The Promises and Pitfalls of Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity

Miscellaneous Readings on Disciplinarity

This week, I read several articles from various journals from the last decade or so (mostly coming from the last five years). These works paint a varied picture of what disciplinarity and even interdisciplinarity can offer English as a whole and writing studies in particular.

Bazerman, Charles. “The Disciplined Interdisciplinarity of Writing Studies.”  Research in the Teaching of English 46.1 (2011): 8-21. Print.

In this article, Bazerman, a well-known advocate of interdisciplinarity, traces how he developed his sense of interdisciplinarity and the benefits of this work. He argues for interdisciplinarity as a means to develop both the “home” discipline (writing studies, in his case) and the “outside” discipline. Interdisciplinarity is a way, in his mind, to develop a fuller understanding of ideas and problems inside and outside the discipline, or, as he says, “the path that finds discipline in our questions and goals, allowing us to draw on the resources of many disciplines” (8). And such a path is perhaps necessary in writing and literacy studies given the complexity of literacy.

By focusing too much on one particular path, we may limit the scope of our research, causing a narrowness of exploration. This he says is a common occurrence resulting from disciplinarity. A field establishes its objects of study, its methods, its core knowledge; while necessary to the development of a discipline, this serves to isolate that discipline from others and to create suspicion of the methods and knowledge from outside the discipline. At this point, Bazerman turns to his own career as a way to illustrate the sort of interdisciplinary work he is advocating. He used sociology and sociocultural theories to examine writing practices. But Bazerman does not call simply for a borrowing of methods or ideas. Instead, he sees this as an integrative process. He immersed himself in the discourse and discussions of the field, not satisfied to dabble with a few theories. What he found through this more involved practice were the deep complexities of writing practices wrought by sociocultural forces within disciplines. In addition, he found himself caught up in four different kinds of “puzzles”: examining problems from other disciplines, maintaining focus on his discipline’s issues and concerns, applying outside knowledge to writing studies systematically, and integrating these internal and external perspectives productively. These puzzles helped him see new areas for inquiry and growth in his home discipline as well as those from outside it. Though he says such work should be accepted and applied more broadly, he cautions us in the end not to assume this breaks down disciplinary walls or eliminates disciplines. The goal must be to learn from disciplines, to apply that knowledge to our own disciplines, and not to pretend that this work removes our distinctions.

What Bazerman promotes here is less an ideological view of interdisciplinarity than a practical one. Embedded in this practicality, though, is the idea that we must push against the modernist conceptions of disciplines as compartmentalized. This leads to a goal of enhancing the knowledge of the fields involved and to break the narrowness fostered by disciplinarity. Furthermore, it seems to me that such a goal is something we might work toward within the field of English (or at least within our own departments), as a way toward Thomas Miller’s call for more integrated approaches to literacy learning in English.

Kopelson, Karen. “Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition.” CCC 59.4 (2008): 750-80. Print.

Kopelson’s article examines the disciplinary status of composition studies, drawing on both scholarship about the field and survey responses from graduate students and faculty in the field. Now that some of the “newness” of the discipline has worn off, she urges us to reconsider some key issues in the field, including the “pedagogical imperative,” the sense of the theory/practice divide, and the need to develop greater interdisciplinarity. Her end goal in this is for the field to emerge “as an interdisciplinary, knowledge-making field of study” (753).

Her first area of interest is in field’s emphasis on teaching. Her survey results indicated that many doctoral students in the field felt considerable pressure to focus on pedagogical issues in their dissertations (regardless of the depth of their theoretical focus), their coursework, and their preparations for job searches. Such pressures, Kopelson claims, limit the types of questions that emerging scholars feel they can appropriately address. In terms of the theory/practice divide, Kopelson attempts to reframe the theory/practice debate as more a division of the use of theory. On one hand are those who develop theory (“do” theory); on the other hand are those who apply theory (“use” theory). “Doing” theory, she says is not about practicality, and a theory can only become practical when someone takes it from its more theoretical contexts. She also suggests that the notion of praxis does not resolve the binary as it still puts theory into direct relationship with practice. Instead, she argues that we need to view theory as an end in itself. Such a view may enable the field to develop more theories of its own instead of relying on outside fields to provide its theories. While this seems to suggest a somewhat isolationist view, Kopelson pushes instead for greater interdisciplinarity but as more of a two-way street: Composition studies should begin exporting its knowledge to other disciplines instead of only using their ideas. What she concludes from these discussions is that the field is too caught up in defining itself and its domains of knowledge and too much time on self-reflection. Instead, she argues that we engage in more critical, theoretical work.

