In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Heavy Traffic at the Intersections: Ethnic, American, Women’s, Queer, and Cultural Studies T. V. REED for some years it has been apparent that the various interdisciplinary fields centered on analyzing history, culture, and power in the United States are being shaped not only by the intersection of disciplines (history, sociology, English, and so forth) but also by intersections with their related interdisciplines. Ethnic Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, Lesbian/Gay/Queer Studies, and cultural studies are entering into increasingly complex relations with each other. Although many scholars sense this, there has not been much critical analysis of what this intersection means theoretically or practically regarding day-to-day collegial and institutional relations . Although there is a growing body of literature on what interdisciplinary scholarship is in general, as well as some good work on particular interdisciplines , we lack a sustained practical and theoretical comparison of what interdisciplinarity means in the di¤erent but related fields that are broadly concerned with race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and other modalities of socially constructed di¤erence in a U.S. context.1 What does it mean for American, Ethnic, Women’s, Lesbian/Gay/Queer, and cultural Studies, which all claim to be interdisciplines concerned with the interrelations among these various modes of di¤erence? And what does it mean that many scholars working in these fields feel increasingly that our work exists at a confluence of two or more of these related fields? Are these fields talking about 2 7 3 the same “di¤erence”? Or do their interdisciplinary norms or their political assumptionsdi¤ersignificantly?Addressingsuchquestionsbeginsbyacknowledging that the answers may be quite di¤erent at the theoretical and the institutional levels. Intersections on Interdisciplines As I explore later in this chapter, the various “studies” fields seem to be converging more and more in terms of theoretical orientation. Indeed, particularly among younger scholars I talk to, raising issues about the relations among these fields, or asking which label identifies their intellectual location makes no sense at all. Each of these fields is in e¤ect doing postcolonial American, cultural, Ethnic, gender, sexuality Studies. But however much this convergence may be occurring at the level of theory and scholarly practice, real historical , generational, institutional, and structural di¤erences mean that these fields are divergent “cultural formations,” with some significant di¤erences in their intellectual foundations, ideological orientations, and research agendas . In practice, overlapping political and scholarly agendas, combined with di¤erent institutional locations, mean that these fields are increasingly competing for the same limited resources. One way to see the structural tensions among these interdisciplines is to look at some stereotypical ways in which the relations between and among them have been described. For example, on the one hand American Studies looks to some traditionalists in Ethnic and Women’s Studies like it has stolen from and perhaps sought to colonize them, both in terms of scholarship and institutional space. By contrast, to some traditionalists in American Studies, it looks like the field has been fully taken over by Ethnic and Women’s Studies perspectives and practitioners. From yet another angle American Studies, in the earlier scenario, the aggrandizing force par excellence, is seen merely as a rather parochial branch of a still greater imperial power called “cultural studies .” To still other scholars, cultural studies and American Studies both seem watered down, mainstreamed versions of more radical critiques coming out of Lesbian/Gay/Queer, Gender, and Ethnic Studies. Each of these stereotypes points to certain parts of the truth about complicated power relations among these fields. We need more open and frank discussion at conferences, in journals, and in the hallways about these power relations. We also need careful comparisons of the interdisciplines to try to understand more fully what di¤erences and similarities exist on various ide2 7 4 / t. v. re e d ological, structural-institutional, and methodological-epistemological levels. In my own experience talking with colleagues working with me in American Studies at Washington State University, but whose primary a‹liation is with Ethnic or Women’s Studies, it has become apparent that what at times appeared to be substantive ideological di¤erences were, in part at least, different ways of articulating the common political trajectories of our respective interdisciplines. This is not, I hasten to add, predicated on the assumption that all people within a given interdiscipline share the same understanding of the interdiscipline, the same ideology or the same methods. Nor does this assume that most scholars...

Share