Eric Bolesh, a senior at Harvard University, scanned his college options four years ago and saw the majors he expected to see. He scoured through the standard descriptions - English, history, biology - but the different subjects blurred into one, and became indistinguishable from one another.
As he searched through the materials, however, something caught his eye, a different kind of major and maybe a new academic experience - Harvard's department of folklore and mythology.
It was something he had never seen before. Intrigued, he visited the department as a senior in high school. And now, in just a few months, Bolesh will graduate as a double concentrator in folklore and mythology and history.
"It's really made me happy about being here at Harvard," Bolesh said. "I honestly can't think of any other option that would have given me a more fulfilling experience in college."
Though his parents questioned the practicality of his choice, Bolesh is preparing to move to Chapel Hill after graduation to work in benchmarking and strategy consulting. "The company values a creative approach to the problems that it deals with, and I think that's something I'll be able to provide them with," he said. "I've already taken a creative approach to the problem, as it were, of my education, and they seem to value that."
He paused.
"Maybe I just dressed nicely."
Probably not. Harvard is the only Ivy League school to offer an undergraduate degree in folklore and mythology, but during the last 20 years, the notion of interdisciplinary education has infiltrated - and in some cases become a bedrock of - elite undergraduate institutions.
*
Yet despite widespread sentiment that interdisciplinary studies are valuable, faculty, administrators and students continue to disagree over how they should be integrated and what, exactly, they are.
Among Ivy League schools, Princeton stands alone in offering interdisciplinary studies primarily as certificate programs rather than as majors. At Yale, undergraduates can major in a variety of programs including Renaissance studies, humanities, African studies, computer science and psychology.
At Harvard - in addition to folklore and mythology - interdisciplinary majors include environmental science and public policy, history and literature, social studies and women's studies. Dartmouth offers Native-American, Arabic, African, African-American, Jewish and women's studies.
"In some respects, I think Princeton has maintained the position that it's important for a student to have a firm foundation and grounding in a single discipline and with that grounding can move into interdisciplinary studies by having a certificate," Associate Dean of the College Hank Dobin said. "I think there is perhaps some concern that some interdisciplinary majors don't provide foundations in a kind of single disciplinary perspective in sufficient depth. I do believe that's important."
"Some universities have taken other approaches. My sense is that at least for the undergraduate curriculum, we are fairly confident that our approach is a good one."
Sean Wilentz, director of the American studies program, was more blunt.
"I think we've got it right, and everyone else has got it wrong," he said. "For an ideal model, I think ours is it."
Wilentz argued that the "cross-fertilization" achieved by drawing faculty from various departments to teach in certificate programs stimulates intellectual life at the University in a way that a single department - with its own faculty - could not.
Based on his experience in American studies, he said, "My history classes are much more open than they might have been when I began. It's edgier. More sparks fly this way."
Steven Biel, director of studies at the history and literature department at Harvard, offered a slightly different opinion. "That's a valid approach," he said. "But I think that an alternative approach is to imagine that there might be a way of venturing beyond a discipline in which the end result is something other than a return, even an enriched return."
"In our case, we hope for a third way - discovering an alternative, which is equally intellectually rigorous, but also new," added Biel, whose department does not have its own faculty.
According to Biel, interdisciplinary majors at Harvard are relatively new. But he said, "I just know that women's studies, African-American studies, social studies are some of the places where the most exciting work is being done on campus. They're all extraordinarily exciting places to be as an undergraduate at Harvard."
This year, Biel advised a student whose thesis focused on American involvement in the war in the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century - a perfect topic for a politics major. But the sources used included songs and poems, analyzed from historical and literary perspectives.
"Beyond high falutin' reasons, most basically it's a place for students who are interested in both history and literature," Biel said, laughing. "If you love to read poetry or novels but you're also interested in the French revolution or the industrial revolution, there ought to be a place that can create some kind of coherence out of that."
Margot Browning, director of the Big Problems program at the University of Chicago - which offers a variety of interdisciplinary majors, including "humanities" and "laws, letters and society" - said her university allows students to pursue their true interests.
"Some of the questions and problems that students become interested in don't fit neatly in one field. A student says, 'I want to be proficient in literature and philosophy,' and an interdisciplinary approach like that makes for additional work, perhaps, but makes for additional leverage. You can ask comparative questions across fields, across time periods, cross-cultural questions. It can be part of your purpose to cross boundaries instead of stay within them."
But Anson Rabinbach, director of the European cultural studies program at Princeton said he remains wary of efforts to create interdisciplinary majors.
"I can guess that some people would like to see that happen, but I'm skeptical of that," he said. "I think you have to have a balance between anchoring in a discipline and experimentation, and too much of either is not a good thing. Ideally a program like European cultural studies provides a space where people can work outside their specific disciplines but in an area related to it."
But some administrators argue that disciplines were created for organizational purposes, not to facilitate learning.
"When you have a departmental structure that is basically an administrative structure, that can be an obstacle especially at the undergraduate level," said Kent Peterman, director of academic affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. "In lots of ways, the bureaucratic organizational structure doesn't represent the way people work together intellectually."
*
Not all Princeton professors agreed that the University's approach was ideal. "I know that it can be quite challenging for students to major in interdisciplinary fields, and I certainly welcome students who are interested in that," said Nell Painter, director of the African-American studies program at Princeton. "I would be delighted if we could find more flexible ways to deal with interdisciplinary work and keep the focus on a good strong, disciplinary backbone."
