Submission to Curriculum Reform Committee, 14 February 2008
Dr Hazel Hutchison, School of Language and Literature
Interdisciplinarity is a word that has been heard a lot on campus recently in
connection with the process of Curriculum Reform, and there had been considerable
discussion about the possibility of cross-school and cross-college courses taught
across disciplinary and administrative boundaries. This presentation outlines one such
course already running successfully: EL40BL Frankenstein to Einstein: Literature
and Science in the Nineteenth Century. This course is taught by myself, Hazel
Hutchison, based in the School of Language and Literature, Ben Marsden and Ralph
O’Connor, based in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, with input from
Neil Curtis and Siobhan Convery in Historic Collections.
The nineteenth century is a long and diverse period, but 10-15 minutes is a very short
period, so this presentation will give a brief sketch of what we do in this course.
I will start by outlining our Aspirations for this course:
Why did this course seem necessary?
What are the key ideas which govern its conception?
Then I will give you some of the Practicalities:
How is this course delivered?
What do the students learn and what do they take away from it?
Finally I want to draw a few Abstractions:
What can be translated from our experience into the context of other courses?
At a moment of change, what might be relevant to Curriculum Reform?
Aspirations
Like all great ideas Frankenstein to Einstein began with a cup of coffee. When Ben
Marsden and I were office neighbours in the Old Brewery, we quickly worked out
that we had a shared interest in nineteenth-century culture, and had more intellectual
common ground than many of our colleagues in our own departments. At some point
over a cup of coffee, we rather wistfully agreed it would be good to teach a course
which utilised my expertise in literature and his expertise in history of science.
However, the administrative procedures in place made this less than easy. Everybody
we consulted told us that this would be technically possible but fraught with
administrative problems—an assessment that was borne out by later experience.
However, ‘technically possible’ provided enough of a green light for us to proceed,
and Ben and I produced a course proposal and started thinking about course content.
At this point Ben secured a Senior Research Fellowship at the Dibner Institute
(MIT/Harvard) for a year and plans were shelved. This turned out to be a useful holdup, as in the interval the School of DHP hired Ralph O’Connor, a specialist in
nineteenth-century popular scientific literature. Ralph was keen to be involved in the
project, so we reorganised the course programme to include him. When Ben returned
from Boston we clarified our objectives and procedures, and the course was ready.
Interdisciplinarity is nothing new. In fact, in the history of thought, it is disciplinarity
that is the parvenu upstart. Certainly in the nineteenth century many discipline
boundaries that seem cast-iron to us simply did not exist. This was true within
academia and beyond. One need only glance at the contents page of any major
nineteenth-century periodical to see this interdisciplinary process at work. Take for
example a volume that happens to be on my bookshelf, Nineteenth Century, vol. 2
(1877). In this volume, articles on History, Theology, Foreign Policy, Medicine,
Optics, Education, Literary Biography, Housekeeping, Philosophy, Technology and
Poetry all rub shoulders. W. K. Clifford, Professor of Mathematics at University
College London, writes on poetry, while W. E. Gladstone, MP, serving Prime
Minister, writes about the optics of colour.
However, many modern academic approaches to the nineteenth century are so focused
on disciplinary methods and concerns, that the richness of this cultural diversity is
made invisible to students. The main aim of our course is to expose students to the
interdisciplinary nature of nineteenth-century culture, so that their understanding of
texts, events and practices from the period is enlivened and sharpened. We also want
to question their own intellectual boundaries and enhance their reading strategies by
exposing them to different kinds of texts. For the cultural history students enrolled on
the course, this means learning to examine imaginative literary texts as cultural
documents. For the literature students it means reading scientific and journalistic texts
as literary texts in their own right—texts which employ complex linguistic strategies
and rhetorical structures. Every nineteenthcentury text on this course has the status of
a ‘primary text’, and should be read with as much attention to its mode of expression
as to its content. Indeed, as recent thought acknowledges, it is never possible to
separate these two elements completely. By the end of the course, the students should
have grasped not only that many nineteenth-century literary texts are crammed with
references to contemporary scientific developments and technological innovations;
but also that the science of the century was shaped by the cultural imperatives of the
period, and were disseminated and popularised through the sophisticated use of tropes
and narrative structures by writers in many different contexts. (See Powerpoint slides
for a list of course aims.)
Practicalities
EL40BL is taken by students from English and Cultural History. Technically it is also
available to History students, it has never been enthusiastically advertised to History
students. As with all level-4 English courses, the course is taught in two two-hour
seminars each week, and is capped at 15 students. Both years it has been offered, it
has been the most heavily subscribed course at level 4. The course could run twice
over if we had the time to teach it. This is a team-taught course, but this doesn’t just
mean we rotate the teaching. Our aim is to have two of us there for most of the
seminar sessions. This does not always register on our workloads, but it really works
in class and is one of the aspects of the course which the students enjoy most. They
especially relish any hint of disagreement or diversity of opinion on some fine
academic point. And, at level 4, it is healthy for the students to be exposed to a variety
of contrasting intellectual ideas. The reading for the course is a mix of literature and
contemporary source material. Each week a ‘literary’ text is balanced with some other
primary text and the students are encouraged to explore the connections between them
and are given the necessary contextual information to facilitate this. The course also
includes visits to the Archives, at Special Libraries to look at relevant print and MS
material and to Marischal Museum where the scientific, anthropological and
‘imperial’ collections enhance the students’ engagement with the core themes of the
course.
