Seminar promotes
interdisciplinary scholarship

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Pat Warner, associate professor of Consumer Studies, shows Spanish professor Nina Scott an 18th-century shoe. (Sarah Buchholz photo)

t's a truism that, despite a growing emphasis in scholarship on interdisciplinary studies around the country, faculty don't often get to work on academic projects with colleagues in other departments. This semester, however, thanks to the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Humanities and Fine Arts (ISHA), nine people from six departments have met regularly to discuss "reproduction" from a variety of perspectives.

    "We've really ranged from antiquity right to the present, to the latest ways in which the market economy is reproducing itself through Internet technology," ISHA director Stephen Clingman said. "We've had topics on the French Revolution, on Mexican painting in the 18th century, and a 1917 movie on birth control. It just validates the whole idea of a seminar that people of different disciplines and intellectual backgrounds can take a theme and ... consider it from so many angles and in so many dimensions."

    "I find it very valuable and stimulating," said Communication professor Marty Norden. "It's great to come together and share ideas and get feedback on various projects we're working on."

    Norden hopes to publish an anthology that would reproduce a lost 1917 film made by birth control advocate Margaret Sanger about her work and would include film reviews and legal documents from the process of censoring the film. In keeping with the variety of issues raised in the seminar, Norden's project involves at least four types of reproduction: biological reproduction, with which Sanger's career and the film were directly concerned; her own reproduction and reinvention of herself through the making of an autobiographical film; the legal effort to stop the reproduction of the film in theaters; and Norden's reproduction of the film from secondary sources.

    "Smith [College, which houses the Margaret Sanger Papers] has a scene-by-scene description of the movie, and it includes all of the title cards, which convey the verbal material in silent films," he said. "It also has fairly detailed descriptions of the scenes that went with them."

    In addition to Clingman and Norden, seminar participants include Patricia Warner, associate professor of Consumer Studies; Spanish professor Nina Scott; assistant professor of Communication Mari Paredes; Art professor Susan Jahoda; Laetitia La Follette, associate professor of Art History; and Stephen Harris and Christine Cooper, both assistant professors of English.

    "I think the best thing of all is to be in a place where you can actually hear people in foreign disciplines talking about their thoughts and their work and to realize how great the University is and how much talent is here," Warner said.

    "It's been a good opportunity for a junior faculty member to see the spectrum of work that's done on the campus and to have an opportunity to exchange work with a range of people you wouldn't necessarily otherwise encounter," said Cooper, who is working on "the forms of agency generated by narratives of reproduction during the French revolutionary period."

    Both Cooper and La Follette said that working across academic "generations" supplemented the richness of the interdisciplinary environment.

    "There's a certain energy from having full professors and junior faculty work together," La Follette said. "Our own work is obviously going forward as a result. I actually came into the seminar looking for some opportunities to develop ideas about digital reproduction. My own area of research has been antiquity, and this [seminar] has given me the opportunity to explore some of the ideas about changing attitudes toward images."

    La Follette said the group's work has raised theoretical issues about the attitude toward the past both currently and in antiquity.

    "I think my final presentation is going to be on the idea of reusing parts of monuments and the message the Romans are sending. Is it cannabalistic, or is it a tribute?"

    Warner's work also looks at both past and present. In her presentation to the seminar, she demonstrated trends in 18th-century clothing at the Flynt Center for early New England Life at Historic Deerfield. Although the group usually meets in Humanities and Fine Arts dean Lee Edward's office, members took what they called a "field trip" to the center in order to be able to see 18th-century clothing firsthand. After presenting slides and clothing from the center's collection, Warner showed excerpts from two contemporary films, based on the same book set in the 1780s. One, "Dangerous Liaisons," the group agreed, made a credible attempt, with some glaring exceptions, at invoking 18th-century dress. The other, "Valmont," for the most part did not.

    "The question remains: Why is it important to do a realistic job, or is it?" she asked the group after her presentation.

    "It does make one think of how much we see of the past is a makeover," Clingman said.

     "We're also seeing the cleaned up version" of history when we peruse "historical" evidence, such as paintings, said Harris, who studies the reproduction of Greece and Rome in Late Antiquity.

    Participants discussed ways in which images are mediated and issues scholars face in attempting to arrive at legitimate conclusions about the past or even the present before adjourning for a group lunch.

    "For me it's a great boon just to be part of this because I learn so much," Clingman said later.

    Warner said she joined the seminar on the heels of a joint project with a Zoologist friend at another university with whom she'd been trying to work for years.

    "Because she's a scientist, this whole issue of reproduction is interesting to her," she said. "Interestingly, there's not a scientist in this group. And this, to me, is such a scientific topic."

    "We'd like to bring in people from the sciences," Clingman said. "There's a whole cultural problem in which the people from the humanities and sciences don't really speak to each other, and I'd like to change that on the Amherst campus. I think it's possible."

    Clingman said he especially has enjoyed the "spirit" of the group this semester.

    "There's a sense of adventure and exploration, and that's exactly why I became an academic," he said.

    "It's been really a joy to get together and share ideas," La Follette said. "This is really what a university is supposed to be about. It can only strengthen us individually and as an institution.

    "Stephen's brilliant ideas and the support Lee [Edwards] has given made this happen. Stephen is very encouraging but also very sharp in terms of adding insights and showing how much common ground is here."

    "I very much commend Lee Edwards for her support of this," Norden said. "I hope it is something that will go on for many semesters."