Princeton students agreed that interdisciplinary studies are important to their education, though opinions varied on how to approach the situation.
Matt Frazier '02 will be majoring in the Wilson School next year - one of Princeton's few interdisciplinary majors - though he said he might have majored in European cultural studies had that been an option.
Frazier argued there should be more interdisciplinary majors because students are sometimes intimidated by the dual requirements of departments and certificate programs, which rarely overlap.
"I think it would benefit everybody," he said. "What those professors say is valid, but I think that idea leaves people caught up in their departments, and that means they have to toss aside these classes. I'm pretty satisfied with what I've been able to find. But I think some people are frustrated."
For other students, certificates are an ideal solution. Caitlin Fitz '02 recently enrolled in the American studies program to supplement her history major. But, she said, American studies would never have supplanted it.
Others concurred that increasing undergraduate choices would be desirable - whether that entailed increasing the number of certificate programs, allowing students to double major or expanding the selection of majors.
Wilentz agreed that the certificate programs could be improved.
"We should be able to do both," he said. "I think it would make the place more attractive to students and faculty. Ideally, I see the University understanding that interand multidisciplinary excellence needn't come at the expense of traditional disciplines."
Rabinbach added that he would like to see more opportunities to advertise current programs. "I always get the feeling that students don't know that we exist," he said.
*
But some argue that more than increased publicity is required to promote interdisciplinary education.
William Newell - executive director and founder of the Association for Integrative Studies, an organization that promotes interdisciplinary studies - argued that interdisciplinary programs employed by the vast majority of schools are fundamentally flawed.
"Instead of a truly interdisciplinary experience, you have a variety of classes in different disciplines," said Newell, who also serves as executive director of the interdisciplinary studies school at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "You may be taking a class in women's studies, but it's taught by an English or history or sociology teacher and from that perspective."
Hanny Hindi, one of three student representatives to the School of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Education Committee at Penn, agreed with Newell's analysis.
"The majors are only interdisciplinary on paper," he said. "I think it's important that Penn has recognized that distinctions among departments, though logistically important, don't always divide the areas of human knowledge exhaustively. But I think the only way that things can be really interdisciplinary is if it's interdisciplinary within a course."
The new freshman distribution requirement at Penn - developed with the input of student representatives - will address this concern, creating classes taught by a tag-team of professors from a variety of different disciplines.
"I think it would be absolutely ideal to have true interdisciplinary majors," Hindi said.
Newell founded AIS in 1979 after teaching an interdisciplinary class on urban issues in Philadelphia that highlighted the difficulties in relying on individual disciplines to solve complicated problems. According to Newell, schools like Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and Bennington College in Bennington, Vt., are generally closer to the spirit of interdisciplinary - rather than multidisciplinary - education.
Hampshire does not offer departmental majors of any kind. Instead, students design individual courses of study in conjunction with a faculty adviser. Classes also strive to be interdisciplinary - for instance, one recent course on "the ethos of the future" drew on science fiction, cyber-culture, literature, electronic music and film.
Another dealt with the culture of Cold War America, using a wide range of works from personalities such as Sylvia Plath, Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac and James Dean.
At Bennington, a class on medieval theater is supplemented by an opportunity to stage outdoor performances of selected materials from the course readings.
*
Among Princeton professors, the level of interdisciplinary work in the classroom varies widely. Some utilize films and photographs to enhance studies of literature, while others concentrate on a strict interpretation of their disciplines. But regardless of individual efforts, the number of majors is still limited.
Bolesh was drawn to Harvard by the promise of a unique educational experience. "As I looked into folk and myth further, I realized it would allow me to do some interesting things that a lot of people wouldn't get to do - to not necessarily be constrained by a very rigid structure," he said.
"If I had majored in history all by itself, things would have been very different. I wouldn't have had the sorts of eye-opening experiences that I had in folk and myth - work in ethnography, anthropology - mind-expanding subject matter that I value very highly. I'm thankful that I was lucky enough to take folk and myth when I wasn't aware of the rewards."
Read More
Tecca takes the town at spring Lawnparties
Isabella DailThis spring's Lawnparties saw sunshine, Lil Tecca, and large crowds, despite calls for a boycott from protesters at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
This spring's Lawnparties saw sunshine, Lil Tecca, and large crowds, despite calls for a boycott from protesters at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
USG holds eleventh-hour emergency meeting, statement on Lawnparties to come
Christopher Bao, Sejal Goud, and Miriam WaldvogelWith day four of the sit-in beginning, USG had yet to officially gather to discuss the demonstration. The ‘Prince’ spoke to non-voting attendees and USG Senate members, some of whom expressed frustration at the lack of action, and others who chalked the night’s events up to the execution of procedure.
With day four of the sit-in beginning, USG had yet to officially gather to discuss the demonstration. The ‘Prince’ spoke to non-voting attendees and USG Senate members, some of whom expressed frustration at the lack of action, and others who chalked the night’s events up to the execution of procedure.
Day four of ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ at Princeton
Daily Princetonian StaffSunday marks day four of the Princeton sit-in in solidarity with Gaza. Lawnparties activities are set to take place — follow for live updates.
Sunday marks day four of the Princeton sit-in in solidarity with Gaza. Lawnparties activities are set to take place — follow for live updates.
