of the Interdisciplinary project.

9-10: breakfast

10-11:30 – Questioning Crisis: Adam Dylan Hefty (Valences of Discipline in the Times of Imperiled Institutions), Surya Parekh (Graduate Work), and Mario Diaz-Perez (Max Weber and the Crises of the Sciences)

11:45-1:15 – Articulating Histories: Todd Chretien (Listening to the Subaltern Speak: Methods for Recovering History), Joshua Brahinsky (Tentative Musings on the Friction Between Disciplines when Making Resistances from Speaking Tongues), and Fritzie de Mata (Dead Bodies and the Balikbayan Boxes: Unpacking Spatial Linkages in the Subaltern Pacific)

2:15-3:45 – Perceiving Violence: Maya Gonzalez (On Primitive Accumulation), Steve Carter (Military Reading as Interdisciplinary Approach), Aaron Reed (What If I’m the Bad Guy)

4-5:30 – Thinking With/Partaking in the World: Madeline McDonald (On the Problem of Utopias: Toward an Edge-Topology of ‘Post-Sixties Narratives’), Erin Ellison (The Girls are Alright: Addressing Gendered Power Dynamics Within a Youth Participatory Action Research Setting), Joshua LaBare (The Ecology of Everyday Life)

5:45-6:45 – Symposium of HistCon Alumni

6:45-following – refreshments