The students write an essay mid-term; they also take a two-hour exam in January.
10% of the course mark is allocated for seminar participation and 10% for a group
project. Last year, this project was based on the invaluable nineteenth-century
periodical collection in QML basement, and explored subjects including the
popularisation of scientific culture, the impact of print technology on literary practice,
and popular medical literature. This year, the students are working with Neil Curtis at
Marischal Museum to design an exhibition which will be staged in June and July
2008. Before Christmas, the students gave presentations outlining their ideas. In the
coming months they will be working with Neil and the course team to realise
exhibitions based on the themes of Science and Religion, the Human Animal, Time
and Technology.
Abstractions
What is to be learned from this empirical experiment in interdisciplinary teaching?
Teaching across intellectual and administrative boundaries can be exciting and
rewarding for both students and staff. EL40BL has now run twice and has been very
popular with the students. It has also been a joy to teach. Teaching across a
disciplinary boundary means always being on the edge of one’s intellectual comfort
zone. However, teaching within a team means constantly supporting one another,
sparking new ideas and learning from each other. Feedback from the students, both
written and verbal, suggests that they enjoy exposure to a mix of approaches and
opinions. They also appreciate the opportunity to explore new territory, perhaps
because they have reached a stage where they feel secure within their original
discipline. The students also love getting out of the classroom and learning through
material objects, including original printed material.
For the subject area of nineteenth-century culture this interdisciplinary format is
particularly appropriate. However it does requires a certain amount of disciplinary
focus in order to retain an appropriate level of academic rigour and analysis. The
students studying English and those studying Cultural History certainly get different
things out of the course, which suggests that they need the intellectual security of
some sort of disciplinary training, and some sense of a final disciplinary objective, in
order to do useful business with other kinds of materials and subject areas. The danger
of too much interdisciplinary teaching within a degree programme is that students
could lose a sense of focus for their learning and develop into graduates who know a
little about a lot, but have few intellectual tools to analyse any of it thoroughly.
Encouraging the students to make use of analytical processes from single disciplines
helps to counter this danger.
It is also intriguing to notice how cautious the students can be about crossing
discipline boundaries. Of course, EL40BL is designed to challenge that, but many of
the literature students clearly want to continue reading the literary texts as literature
and the other texts as secondary context. They clearly enjoy the security of knowing
what they are doing and how, and I think it is important not to freak them out by
shattering the analytical methods and categories which they have learned. Engaging in
the traditions and methods of a single academic discipline remains a worthwhile
project. Specialisation leads to depth and rigour of thought and often does evolve
eventually into an interest in how the structures of one discipline also apply
elsewhere. There is no point in attempting to rush students through this process.
Learning is an incremental process and there are few shortcuts. Sound knowledge of
one area is essential before attempting knowledge of many areas, if one is to develop
any idea of how to recognise sound knowledge—which should be the goal of any
academic programme.
Finally, a few words about structures and funding. Winston Churchill is quoted as
saying about the layout of the Houses of Parliament: ‘We shape our buildings and
thereafter they shape us.’ Something similar is true of university structures. The
frustrations of running this course have all been administrative and structural.
Although I am not fully qualified to speak about the evolution of Cultural History, I
do know that English Literature is, and always has been, a very interdisciplinary
discipline. However, the institution of a school structure at Aberdeen has, ironically,
not enhanced the possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration, or synergies, with
other departments. The current orientation of the school structure has focused money
and attention on one aspect of the many interdisciplinary facets of English, and has
inevitably hampered the growth of its connections elsewhere. Intellectual links with
Divinity, History and Philosophy and with the Social Sciences have become hard to
sustain. It certainly takes some determination to keep such connections alive across
fiscal boundaries. The History Department has been reluctant to sign up singlehonours History students to the course, despite frank negotiations early on to ensure
that the course was accredited to that programme as well as to Cultural History. This
leads to an imbalance of FTEs between the two schools, and inevitable concerns about
funding and staffing in the future.
Moreover, raising money for innovative teaching events and practices, such as the
forthcoming exhibition at Marischal, is always complex when designated funds for
such events do not exist. As this course has a foot in several camps, and as few
resources are available for teaching projects rather than research, this can prove rather
tricky. Like any worthwhile project, interdisciplinary courses require solid resources,
and cannot run entirely on enthusiasm. If such courses are to be at the foreground of a
radical rethink of the curriculum, this may have also radical implications for
administrative and fiscal structures.
Interdisciplinary teaching is challenging and rewarding for both staff and students
alike. An interdisciplinary course such as EL40BL Frankenstein to Einstein works
best for students when attached to a programme with a robust disciplinary
methodology, so that the students can explore new territory using tried and tested
intellectual strategies. However, the current administrative and fiscal structures of the
University do not make interdisciplinary teaching straightforward, and if such courses
are to form a component of the reformed curriculum then issues of funding and
registration will need to be resolved.
HH 14 February 2008 / revised 11 March
If you have any questions about this presentation, you can contact Hazel Hutchison at
h.hutchison@abdn.ac.uk