[As another Fall
semester kicks off, a series of preview posts—this time focusing on new things
I’ll be trying this semester. Leading up to a special pedagogy post this
weekend!]
Three reasons I’m
very excited to be teaching our IDIS Capstone for the first time.
1)
The Senior Projects: I’ve had the chance over
the years to serve as the advisor for a number of individual such projects, in
which our IDIS majors combine three distinct disciplines into one culminating effort.
To cite two examples: a student combined English, Psychology, and Human
Services/Counseling to create a novella about domestic abuse; another combined
English, Art, and Communications/Media to create the opening pages of a graphic
novel about King Arthur. These projects exemplify interdisciplinarity and
undergraduate achievement, and in this Capstone course I’ll have the chance to
work for the first time with a group of students as they design, research, and
produce their senior projects. Can’t wait!
2)
Applying Interdisciplinarity: Alongside their
work on those individual projects, the course also features a shared topic and group
of readings and materials. For my version, I plan to modify and adapt my summer
graduate course on Analyzing 21st Century America, asking the
students to use a variety of texts, media, and disciplinary perspectives to
analyze such topics as #BlackLivesMatter, satire and humor in American culture,
controversies and debates in sports, and the role of the media and popular
culture in our unfolding presidential election. I hope that these collective
conversations will inform the students’ individual projects, but in any case I
know that they will produce valuable insights on our 21st century
moment and culture, and on what interdisciplinary thinking offers us as members
of that society. Can’t wait!
3)
I’m Me!: I don’t imagine that readers of this
blog will need much convincing that I’m very much about interdisciplinarity.
But long before I began blogging, that concept and skill has informed nearly
every academic decision and goal of mine: from choosing to
major in History and Literature to working to create an
American Studies program at Fitchburg State, to name only two of the nearly
limitless examples of this emphasis. I also work to bring interdisciplinarity
into every class I teach. But at the same time, the IDIS Capstone will be the
first course I’ve taught where interdisciplinary research and writing, reading
and analysis, thinking and scholarship will comprise the most central elements
and goals. So I say once more, with feeling, can’t wait!
Last preview
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Things you’re hoping to try or do this fall?
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