Humanities, Culture, and Interdisciplinarity: The Changing American Academy

8. DEFINING OTHER AMERICAS

Chapter 8 DEFINING OTHER AMERICAS Douglas Bennett calls identity fields a kind of “sacred edge” in the reopened battle over inclusion and exclusion (144). American studies was a staging ground for interests in race and gender. However, former President Mary Ellen Washington recalls, when the Radical Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA) formed in 1969, African Americans were relatively invisible. The loosening of disciplinary boundaries was part of a new synthesis that should have made African American and American studies natural collaborators. That did not happen (3). By the mid-1970s, members of the former Radical Caucus were being elected to the ASA Council. They were subsequently joined by members of the Women’s Committee. The general community of American studies was also becoming more diverse, and new programs finding support (Horwitz, “American Studies” 115; Mechling,” Axioms” 10–11). In order to develop their interests fully, though, the “others” had to create their own fields. Identity fields represented another “America” on the edge of the traditional frame (Campbell and Kean 30). They provided homes for studying previously neglected topics, imparting new personal and sociopolitical relevance , fostering collaborative work, and establishing interdisciplinary approaches capable of refiguring existing concepts, ideas, and frameworks (Garcia and Ratcliff 119, Olguin and Schmitz 439). In forging new pathways in the study of American culture, they also created a counterpressure on both the disciplines and American studies. In the case of American studies , the pressure was compounded by changes in departments of English and of history where studies of American literature and social history were securing a place (Mechling, “Axioms” 10). This chapter compares the trajectories of two major exemplars—African American and women’s studies. The objective is not a full account of each field, but an understanding of how they forged new pathways for the study of American culture. Several Defining Other Americas 177 related questions follow. How do these fields differ from other interdisciplinary fields? What parallels appear in the early period? What were the major gains and impediments in that period? What role have the concepts of unity and disciplinarity played in their evolution? How has interdisciplinarity been defined and practiced? What is their current status in the academy ? What lessons about the academic home of interdisciplinarity emerge from these and other identity fields? Interdisciplinary Prospects Identity fields are qualitatively different from other interdisciplinary fields because they emerged from external historical events. They were the academic arm of movements that began in the social and political arena: in challenges to the political, social, and economic order; in struggles for ethnic , racial, and gender equality; in cultural and educational projects anchored in self-definition and pride; and in efforts to create curricular parity and build transdisciplinary paradigms. “Ethnic studies” is an umbrella term for fields that focus specifically on the ways that race and racism have shaped ethnic reality in America. The most frequent approach has been ethnic-specific studies located in separate programs, centers, and departments . Ethnic studies also became a component of American studies programs and departments, though far less often (Butler 96–97, DeSoto 302). Identity fields emerged at roughly the same time. The civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s and student activism in the mid- to late 1960s stirred widening protests on campuses. In 1968, San Francisco State College became the first predominantly white institution to establish a black studies program, and demands from coalitions of women and other groups followed. In 1968 and 1969, Asian American studies began at San Francisco State University and the University of California at Berkeley. And in 1970, San Diego State University and Cornell University launched the first women’s studies programs (Levine and Nidiffer 78; Matibag 185). In each case, the object existed before the field. The Rise of Black Studies The precursors of African American scholarship and teaching date to the early 1900s. Pioneering works included writings by W. E. B. DuBois, Arthur Schomburg, Carter Woodson, J. Saunders Redding, John Hope Franklin, E. Franklin Frazier, and white scholars such as Robert Park and Melville Herskovits. Between the 1890s and World War II, numerous organizations emerged to document and analyze the experience of people of African descent , including literary and historical associations. In the 1930s, a number of historically black colleges and universities created courses on black life in America, some predominately white universities offered courses on “Negro life” or “Negro culture...