Trusting and Sharing Our Disciplines:

The Academy at Its Best

(August 18, 2004)

 

Robert W. Hill, Professor of English and

CETL Faculty Fellow for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning

Kennesaw State University Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

 

Fall Events:

September 3, 2004, 9-11 a.m., CETL House: CETL Book Club, Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

 

Introduction: The Way They Came

I.                    The Warrior: How to Fight;

II.                 The Wanderer: How to Feel

III.               The Poet: How to Party

IV.              The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

V.                 The Philosopher: How to Think

VI.              The Artist: How to See

VII.            The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

 

October 14-17, 2004: Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, NC: annual conference of AIS (Association for Integrative Studies): http://mercury.jcsu.edu:8080/freesite/index.php?dmagerais.

 

November 4, 2004, 12:30-2:30 p.m., CETL House: CETL Book Club, John Irving’s The World According to Garp

December 10-11, 8 p.m., Studio Theatre: Attend and discuss play based on Moby-Dick, written and performed by KSU Theatre Senior Seminar

TBA: Interdisciplinary Studies lunch or breakfast meetings

TBA: Georgia’s Two Most Recent Poets Laureate: David Bottoms and Bettie Sellers on "Art, Music & Poetry"

TBA: Pauline Gagnon, Dean of Arts and Sciences, State University of West Georgia: XIDS Courses: Interdisciplinary Studies Built into the Arts and Sciences Curriculum

 

 

Spring Events:

February 11-12, 2004, Atlanta: 12th Annual Georgia Conference on College and University Teaching

 

TBA: Two more CETL Book Club discussions

 

TBA: Interdisciplinary Studies lunch or breakfast meetings

 

 

The Written Word:

 

Reaching Through Teaching, a peer-reviewed online journal on the practice, philosophy, and scholarship of teaching in higher education: http://www.kennesaw.edu/cetl/ReachingThroughTeaching.htm

 

CETL Newsletter, Teaching Notes: http://www.kennesaw.edu/cetl/teachingnotes.htm

 

Online Discussion Site for “Interdisciplinary Studies, 1999-Present”: www.nicenet.org [Class Key: 9Z0554S87]

 

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Interdisciplinary Studies for Summer 2004-Spring 2006 in the Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University will include faculty and students in the pursuit of:

 

  1. Theoretical analyses of the interactions, interplay, integration, interpolation, and assimilation of identifiable fields of academic study—their content and their methodologies—including such approaches as may be called interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, or integrative; and

 

  1. Applications of Interdisciplinary Studies to the practice of teaching, at all levels.

 

In this two-year program we will examine:

 

  1. not only traditionally certified academic disciplines but also areas of thought and imagination in which we “naturally” or “unwittingly” employ more than one device of process or intuition to achieve understanding and to communicate it (for instance, creative writing or musical composition might be considered intrinsically interdisciplinary for their requisite assimilation of often disparate bodies of knowledge);
  2. intradisciplinary analogs to the field of Interdisciplinary Studies (for instance, literary theory regarding intertextuality and adaptation, which requires rigorous attention to literary genre, may offer some means of access to interrelationships among disciplines);
  3. techniques, effects, and value of multidisciplinary team-teaching so as to suggest how the confluence of two or more teachers’ contributions might be conceived as flowing not only through individual teachers but also through individual students who emerge from such experiences;
  4. how disciplines are affected by thoughtful contact with other disciplines, not only as one may be considered analogous to, or metaphoric of, the other, nor as one may merely supply examples or anecdotes, but also as each discipline may actually have been transmogrified or transformed by the other;
  5. how and where Interdisciplinary Studies may already be evident in the curricula of KSU, e.g., American Studies, General Education;
  6. how and where and by whom such scholarly work has already been done here at KSU; and
  7. published scholarship, professional associations (such as AIS), and other established centers of national repute, such as the Center of Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois and the Center for Teaching and Learning at Northwestern University, so as to allow for public affirmation of, or collegial corrective to, our local work.