Interestingly, Kopelson seems to be reinforcing some of divisions she wants to reframe here. I agree that the field suffers from a dearth of its own theories. However, that is perhaps if we purely define theory as something disciplinary unique and specific. Even then, drawing on theories from other fields and applying them in the rigorous and systematic ways promoted by someone like Charles Bazerman can be “doing” theory. Put in a new context, the theory can take on a new tenor and become in some ways a new theory. I also feel, like Thomas Miller, that attempts to distance ourselves from teaching, from the practical side of our discipline, has a cost for us. We should not neglect theoretical work at all; however, we should also work to apply the intellectual rigor to pedagogy.

Paretti, Marie. “Interdisciplinarity as a Lens for Theorizing Language/Content Partnerships.” Across the Disciplines 8.3 (2011): n. pag. WAC Clearinghouse.  Web. 30 Jul. 2012.

Paretti takes up interdisciplinarity as a way to improve the teaching of writing throughout the university. Though this is certainly not a new concept in WAC circles, Paretti uses this discussion to argue for deeper integrations of language and content to create a more meaningful and productive relationship between language and content faculty for the betterment of pedagogy.

To do so, she begins with the relatively common beliefs of content faculty who feel writing is not their domain, despite the fact that they often require writing (and usually discipline-specific writing) of their students. But this need for discipline-specific writing skills leave writing instructors in a tough position of either trying to abstract general principles from an unmanageable number of disciplines or to become nearly experts in a limited scope of disciplinary discourses. Additionally, writing instructors often look past the use of content in writing instruction. Both groups, then, attempt to separate content and language. To respond to this, she suggests that language and content faculty must work together, “making disciplinary epistemologies explicit and helping [students] navigate these epistemologies as they develop disciplinary identities” (n. pag.).

Of significance for this purpose is the distinction between multidisciplinarity—disciplines working together, but each only going as far as its specific discipline’s focus will allow—and interdisciplinarity—a more integrative model. Clearly, the latter approach is closer to Paretti’s goals as it “operates around the shared goals that reside at the intersection of disciplinary boundaries” (n. pag.). By recognizing and valuing the shared goals instead of promoting one discipline’s goals as more important than another’s, faculty are better able to communicate and negotiate their goals with one another.

To translate this into pedagogical terms, she combines these ideas with situated cognition (to make explicit the influence of different spheres of knowledge on certain practices, e.g., writing) and metacognition (to help students recognize concepts that can be applied to different contexts). By coming together, content faculty can promote situated cognition while language faculty can promote metacognitive skills. Combined with this, though, must be the recognition that the relationship between content and language faculty is one of equality, or else one side’s views and goals will dominate those of the others. Again, this calls for clear communication and negotiation of goals is necessary.

Certainly, such interdisciplinary work has considerable potential for teaching writing at a more advanced level, once students are more aware of their discipline and its discourses. However, I was a little put off by some of the generalities here in terms of enacting this interdisciplinarity. Undoubtedly, faculty share the goal of educating students, but simply invoking ideas of interdisciplinarity and negotiation of goals in such contexts may not be enough to overcome the separations and the power of disciplinarity. One can hope that the larger goals of education trump smaller disciplinary goals, but set ingrained agendas can be hard to overcome. Perhaps the next step is to explore more fully specific and systematic ways to generate the kinds of goals content can agree upon.

Balzhiser, Deborah, and Susan H. McLeod. “The Undergraduate Writing Major: What Is It? What Should It Be?” CCC 61.3 (2010): 415-33. Print.

Balzhiser and McLeod want to explore here the different iterations the writing major has taken as it is developing across the country. In doing so, they are addressing a key issue for the disciplinary status of writing studies, namely to define general curricular goals associated with the discipline. Doing so, they argue, will allow the discipline to better define itself and its areas of study. This butts up against some inconsistencies they discovered.

The key issue they address is that the writing major takes two different forms. While they immediately claim that having two types of major is not problematic in itself, the structures of these majors and their curricula are structured do give them pause. The first type of major is what they call the liberal arts model. This model’s “curriculum shows an integration of creative, literary, and professional writing” (419). However, as their examinations of catalogue descriptions demonstrates, a number of programs following this model construct “literature majors with writing courses tacked on as an afterthought” (422). The second model is a professional/rhetorical writing model. The emphasis here is certainly more on writing, but the differences between these two models and curricular inconsistencies suggest a sort of incoherence in the goals and curricula across the majority of major programs as they existed at the time of this study. Furthermore, “literature centric” views present in many departments contribute to this incoherence, as do fears of a new program taking students away from an existing program (423-24). The authors argue that to remedy these problems the discipline needs to begin to establish goals and learning objectives that may be applied as appropriate to local contexts. In addition, they argue for consistent curricular requirements including at minimum gateway, methods, and capstone courses.

The recommendations here would do much to add greater coherence to the discipline and strengthen its rising major. One concern that I have though, is that, while they do mention how the literature corners of English and forces outside English can influence the development of the major, they do not mention much in the way of addressing such factors. Instead they turn their attentions to more “in-house” issues of curriculum, which are certainly necessary. However, by not addressing those significant outside forces that can stop a new program from developing, the inside issues may simply become philosophical exercises.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” CCC 56.4 (2005): 654-87. Print.

Fulkerson examines the developments within writing studies as a field between the 1990s and the mid-2000s. By investigating what he sees as the dominant epistemologies, he argues that the discipline is losing unity and its focus on the teaching of writing. The field as he sees it is split into three factions: the social constructivist camp, the expressivist camp, and the rhetorical camp (which he further subdivides into focuses on argument, genre, and academic discourse).

Fulkerson begins by establishing a schema for his analysis. This takes the form of a chart with four categories that address a particular approach’s view of good writing, its sense of the writing process, its pedagogical approaches, and its underlying epistemology. He then turns this lens on the three camps in writing studies, starting with social constructivism. This view, he claims, overemphasizes issues of race, class, and gender; readings; and what he calls “leftist ideology” at the expense of writing instruction. He claims that these courses are often not really writing courses at all. While expressivist courses may put more explicit emphasis on writing, he argues that this approach, too, fails to maintain coherence and focuses too much on issues of self-exploration. Finally, the rhetoric camp fares a little better in his analysis but still receives a number of critiques, including a lack of explicating expectations for students, an absence of a specific sense of process and relying on imitation (in the case of genre approaches), and the potential for maintaining hierarchies of power and privilege (in the case of academic discourse approaches).

In other words, Fulkerson sees that state of composition in the twenty-first century as incoherent, messy, and even wrong in some instances. But in all of this, Fulkerson remains relatively vague about what he is in fact advocating as the direction of the discipline. He variously hints at the importance of the writing process and the need to emphasize writing in class instruction, but he never really expands on these views. In addition, he claims the approaches he critiques are all quite varied but does not hesitate to generalize about them and their problems, suggesting that these approaches, social constructivism in particular, could not achieve the kinds of ends he would like to see. I don’t pretend that any of these approaches is without its flaws, but these kinds of critiques without possible remedies or new directions seem to be more effective at driving in wedges than yielding productive results.

Murphy, Michael. “New Faculty for a New University: Toward a Full-Time Teaching-Intensive Faculty Track in Composition.” CCC 52.1 (2000): 14-42. Print.

One of the seemingly perpetual issues related to writing studies is the role of contingent faculty within the discipline. Because of the heavy reliance on such faculty to teach lower-division and required writing courses and the conditions they often teach under, one must wonder how the situation affects the status of writing studies as a discipline, particularly in the view of those outside the discipline. Michael Murphy’s article proposes a possible solution that would give qualified and competent writing instructors something akin to tenure without the required research component. Though these faculty would have a greater sense of security, they would still be an economical choice for institutions to staff the large numbers of required writing courses. So instead of looking at the issue of contingent faculty as an ethical one (though it still surely is), Murphy looks at it from an economic standpoint and from the standpoint that the research system of higher education has caused this labor issue. In short, he is trying to come up with a solution that all sides may find beneficial.

Undoubtedly, universities are as much influenced by the economics of the real world, and Murphy says those in higher education cannot pretend to be isolated from broader economic forces. Nor can we ignore other demands of the world outside academia. Such demands include calls for competitive education and more of it. In this sense, giving more stable position to skilled writing instructors responds to this demand for education, but because these faculty will fill the education need, faculty trained as scholars may be able to pursue research, upholding this side of the university’s goals. And since instructors would not have research requirements, they would not need the release time or sabbaticals, making them a more economic choice for administrators. On the surface, this seems nearly identical to the labor system currently in place, but Murphy claims these full-time instructors would be able to receive legitimate tenure. In addition, they would receive an adequate but not overwhelming number of courses and more just compensation to ensure they would be able to make a living.

I wholly appreciate what Murphy is doing here. He is looking for a way to treat contingent faculty more equitably while maintaining their economic value to the institution and maintaining the intellectual aspirations of the discipline. I also favored his sense of the intellectual value of teaching for the discipline. Clearly, he is trying to avoid the sorts of hierarchies and their inevitable problems that have troubled the discipline in the past. However, despite the best efforts of such a system to take the teeth out of hierarchies, by dividing faculty as this system does, hierarchies are bound to remain. This is quite a conundrum for the discipline to face, and while Murphy’s proposal may not go far enough, it is a good start toward a practical answer to this riddle.